Historiker

I entered the Kubel and the R-71 in the IBM car show. Much to my surprise both won their classes! The Kubel took best off road.

Here’s the Kubel parked in the lot for judging and viewing. There was a lot of interest in her..

The R-71 took best classic motorcycle… I altered the generic trophies a bit the Kubel’s trophy had a plastic sand rail on it and the motorcycle had a chopper. I milled them off and replaced the sand rail with a miniature Kubel and the chopper with a Tamiya R-75.

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!

I’ve almost completed my fix for the MG mount. From the previous post you’ll know that the Chinese made part was crap so I elected to redesign it.

I turned my new one out of T-6061 bar. Rather than an undersize pipe this is a size fitted machined piece. The bottom fits down into the elevation shaft, the larger portion prevents the shaft from dropping too low and hitting the top of the sidecar and the top portion is fitted to the MG cradle. The groove is where the machined Allen screw fits to capture the cradle and prevent its coming off.

Here it is all assembled and fitted for testing. Works nice, free swivel without binding like before and also done away with the previous canting because of the undersize shaft. Now it’s usable…

Tonight I’ll cut a groove for the rack from the old part to attach to the new machined shaft. Then I’ll have working elevation too…

Sometimes things you purchase don’t work so well out of the box. This Chinese MG mount is one of those things. The metal work was a bit unfinished necessitating some out of the box fixes like finishing the unfinished sharp metal edges and deburring drilled holes etc. I expect that, but I also expect that the parts will be fabricated to work together. With this MG mount it’s not the case.

As you can see from the photo the weight of the MG pulls the mount way over, as seen here. Worse the method of fixing the MG cradle to the top of the shaft is an allen screw. When it is tight enough to keep the cradle mounted, the cradle cannot be turned.

Here’s the mounting that the support tube fits into, its internal diameter is 1 1/8^th inch as is the MG cradle. The problem is the tube they’ve used as the MG support shaft is only 1 inch in diameter, which makes for a sloppy and unsafe mount.

Here you can see the MG cradle and the undersized MG support tube.

My solution is going to be to machine a new support tube out of the T-6061 aluminum rod stock that you see on the left of the photo here. I will turn it down to fit the MG mounting, attach the elevation rack to it and cut a small grove in the top to use the set screw in the MG cradle to secure it to the top.

Next to start turning the new shaft…

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…