Long before I purchased a DKW F94 car, I was actively searching for a DKW motorcycle to buy. Unfortunately for me, these proved much harder to find in Australia than I'd hoped. Several opportunities came up but all fell through. In the end I ended up finding and purchasing my DKW car in South Africa and the quest for a motorcycle fell into abeyance.
However, several years ago a fellow DKW enthusiast in Perth told me he was liquidating his collection. One of the vehicles in his collection was a 1957 DKW Hummel moped. He was a Dutch immigrant and had bought the Hummel with him when he migrated to Australia in the 1960s. Here, he found the slow little bumblebee completely unsuitable for Australian traffic, so he sold it. Many years later when he retired he began a nostalgic search for a Hummel. Almost none would have come here so this would have been a challenging search, but eventually one popped up. Imagine his surprise when it turned out to be the same one he had brought to Australia in the 1960s!
Knowing this vehicle's unusual history, I was happy to purchase it. It wasn't running at the time, requiring a new isolator. I eventually managed to source one from Germany and got the machine running. However, after a few test runs, the petrol tap began to leak so I parked her up. Several times I attempted the investigate the leak but the access panel is very small and getting a spanner to the tap difficult, so I gave up. It wasn't as though I was able to ride the Hummel on the road.
Well, I finally managed to get the petrol tap out and investigated. The problem was the cork petrol tap seal. The original had begun to decompose and crumble.
I obtained a replacement from zweirad-union-mopeds.de. It proved to be a bloody difficult task to fit the new petrol seal and I should probably have just bought a complete replacement. Nevertheless, once fitted the petrol leak was solved and the bumblebee began to happily buzz again.
She's a skitty little thing. It's not fast or powerful, but it it's better than pedalling.
And then I found a real motorbike! https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2022/03/1954-dkw-rt250-h-motorcycle.html
