Historiker

Happy Independence Day! I’m spending mine rebuilding the carburetor on my Kübel… an entirely self inflicted wound. Like a dunce I used one of my jerrycans without checking it first. Duh, it was full of fine rusty particulate matter that is now blocking my carburetor jets. The Kübel won’t idle at all and runs really poorly with no power. I barely managed to limp home.

Fortunately rebuilding a VW carb is way easier than the Carter Thermoquad on my Dodge; and with only two bolts holding it on and one wire and a throttle linkage to disconnect is it removed in minutes.

I dissembled it on the bench and cleaned out a lot of fine rusty goop, soaked the body and jets, cleaned the fuel and air passages and reassemble it all in less than an hour. Here’s the cleaned carb back in place.

The Kübel purrs like a kitten again…

The stencils that I custom ordered from Axholme Signs have arrived. And they are great!

Tony even included a practice stencil so I could get used to the operations. It worked fine and the first real application was to my BMW R-71. The test will be the symbol used by von der Heydte fallschirmjager on their vehicles. The stencil is two part due to its intricacy.

Here’s the base portion of the stencil, the diamond, in place, masked off and painted…

Here’s the second portion of the stencil, the R, in place, ready to spray…

And the end result, wunderbar!

One problem with owning vehicles is keeping up with the keys at a event and also what key fob to keep them on. There are very few period key fobs available.

I want something large enough to so if they are dropped or misplaced I can see them from a distance. Or not forget them on the dresser when I leave for an event. I recently picked up two new key fobs off of a vendor on Ebay. They meet my criteria and are simple and well made. The topper is that they are Fallshirmjager themed!

I love them, and the slogans embroidered on them too…

Don’t whine, fight!

Fallschirmjager, fall from the sky and fight!

Tonight I finished the left front floor insert, so now the left side is done. I’ll have to wait until I relocate the battery into a smaller box instead of the huge aluminum container it’s currently in on the right rear floor.

Here’s the new floor…

Another little thing that was bothering me was the extra length left on the inside of the door handle rods. They stuck into the passenger compartment by a good inch. Add to the a snaggly old cotter pin they looked a bit off.

Small details can make a difference so I removed the handle shortened the rod and drilled a new lock hole. While I was at it I ground down the bumpy weld that was left on the outside. looks better now; three more to go…

I upgraded the R-71 a bit, added a MG mount and an MG-34…

Here are the parts as received from China, a bit rough and in need of cleaning up. Fit and finish isn’t the best; but with some machine work they will become passable…

Here’s the mount and MG on Gerda the R-71…

I may make a mount for the gas bottles for the trunk…

Worked some more on the Kübelwagen’s interior, I’ve almost finished cleaning up, derusting and painting the floors. There is only a tiny bit of surface rust so far, but want to keep that from becoming any problem.

Here’s the right passenger side, you can see the old wooden mat is made from pine and kind of flimsy. It also is bolted to the floor so anything that falls in gets trapped and takes a fair amount of work to expose to clean. I’m fabricating new mats out of oak for sturdiness and with two other changes. First to have a wider slat distance so it’s possible to vacuum between them and then to have them snug fitted so they don’t require bolts to hold them down, yet provide good solid footing.

You can see that a lot of stuff gets trapped here…

Here you can see it all cleaned up and ready to sand off the rust…

Here it is all finished; primed with SW 988 catalytic primer and finished off with Luftwaffe grey.

Here’s one finished floorboard for the left side rear position. It drops into place and holds snugly…

I started work on cleaning and fixing up all the little things that are out of whack in the interior. It’s sand, not that I have anything against the Afrika Korps more events I can go to are European themed so a Luftwaffe grey paintjob makes more sense. It also allows me to cover all my sanding and restoration work.

The sand coloured interior, also lots of accumulated dirt under the floorboards…

I removed the driver’s seat it was loose on it’s mountings so I’ll fix that when I put it back in. Floors cleaned and a little bit of test painting…

The rear seat out and cleaned up too…

P&G catalytic primer and Luftwaffe grey topcover…

The Kübelwagen is deafening when on the road, everything rattles and the sheet metal is like a large speaker cone. To make things complete the boot behind the rear seat is a great natural amplifier. It is totally impossible to hear even the motor when under way.

Dynamat is the cure for this it is a sound damping material, easliy cut and applied to surfaces.
Here’s the boot with Dynamat applied…

George the cat has supervised the building of two airplanes, sitting calmly or sleeping in the fuselage even while the air compressor is bellowing and the rivet gun is hammering away. So a little grinding and sanding isn’t going to ruffle him.

Here he sits on the package shelf while I work on the interior…

I think you better look at the wiring…

Oh a rat’s nest, I can handle that!

More small stuff on the Kübelwagen project…

Here’s the Kübelwagen, snug in the shop…

The Kubelwagen had a homemade MG mount/carrier on the crossbar behind the seat. Really got in the way on ingress/egress and presented a lot of ‘hurt me’ edges if the car was used on the highway, as you can see…

The homemade rifle mount was kinda ugly and also mounted too low and in the way.

So off they both came; I’ll smooth off the bar with the grinder… also notice the huge battery box in the floor. I’ll replace that with a more accurate wooden box that is also way smaller.

Later I’ll add one of these rifle clip and mounts from Blitzbikes.