The Kübelwagen instrument panel is mostly done, now comes the hard part; untangling the rats nest of wiring behind it. The wiring is mostly ‘74 beetle, but has been grafted and added to by one of the ‘wire crimp and electrical tape set’. You know, the ones that strip wires with a pocket knife, randomly twist wires together without soldering and make liberal use of electrical tape (cheap stuff no less) and use crimp connectors without solder and use pliers to crimp with… argh. What a mess that is.
So while figuring out the wiring I noticed that there is no dimmer switch and a momentary contact switch has been spliced in. Huh? Well I’ll have to take that apart and figure out what’s going on. I would like to have high beams. Additionally there appears to be wiring for turn signals (I’ll need them since I drive on the public highway) but they do not function. So my work’s cut out for me.
Here’s the finished panel in place and somewhat functional, pending more wiring…
… and I’m still looking for original type switches…
The last area of my Kübelwagen facelift is the instrument panel. The existing panel has the same bumpy welds and sort of slapdash fitting as I’ve been fixing on the rest of the car. I noticed that Mike at Blitzbikes had a replacement early dash panel that was well formed and also had the original style 5 place fuse boxes.
They arrived last week and so it’s time to start on the upgrade. You can see the original panel isn’t a real nice one; I’ve started to take it out here…
The right side panel isn’t correct either. On the Kübelwagen it was a slanted panel, here it was made wider and square to add a oil pressure gauge (that didn’t work anyway) so I’m going to remove the panel and fabricate a new one that is more like the original. The wiring is a tangle and the fuse box is on the bottom. Nothing is soldered…
The dash panel is nice and well made, but there is no speedometer mounting so I have to fabricate that too. The process was a throwback to my aircraft fabrication days. I laid out a panel and fabricated it out of aircraft aluminum. Here I’ve just made the speedometer cutout on the drill press…
Here the speedometer is mounted and the light switch also (I’m looking for original style switches). The speedo plate is now secured with two nut plates. I’m test fitting it…
Time to call it quits for the night, it’s been a long day. Here the new right side panel has been fabbed and is being test fitted…
This year’s new and improved show was kind of a bust… it started out nicely with great weather and a good turnout of our trup. We had a command tent a fully equipped hospital tent and a full telephone communications display. Johnny had the ‘40 German Ford and the Flak 38 and the 105 ready for the battle.
and our motor pool was filling up nicely…
the Flak 38 and the command tent…
Even the 222 was up from San Antonio… it’s kind of hard to see under the rain tarp though…
The first damper was the threat of rain on Saturday. Not a biggie since it was forecast to be a morning shower followed by clearing. The real downer was after being encouraged to be in uniform all day during the event, when we registered we were asked not to attend the banquet in uniform if we were representing Axis forces. This was an unpleasant last minute surprise. Having brought our dress uniforms specifically because we’d preregistered for the dinner we were left with nothing but grungy tee shirts and jeans (we’d just unloaded two trailered vehicles, boxes of gear and set up two tents!)
Since we had preregistered for the dinner we went anyway, but noticed there were several empty tables as the general consensus among the Axis forces was of unwelcome… I won’t put in print what several said but it was pithy and pointed as you can imagine. The general feeling it left was we want you here for the battle but stay in the back of the bus please.
About 4AM Saturday morning the rain arrived… I threw our tarp over the zelt tent to keep the seepage down. It was generally a light rain until about 7AM. When we got up though we got word that a pretty strong front was about an hour out. Since the field would get pretty muddy fast we loaded up the vehicles and struck the camp quickly. Some folks stayed but we decided to cut our losses and drove back to Austin in some pretty fierce winds and rain. Maybe next year will be better.
After coming back early from Brent Mullins Jeep show (more on that later) I had a bit of time to do more work on the Kübelwagen. I’d received a large shipment of parts from Mike at Blitzbikes and didn’t have a chance before now to install them. I removed the old cobbled up tail lamps and installed these Bosch beauties…
a closer up view…
I also had time to spray the new stencils for the battery box that Tony at Axholme Signs made for me…
One of the more unpleasant sides of this hobby of ours is the pettiness of the arguments that arise. The topics are always the same; authenticity, taking hits, event organization, event scheduling etc. Everyone has their own opinion but nobody want’s to compromise and just sit down and work it out for the common good. It is quite tiring…
My girlfriend teaches kindergarten and the stories she tells of arbitrating daily disputes only varies in subject matter from the things I hear in organizing a reenacting event. Truly amazing!
Recently I introduced the use of hit cards for our tactical events. The system, when applied with a little judgment on the part of the reenactor, can yield good results. It also give our medics something to do during the tactical battles. Still there was grumbling about how people could open the paper strip when they registered and ‘cherry pick’ their hit…. argh!
So being an inventor (it’s my day job, 88 issued US patents so far) I’ve come up with the solution to some of the griping… The HIT COOKIE. I will have them for our next tactical, so you get hit break open your cookie and read your fortune!
Still putting the finishing touches on the Kübelwagen, but I’ll be done in time for the Brent Mullins Jeep show. Looking good…
Today I got the chance to do a bit more work at lunchtime. I painted the right side fenders and started on the left side Balken Cross. It’s the largest of the stencils and the most difficult I think, requiring good registration of two layers of stencil to accomplish. We’ll see how it turns out…
Masked and sprayed first pass…
Finished job…
