Old/Wierd Cars

ain't it nice not living in the burbs?

Ive found it more perplexing figuring if they actually run or not

Actually not much different from the burbs in that perspective

Now living in an area where rust is not much of an issue, and coming from an area where rust is a huge issue, it is amazing to me what people drive everyday.

I have see a Toyota 2WD dually. Really.

Remember Datsun B210's? I thought they had all been crushed 10 years ago.

Those fat little mid 70's Mustangs seem to be making a comeback here.

And there is a older guy that tools around town in his 67 or 68 Camaro, Primer gray and Black, probably wouldn't sell it for any money.

I have a 48 year old John Deere tractor which works fine. Its most recent mechanical attention consisted of hose-clamping a new coffee can over the hole in the exhaust stack, and a bit of duct-tape upholstery repair. Similar equipment abounds in the area. There are plenty of ancient, beat-up, but functioning, pickup trucks too. Some are stay-at-homes, un-plated and never venturing from their own farms, others rattle along the gravel roads dragging enormous plumes of dust.

My 8-month-old truck is currently languishing at the Dealership, awaiting it's third fuel-injection rail.



timber

Sublime...I think we live in the same neighborhood!!

I owned two German DKW's, a 1957 and a 1962. They were also identified as Auto Union. They had a logo of 4 overlapping circles. (Where have you seen that before? But that's a different story.)

The DKW was a 3 cylinder, two cycle engine with front wheel drive.

The engine had only seven moving parts: one crankshaft, three rods, and 3 cylinders. There was no oil pump and no water pump. You put in a quart of oil into each tankfull of gas. That took care of lubrication. The radiator was between the engine and the firewall. A huge hose (3-4 inches in diameter came off the top of the engine and self-circulated 'the water much like a radiator in a house operates. There were no valves. Two cycle engines use ports in the cylinder and block.

The crankshaft came out the front of the engine acting as a camshaft - it used three sets of points connected to three coils. you could lose a coil or set of points ands still drive 50mph on two cylinders.

When it idled, it sounded like a popcorn popper. But the least amount of pedal made it sound like and run like a six-cylinder car.

A testament to its driveability. I drove a DKW from the midwest through Mexico and Central Amreica all the way to Panama. Some of the roughest roads I have ever encountered. Started with six (yes 6) new tires. The tires were all in pretty bad shape after the six thousand mile trip.

Early Saabs
The first Saabs ('47?) through late sixties used that DKW 3 cylinder 2 cycle engine. I had a 1963 Saab 96 sedan. One cool feature was the freewheeling clutch. Take your foot of the gas pedal and it shifted to nuetral, touch the gas and you engaged whatever gear you were in. This was supposed to prolong the 2 cycle engine life. Interestingly Saab kept that feature even after they started putting V4 4 cycle engines in the 96. The reason was that the free wheeling clutch was so successfull at keeping the car out of skids in the very popular sport, in Sweden of Ice Racing. In the sixties you didn't overhaul a warn engine at your local rebuilding shop. You just went to the Saab dealer, they pulled the engine and dropped in a refurbished one from a single rebuild center in the the US that understood automotive 2 cycle motors.

That free wheeling clutch was also protection in the event that the engine started backwards. Being 2 cycle it would run if got started. Had many 96's a 95. 2 sonetts etc. While buying parts I met a DKW owner from Brooklyn, NY. His source for parts was to travel to JFK and look for pilots for german air lines who he could persuade to bring back needed parts.

Pitter, hitchhiker

Nice to get one let alone two people who have heard of DKW/Auto Union
I thought the free wheeling was for better mileage and because two-cycle engines don't have the smooth slowing down of a four-cycle.

I say mileage because I owned an American car called a Willys, a 1950.
It was a four cycle engine but it had free wheeling which you could switch on or off.

A oouple of DKW stories. My wife would go to get gas (no self service) and would proceed to get a quart of oil out of the trunk and begin to pour it into the gas tank. The attendants would go nuts. "Lady, lady!! Stop!!!" She'd explain aboutt the two cycle and,also, about why there were snow tires on the front wheels.

I learned that if you had a snow covered area, you could put the car in reverse, crank the wheels all the way, let out the clutch and do a 180. The car will spin on a dime. you can do it with any front wheel drive car. Watch out there are no bare patches - you might cause mucho damage.

ah yes i had that free-wheeling in my Saab 97 as well as my Saab Monte Carlo

Monte Carlo, a carburator for each cylinder. "Rezappa" joints too.

Pitter, I don't know when the first SAAB was made. But was designed and made by Svenska Aeroplan Actie Bolaget (Swedish Aircraft Company).


Do you see any airplane design influence on the early SAAB ?

As I reckymember, DKW/Auto Union and Audi sprang from the same original firm, Horch, which also spawned Porcshe and Volkswagen. In the late 1930s, the great Italian Grand Prix driver Tazio Nuvolari, in an Auto Union, pretty much designed by Ferdinand Porsche (who went on to design the WWII Tiger Tank, anong other things), bested both Mercedes and Ferrari on the premiere racing circuits of Europe. SAAB, which during the war built mostly a license version of the German Messerschmidt BF109 fighter plane (popularly, but incorrectly, known as the ME-109), re-incorporated in '47 as an automobile manufacturer (there being then little domestic demand for fighter planes ), but I don't believe the first production car, a "Model 92" was offered for sale untill around early 1950. The chief influence of SAAB's aircraft manufacturing experience was in the area of sheetmetal forming. SAABs gained a reputation for performance and reliability on the rallye circuit, for instance dominating their class in the Paris-Dakkar rallye for years in the '50s and '60s. A silly bit of trivia ... a series of developmental models, built to explore and perfect the transition to 4-cylinder/4-stroke engines, was internally codenamed the "Toad". Another silly boit of trivia; there really is a Trollhatten ... and that's where SAAB has been headquartered sincew its founding, way back when bicycle mechanics Orville and Wilbur from Dayton Ohio were the closest thing to astronauts the world yet had seen.

Amazing what factoids one accumulates as a motorsports fan who happens also to be an airplane driver and a history buff

Today's Audi AG is the culmination of five car companies, Audi, Horch, DKW and Wanderer, which joined together to form Auto Union - represented by the four interlocked links

When the car was first introduced, another car manufacturer operated under Horch's name. When Horch designed this new car, he had to find a new name for his company. He selected the Latinized version of "Horch, " Audi. "Audi" is Latin for the German word "horchen" meaning "to hear." If it is in the Imparative it means "Hark" or "Harken"

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Audi engineers stunned the auto world with their innovations. And in 1933, Audi introduced the "Front Cabriolet, " the first of what would prove to be a long line of frontwheel drive cars.

In 1932, Audi and three other German automobile manufacturers combined their technical and financial resources to form the Auto Union. Even today the Audi's trademark, four interlocking circles, symbolize this union. In 1984, the company shortened its name to Audi AG.

From 1934 to 1939 Auto Union dominates International Gran Prix racing with 16 Cylender, 500 horsepower 230 MPH, rear engine, silver bullets with tortion bar suspension.  The speed and circuit records set by these cars in 1938 held for over 40 years.
(Visit our Racing Section)

In 1937 Audi began a crash test program on all it's models. The specifications of this program would meet today's criteria for manufacturer's testing.

From 1940-1945 Rallye and Racing Cars took a back seat internationally for World War II. The Auto Union factory was destroyed by allied bombers.

After the war, pursuant to orders of the SMAD (Soviet Military Administration in Germany), AUTO UNION AG in Chemnitz is dismantled and later expropriated by the occupying power. In 1948 its name is struck from the Commercial Register.

To help cope with the post-war transport shortage, AUTO UNION in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, begins production on the F89L delivery van, the first post-war German vehicle with a forward control chassis. This DKW pick-up van is exhibited at the 1949 Spring Fair in Hannover. It has a two-stroke motor.

After this it takes Auto Union and Audi a while to rebuild.

In 1958 AUTO UNION becomes part of the Daimler-Benz organization.

in 1964 the Daimler-owned AUTO UNION is purchased by Volkswagen.

I read somewhere that the handling of those sixteen cylinder cars was so radical they hired motorcycle racers with no car racing experience so they could learn the car from scratch.

I've heard that too, Pitter, but I think that's mostly just legend. Auto Union's top drivers in the glory years of pre-war Grand Prix racing were Tazio Nuvolari, who had been with Bugatti, and Hans Stuck, who had been with Austro-Daimler and then Mercedes, and who was a favorite of Hitler. Stuck actually won a woman in an impromptu car race. An Austro-Hungarian playboy count named Zichy bet Stuck "anything" he and his Bugatti could beat Stuck and his Austro-Daimler. Stuck named the stake as Xenia, Zichy's total stunner of a wife, with whom Stuck probably was having an affair. She remained with Stuck untill her death a few years later. Stuck once also beat all comers in a hillclimb driving an Austro-Daimler he had modified to run backwards. I s'pose I could look stuff up, but its more fun to just do this from memory, even if I miss a detail or two. Ever since I was a little kid, I've been fascinated by motorsports, and among the heroes of my youth were the top drivers from across the world.

Here's another silly bit of silly racing driver trivia. Juan Manuel Fangio was the greatest of the first generation of Post War Grand Prix champions, driving for Ferrari. One afternoon, he was zipping along a rural road in his own car when a farm wagon pulled unexpectedly onto the road just over the crest of a hill. Fangio was unable to totally avoid the collision, and though no one was hurt, both the farm wagon and his Ferrari were damaged badly enough to necessitate the attention of the police and the assistance of towtrucks. The first officer on the scene surveyed the skidmarks and the banged-up sports car, which was immobilized in the ditch alongside the road. Turning to the nattily dressed, obviously chagrinned driver, the cop scathingly said, "Just who the hell do you think you are ... Fangio?"

I see them almost daily--UHaul uses them by the hundreds.

Rezappa joints? Pray, tell.

General

The cv joints at the front wheels were supposed to have been designed by someone of that name. I saw mention of them being used on Nissans.