Friday, May 11, 2012

The DKW is licensed!

After failing an initial inspection, Daisy the DKW is licensed for the road. It seems a long time coming, considering the car was delivered in February, but then good things are worth the wait.

Following the first inspection I had a small list of issues to address. These were relatively minor - tyres, headlights, a couple of minor suspension tweaks and the replacement of a torn CV boot. It was the CV boot that proved to be the most challenging item to address and again this was more due to the time it takes to get parts shipped from Germany.

I ordered two boots from http://www.dkwhesse.de/ largely because they have a presence on ebay.de which made purchasing easy. Auto-Masters in Fremantle installed the boot the day after they arrived and I booked the car in for inspection the next day. As it was a re-inspection it was a pretty quick affair - a quick confirmation that all the highlighted issues have been fixed and then we were done!

I would have liked to have kept the South African plates on the car but unfortunately that's not legal so we have Western Australian plates.

The first inspection: https://heinkelscooter.blogspot.com/2012/04/dkw-crunch-time.html

Thursday, May 3, 2012

DKW Junior Project


This forlorn DKW Junior sits in a country NSW field awaiting a saviour.

The Junior was not imported into Australia but small numbers were imported into New Zealand and eventually made their way here. Lack of spare parts and the mechanics to work on them eventually took them all off the road.

As I understand it, this car was traded in to a NSW car dealer who had an interest in German and European cars sometime in the 1970s. The dealer squirreled the cars away on his farm but never got around to repairing or restoring them. After his passing his family began to sell off selected vehicles. The location of the cars is a secret known only to a small group of enthusiasts.

The interior looks in pretty bad condition. All seats and upholstery and some parts of the dashboard need to be fully replaced, but importantly the floor-pan doesn't look to be rusted through - a very good sign! Note also the Saab in the background. That would also be an exceptional project.

The former owner obviously had a DKW 3=6 too as there is a radiator grill on the front seat.

The engine looks to be all there.

A fully restored DKW Junior. The example above would have been this colour too.

I have no connection to the seller, don't know where the car is exactly (beyond country NSW) or how much the family are asking, but if you are interested "I know someone, who knows someone" and can put you in touch. You can contact me via the blog and I will pass your details along.

Update - I believe this car is part of the stash photographed by Goggomobil expert Uwe Staufenberg about ten years ago - http://www.goggomobil.com/schrott/se-29.html

Update 2017 - all cars in the hoard have been sold.