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Werelds
Special Little Man

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Posted: Thu, 31st Mar 2011 13:59 Post subject: My bro's birthday present..and a bit of a present for me too	Quick Quote Quote

So my grandfather has had a motorcycle sitting in the attic for about 40 years. My little brother and I have been working on restoring a Mini now that he's got the room at his house, but that has pretty much come to a halt with the weather being as it is (rains one day, sunshine the next). We knew he had this in his attic, and we've been talking about going to get it for a while. So a couple of weeks ago my dad and I got the bright idea to actually get it, and give it to my bro for his birthday, which is today. I just went over to his place, and he's friggin' happy of course Considering how old it is, it looks remarkably good, and most of the work we'll need to do on it is paintwork - only very little rust. Mechanically there's not much wrong; the clutch is fucked, and the gearbox needs to be revised. The front brake however is fine, and the springs seem to be fine as well. Rear brake needs some grease, but that's about it. And the wiring needs to be redone as you can see in the images below, but that's an easy job and we're both really looking forward to it Anyway, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one on the hump who can appreciate a marvelous piece of engineering like this. It's a 1951 (60 years old!) DKW RT 125 W Telegabel. Sadly, DKW is no longer, but there's a few things noteworthy about it: - If the logo looks familiar, that's because DKW bought Audi somewhere in the 20's; same 4 rings as Audi has nowadays - If the actual bike looks familiar, that's because both BSA (Bantam) in the UK and Harley-Davidson (Hummer) were granted the blueprints to it after WW2 - They were producing more than 100.000 of these back in the 30's - that's an astonishing number for back then Anyway, time for images (click for full res version): And here's one restored to its former glory to give you an idea what we'll bring this back to:

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_SiN_
Megatron

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Location: Cybertron

Posted: Thu, 31st Mar 2011 14:26 Post subject:	Quick Quote Quote

That's awesome, restoring old bikes/cars is a special kind of experience, good luck on that to the both of you My dad has been a gearhead and a mechanic since he was born (turns 47 this year), and I've been a around a number of restorations and rebuilds. I specifically remember that he had two or three Indian motorcycles at one point ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_%28motorcycle%29 ) so I know those really old bikes are pretty damn cool Watercooled 5950X \| AORUS Master X570 \| Asus RTX 3090 TUF Gaming OC \| 64Gb RAM \| 1Tb 970 Evo Plus + 2Tb 660p \| etc etc

Werelds
Special Little Man

Posts: 15098
Location: 0100111001001100

Posted: Thu, 31st Mar 2011 14:42 Post subject:	Quick Quote Quote

Yeah the old Mini we've been working on is something special as well, you really cannot compare cars from now to those. Gonna be great fun to work on this thing, and if we can find good parts (saddle is pretty fucked as you can see, as are the handles, but that's cosmetic stuff) we should be able to get this running and looking good pretty soon I'd think that you of all people would have a project of your own tbh SiN Join in on the war on LeoSatan

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fraich3

Posts: 2907
Location: Not from my mouth!

Posted: Thu, 31st Mar 2011 14:43 Post subject:	Quick Quote Quote

Sweet gift! Your brother is lucky "Zipfero is the biggest fucking golddigger ever" - Mutantius

_SiN_
Megatron

Posts: 12108
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Posted: Thu, 31st Mar 2011 16:27 Post subject:

Werelds wrote:

Yeah the old Mini we've been working on is something special as well, you really cannot compare cars from now to those. Gonna be great fun to work on this thing, and if we can find good parts (saddle is pretty fucked as you can see, as are the handles, but that's cosmetic stuff) we should be able to get this running and looking good pretty soon Smile

I'd think that you of all people would have a project of your own tbh SiN Razz

I do have a project, just not a restoration Razz

I'm in the process of further upgrading my Nissan, this year a built head is on it's way. Cams, port/polish, redone combustion chambers, stiffer valvesprings etc. Also im going over to E85 Smile

My current turbo can handle about 490HP on E85, and I'm planning on reaching that.

Werelds
Special Little Man

Posts: 15098
Location: 0100111001001100

Posted: Thu, 31st Mar 2011 16:41 Post subject:	Quick Quote Quote

Nice Won't be doing that to either the Mini or the DKW though haha We're gonna restore both as close to original as we can, although some parts will be hard to get. Luckily we're both pretty handy when it comes to this stuff, and our dad was originally a car mechanic as well so that should come in handy as well. Not sure what we're gonna do for paint on the DKW yet though, whether we'll do it ourselves or have it done professionally. We've done the cylinder head cover on the Mini, and that worked out pretty well (mate of my bro's is a professional painter and he said he wouldn't have done it better ), but that was a pretty small part so we're still in doubt there. Also need to sort out the rims on that, hopefully we can get a pair as good as the ones we got for the Mini Repainted cylinder head cover: Mini in its current state The rims for the Mini (cleaned, and given a little touchup but they were in near perfect state):

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