Sunday, February 12, 2012

DKW Repairs


I organised a temporary movement permit (http://www.transport.wa.gov.au/licensing/20779.asp) which allows you to drive an unregistered vehicle on the road for the purpose of repair or registration with the intention of taking the straight over the pits on Wednesday morning, but after I'd reviewed the car and taken it for a short drive I changed my mind. The brakes felt weak so I thought I should get them checked out. There'd be no sense taking the car for inspection only to fail on something so obvious.

I took the car down to Auto-Masters in Fremantle. The guys were puzzled by the car but happy to give it the once over.

It turned out the brakes were okay, needing only a top up of the fluid and little adjustment. They are about as good as 50 year old drum brakes get. The underside of the car was 'immaculate', without a spot of rust. But they did advise that the right hand inner tie rod end was worn and this was making the steering veer, especially when braking.

As I needed to import the tie rod end anyway, I considered replacing the drum brakes with disc brakes, which DKW introduced as an option in 1960. Spares can be found in Germany, South Africa and Brazil. In Brazil DKW-Vemag manufactured DKW cars right through to 1968 and many thousands are still on the road. Dekabras still manufacture spares and performance parts and have begun advertising internationally. Their website is - http://www.dekabras.com.br/inicio.php The website is in Portuguese and needs some work but they responded very promptly to my emails and sent me photos of their spares and disc brake kits. Here's a photo:

Nevertheless, after some correspondence I opted not to pursue this option. Replacing the drum brakes would require complete replacement of the front axles and all the brake cylinders. After the Auto Masters guys retuning the brakes they proved to be quite good enough.

Then I needed to fix two defects in the instrumentation requiring specialist parts.  Firstly, the petrol gauge didn't work. This is a common problem with old Deeks and there are no spares/replacement parts available. Arne Guldenstein at Mobilitaeten offers a repair service, so the gauge was shipped over to Germany for repair.

The temperature gauge was also faulty so it also went back to Germany. While the petrol gauge was easy to remove, the temperature gauge was not. The whole instrument, from the sensor to the gauge is a single piece. The sensor was easy enough to unscrew and feed back through the firewall, but removing the gauge was a challenge that required removing the dashboard instrument panel. That required a lot of fiddling around under the dash to undo the tiny screws holding it on and then some real grunt to pull it through - without scratching the paintwork or disconnecting any of the wiring. I pray that I'll be able to get it all back in without damaging anything. I'm hoping that the instruments and the tie rods will be back in about three weeks. Crossed fingers!

Update 2 March 2012
I heard from Arne that the parts have arrived in Germany but are with Customs who may take up to two weeks to inspect and release them. This is disappointing. It doesn't sound like the parts will be back by April.

Here is a link to DKW spare parts suppliers (including Mobilitaeten) - http://heinkelscooter.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/dkw-spare-parts-suppliers-and-repairers.html

To part two: https://heinkelscooter.blogspot.com/2012/04/dkw-crunch-time.html

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

The DKW Arrives


The Tijuca arrived in Fremantle in the early hours of 2 February 2012. She stayed in port long enough to unload her cargo before setting sail for Melbourne that very day. I was quite surprised at the speed of the turnaround as I see plenty of cargo carriers parked dockside for days. I had intended to ride down and see the ship unloading but it wasn't to be.

Cargo Online handled all the import paperwork, Customs and the obligatory Quarantine inspection. Quarantine can request vehicles be steam cleaned and this can take up to a week to arrange. Fortunately I had arranged with Marcelo to have the car thoroughly cleaned before it was shipped so Quarantined passed the car.

Only authorized drivers are allowed dockside so Jason from Cargo Online organized for the car to be delivered directly to our house. It was dropped off on Tuesday 7th February 2012.

Rolling down the ramp

This is my first view of the car as I arrived home after work.



The walk around. Although there are some little flaws in the paintwork the car DOES look as good as it did in the pics from South Africa.

The interior is all original and unrestored.

Settling in behind the wheel. It still has that old car smell that I remember from my old EH Holden (1963); the smell of real leather upholstery.

The moment of truth! The transporter driver said the battery was flat but clearly he didn't know how to start it. I inserted the key, turned it to 'Fahrt', pressed the starter button and the engine whirred into life. I was surprised how quiet the engine was. It simply purrs.

DKW Shipping: https://heinkelscooter.blogspot.com/2012/01/das-auto-kommt.html
DKW Repairs: https://heinkelscooter.blogspot.com/2012/02/dkw-repairs-and-spares.html