UK - Germany car design differences

I'm sure it was the right car for the intended market at the time, and for the places it still sells in. The engineering was brilliant in its day; I just hate driving the bloody things!

Chris

My friend is interested in Marlin or Locost (Lotus) seven kitcars. I mentioned Ford, as it seems that most of locost kits use Ford as a donor car. Most of the ones he is interested in are build in the from 1990 onwards.

So I can tell him that he can use the tool he has, and that threads will be metric.

He had the original Mini (from 1968 or something like that), and he says that he had a lot of problems with needed tools and bolts (threads).

My friend is interested in Marlin or Locost (Lotus) seven kitcars. I mentioned Ford, as it seems that most of locost kits use Ford as a donor car. Most of the ones he is interested in are build in the from 1990 onwards.

So I can tell him that he can use the tool he has, and that threads will be metric.

He had the original Mini (from 1968 or something like that), and he says that he had a lot of problems with needed tools and bolts (threads).

That age mini was a 1950s design, using 1950s tooling and 1950s thread standards, and I used to have the same bother with my 1968 Land Rover until I got all the tools.

That would have been entirely unified threads. Only a problem if you've only got metric tools. But at that time, a European car with metric threads would have been equally a problem in the UK for home servicing and repairs too. As few would have owned metric tools.

We only changed to metric to fall in with Europe. No intrinsic reason. Unified was to fall in with the US during WW2.

It was a mirrored image from the original blueprints All of its history is available via google if you want to check

What - it was converted to right-hand drive :-)

The basic engine design of the DKW RT 125 is similar to the first Bantam. The concepts that were important were the deflector piston, and the way the transfer ports fed in. The engine castings were a similar, but not identical shape. There's only so much you can do with a single cylinder, unit construction, petroil lubricated, air-cooled two stroke!

The engine underwent so many changes during production that from first to last you could barely say that they were directly based on each other.

Early ones had lots of weaknesses; main bearing failure leading to loss of primary compression being the most common. Later ones had the drive side main lubricated from the gearbox to overcome this.

Of course, the cycle parts were totally different from the machine DKW produced (slightly later than the Bantam), as were those of the lightweight Harley Davidson produced from the same design.

I had five of the things in total, all 125's, and one of them tuned to the point it could keep up with some of the 250's of its era.

Chris

It was to put the kick-start and gear leaver on the "Right" side for a UK bike.

Which they never had, look up 90-136 or changed number 90-0338 to see what a D1 piston looks like. I have snipped the rest as you clearly don?t know what you are talking about.

D7 pistons were certainly very standard looking, the only deflector piston I can immediately think of is the type on Villiers engines, such as used on the Allen Scythe, and the bantam ones are not like that.

Yep; note the smiley, intended to indicate a joke. ("Right hand drive" - OK, not that funny.)

Sorry, typing faster than I was thinking. My brain said "deflector

The deflector system used being the use of twin opposed transfer ports, of course.

What, the parts you couldn't pick holes in?

Chris

Vespas used them.

Yeah right

in which case you should have called it loop scavenging, been around since

Like

?The engine castings were a similar, but not identical shape.?

Yes they were but a mirror copy

?The engine underwent so many changes during production that from first to last you could barely say that they were directly based on each other."

The crankcase castings from the D5 in 1958 to the B175 in 1971 were identical apart from minor internal mods for the change to 4 speed gear box. Primary and generator cover also changed slightly during that period, but you would have to be blind not to see the similarity.