It has been a very long time since I've provided an update on the progress of my 1953 Meisterklasse restoration. This is largely because there has been very little progress. I've been extremely busy with other matters and my poor car has been left to languish in the garage without love. The last update was December 2021!!
Where we left off: I placed the engine with some mechanic friends to strip, clean and rebuild the engine. Here we hit our first challenge - getting the engine apart. As the engine had taken on water at some point, some components were tightly rusted. I also needed to get a Dynastart puller, which I managed to obtain from Germany from www.motortools.de It did the job in five minutes but took six weeks to arrive.
So the Dynastart was removed and then....things slowed right down. My friends - being good mechanics - were very much in demand and fiddling around with the engine slipped further and further down the list of things on their plate. Myself, I had so much going on in my life that all my plans to continue stripping down and tidying rusty components, such as the front bumper, fell by the wayside.
I did manage to hammer out some of the many bends in the bumper panels so it does look better than it was, but there's still a lot of cleaning up to go. I need to finish cleaning up the aluminium strips that attach to the metal bumper too. Another half done job!
Anyway, the guys got back to the engine this week and split the crankcase. What a mess inside!
No surprises there. At some point the engine became filled with water and sludge, which resulted in the crank and pistons seizing in the crankcase. The cases will now go for vapour blasting. Then the new crankshaft and pistons can go in.
The gearbox looks pretty good now it has been cleaned up outside and, as I've mentioned before, shifts through the gears easily enough. We're going to start with a good flushing to see what comes out and weigh up whether we pull that apart. It's good to see some movement on the project.
Update 8 August 2022
I thought it would a few more weeks before we saw more progress, but I was wrong. The guys had the cases quickly cleaned up and then began the reassembly.Then we hit a roadblock - missing seals! I was sure we had all the appropriate seals but apparently not. It should not be long before we have the seals for the end of the crank and then we're away again.
The previous update - December 2021: https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2021/12/dkw-meisterklasse-project-update.html
Previous Restoration Updates:
1. DKW Meisterklasse Import April 2017: https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2021/05/1953-dkw-f89p-meisterklasse-import.html
2. Welcome to 2019: https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2019/01/welcome-to-2019.html
3. DKW Meisterklasse Project February 2020 Update: https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2019/12/dkw-project-update.html
4. DKW Meisterklasse Project April 2020 Update: https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2020/04/dkw-meisterklasse-project-update-april.html
5. DKW Meisterklasse Project June 2020 Update: https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2020/05/dkw-meisterklasse-project-update-may.html
6. DKW Meisterklasse Project September 2020 Update: https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2020/09/dkw-meisterklasse-project-update.html
7. DKW Meisterklasse Project December 2020 Update: https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2020/12/dkw-meisterklasse-project-update.html
8. DKW Meisterklasse Project January 2021 Update: https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2021/01/dkw-meisterklasse-project-update.html
9. DKW Meisterklasse Project February 2021 Update: https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2021/02/dkw-meisterklasse-project-update.html
10. DKW Meisterklasse Project May 2021 Update: https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2021/04/dkw-meisterklasse-project-update-april.html