I had hoped that the hibernation enforced on us by the Covid lockdown madness would have given me more time to work on the DKW Meisterklasse project. Unfortunately I was not able to get as much done as I had hoped. As I've covered in my earlier updates, I finally got the seized engine the apart, but was prevented on proceeding further as the pistons and crankshaft I had sourced were stranded in Germany, unable to be shipped due to postal restrictions.
The next major job I started was replacement of the brakes. I had been forced to dismantle the brakes at the dockside when the car had first arrived in Fremantle. The asbestos skins of the brake shoes had been seized but I retained the mechanisms. After discussions with my mechanic friends, I decided to completely replace the brake cylinders, rather than recondition the old ones. I'm pretty sure the car had sat in water at some point in the past, at least as high as the axles, due to rust marks in brake drums, so there's no telling how viable the old cylinders would have been. Again, I thought I'd have been able to make a start on reassembling the brakes, but they too were stuck in Germany with no ETA when they'd likely be on the move.
June passed, then July. I spoke with my parts suppliers, Ralf Muller and Martin Hesse regularly to see if the post reopened. It wasn't until August that packages began to flow again. This last week 'the postman rang twice.' Once with Ralf's package and once with Martin's. A few other random bits and pieces had also arrived recently.
A table full of goodies
A complete set of F89/F91 brake cylinders.
A pair of new condensors
Body mounts - while the rust was being cut it out it was apparent that the old mounts were completely rotten.
Yep, those are toast!
Water pipes. The old ones were completely rotted.
I have had an engine block honed for the new pistons.
This is a D89L Schnellaster expansion chamber. It's not really correct for the F89P, but mine is cactus (see below). I will give it a try. If it doesn't suit, I can always sell it.
The F89P's expansion chamber. It's only useful as a template for a re-manufactured one. That's still on the cards if the Schnellaster chamber doesn't work out.
Update: 10 October 2020
Almost a month after the first parts arrived, the second box arrived, even though they were all posted at the same time. This package was diverted through Melbourne - where there is a FULL LOCKDOWN - so it was inevitably delayed. Now I have my refurbished crankshaft. Great news! Now it's time to get the engine out and begin reassembly.
Blogger News - every couple of years Google performs a major upgrade on Blogger - I work in IT and fully understand this. But as this is Google, which has nothing but contempt for its users, they always manage to totally and utterly F everything up. So, now what used to be a simple process of posting up a couple of photos and adding a bit of text requires painstaking review and reformatting, including the editing of every single HTML coding for every single photo so that it formats correctly on the page. This because the people who work at Blogger obviously don't use the product and don't have the slightest interest in looking after the people that do. So, this is probably going to mean fewer posts until I find a work around to Google's F-ups or - God forbid - they fix it. Thanks again Google!
The previous update: https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2020/05/dkw-meisterklasse-project-update-may.html