Thread: Konig History

  1. #321
    Team Member dumperjack's Avatar
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    Unhappy

    day after tomorrow, before 20 years ago died Dieter Koenig....

    the accident was on 16.08.1991, the following day he died in hospital.

    on a small airfield near Berlin (the name of small city: Saarmund), he fell off during a test flight.

    he tested an ultra-light flight - engine.
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  2. #322
    Burgess/Evinrude F1 V8 Lars Strom's Avatar
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    Default Yes..We lost Dieter Konig 20 years ago tomorrow.

    I have many good memories from racing with Dieter Konig.
    This is Paris 6 hours..and the red arrow is Dieter.

    Joachim Mareth was my co-pilot for the race..(Dieters sisters son)..
    We raced my Molinari with a Volvo Penta/König in the OE class.


    Thanks for everything Dieter and R.I.P.
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    Lars Strom

    Life is good





    Check my own racing history at BRF...http://www.boatracingfacts.com/forum...ead.php?t=6727

    My racing web site SVERA.se....http://svera.se/blogg/paris-6-hours/

  3. #323
    Team Member Master Oil Racing Team's Avatar
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    Great photo Lars. And to the left of Dieter and behind your plexiglass windshield is Dieter's son Peter, and to the left of Peter is your co-driver Joachim Mareth. Dieter was a loss to the boat racing community, and to those of us who knew him....a good friend. His mind constantly thought motors and boat racing. He was a one of a kind type of person. In spite of the fact that he was very successful at thinking of improvements on his motors, and making it work, he was a humble man. Dieter always strived to please, and be accomodating.

    Lars....I think you will be very interested in Tim Hanna's book which was recently published and contains a lot of interesting stories about Dieter and Kim Newcomb's quest to build a name for Konig as a top manufacturer of motorcycle engines. I will have more information after I get my copy of the book. It has some interesting insights on Dieter I had not heard before.



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    Quote Originally Posted by Mark75H View Post
    The winged Konig boat didn't establish any records that I know of. I suspect the motor on it is the opposed 6 Konig. I think young Mssrs Konig & Krage would be good sources on this.


    The Konig/Ford V-6 was the same hp as the Merc in 1969, but weighed twice as much as the Merc. The price was almost 13,000DM, I don't know how that compared to the Merc at the time.

    There was also a 70hp with a 4 cylinder Renault.
    The price for the Konig/Ford V-6 must be seen in the context that the Ford Capri RS2600 hit the roads in that selfsame year at DM 10000 flat. Dieter exhibited his 2-stroke
    6-cylinder on his unusual boat in the pits during the Berlin 6-hours of `69, Saturday only, not far from where H Tinscher and I had parked our Dalla Pieta` 850cc SE boat. I remember the 6-cylinder as a 60-degree V6, but I may be wrong.

  5. #325
    Team Member Smokin' Joe's Avatar
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    Default König Motorenbau, Berlin (Friedrich Olbricht Damm 72) I

    Quote Originally Posted by dumperjack View Post
    day after tomorrow, before 20 years ago died Dieter Koenig....

    the accident was on 16.08.1991, the following day he died in hospital.

    on a small airfield near Berlin (the name of small city: Saarmund), he fell off during a test flight.

    he tested an ultra-light flight - engine.
    A week ago our son Hans and I visited Holger Arens at his factory in east Berlin. We'll post photos and a story later. He told us that the König factory is still there on Friedrich Olbricht Damm, the doors were simply shut when Dieter died, and that son Peter König occasionally sells some motor parts to König enthusiasts. That was during our annual vacation on the east German island Hiddensee ne of Berlin.

    On the way back from Hiddensee to Austria yesterday we stopped and (with Wayne Baldwin's help with the address) finally found the factory's back entrance just before Peter and his sister Marion were about to drive away. I immediately recognized Peter from photos of Dieter. Peter asked who am I, noticed my Johnson cap, and was immediately very friendly (as was Marion) to an old boat racer. They had a duty to perform but nevertheless took time to show us the factory (I didn't find out if they speak English, but having grown up in west Berlin I assume that they do). As we walked inside the factory I said to Peter 'Wir sind auf heilige Grund' ('We're on holy ground'). When he took me into the test room he finally responded, 'Jetzt sind wir auf heilige Grund' ('Now we're on holy ground'). There were a pair of expansion chambers attached to a hose to send the exhaust out of the building. I didn't see the dyno but it was surely there. In another room we looked at rows of blocks and powerheads, a few with v-block reeds (experimental) but most with rotary valves. There were also the air cooled plane motors. Near the end Marion brought out a box of props, König, Wald (east German) and Dewald. There was an unworked König prop casting among the lot. Peter vaguely recalls being with his father once when the metal was poured (Marion thinks the molds may still exist) but he doesn't recall the foundry. The König prop has a blade shape that I'd build, so I bought it. I don't know which class motor it fits, will put it on my pitch gauge when I get back to Houston and then Wayne can tell me the class. It was a very pleasant and important experience for me to see the old factory, rows of parts complete with machines. Peter didn't want photos made of the machines because of what he saw as Unordnung. My German wife took one photo, she didn't hear him say that, and the machine shop looked fine to both of us.

    The first photo shows the front, today, of the former factory building. The König entrance is at rear. Between the used car business and König is a small metal works. Wayne has posted (pg. 1) a photo of the front of the building from 1977, and fantastic photos from the inside. Presumably, that was during Wayne's trip to Berlin when he and Dieter went to a race in Austria on the Donau/Danube. I didn't ask Peter and Marion if the rent out the rest of the building, or simply sold it.

    I told Peter I'll try to visit again next summer. Marion was kind enough to give me a stack of König decals before we left, now I'll have to put them on a JohnRude! Unless there are enough parts left in the stock to assemble a complete König. I'm wondering if the old 3 cyl. 500 cc model might be possible but would settle for a Boxer.... .

    As an anecdote, I told Peter I was a factory-trained Mercury mechanic at age 14 and cringed every time I saw a König speed record listed in the NOA record book. that brought a smile.

    Joe McCauley

    PS I learned later via email that Peter is fluent in English.
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  6. #326
    Team Member Smokin' Joe's Avatar
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    Default König Motorenbau, Berlin (Friedrich Olbricht Damm 72) II

    I took the first three photos, the rest were taken by my wife, Cornelia Küffner.
    Our 29 year old son, Hans, on the website is 'May Fly III'.
    The nice finished prop shown is the König design that I bought yesterday.
    Peter stated that Dieter made a pitch gauge (shown below) and that he
    found that most props have pitch variation from one blade to another (true, excepting
    Mercury, thanks to the Dick Snyder tradition). Dieter found that he could pick up speed just by getting the pitch (distribution) equal on all blades, but his blade shape is also decidedly better than that of many if not most racing props made today.

    Did they carry hydros over to the canal (shown below) for testing?

    For an update on what's going on today in Berlin in outboard manufacturing, look for my next post on 'Arens Motorenbau'.



    Quote Originally Posted by dumperjack View Post
    day after tomorrow, before 20 years ago died Dieter Koenig....

    the accident was on 16.08.1991, the following day he died in hospital.

    on a small airfield near Berlin (the name of small city: Saarmund), he fell off during a test flight.

    he tested an ultra-light flight - engine.
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  7. #327
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    Default Way cool !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Posts like this are the reason there is a Boat Racing Facts....Joe: Great job, great photo's. The flat 4 with reeds and Rotax style porting would have been very interesting.

    Peter looks so much like his dad.....

    Michael D-1

  8. #328
    Team Member Smokin' Joe's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mike Schmidt View Post
    Posts like this are the reason there is a Boat Racing Facts....Joe: Great job, great photo's. The flat 4 with reeds and Rotax style porting would have been very interesting.

    Peter looks so much like his dad.....

    Michael D-1
    You're ahead of me, Mike. For reeds, rotax cyl. and pistons see my forthcoming Arens post.

    Arens is still aactive and has a new direct injected rotary valve race motor they want to detune and produce as sport boat motor.

    Best,
    Joe

  9. #329
    Team Member Smokin' Joe's Avatar
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    One of the BMW/König 2-stroke bikes is still in the factory, Peter uncovered it briefly yesterday..


    Quote Originally Posted by Master Oil Racing Team View Post
    That was a good story Tim. I'm trying to picture where that happened. Since I started posting pics of the factory, I've been trying to remember the floor plan. I have a general idea, but some parts are fuzzy. Dieter never pointed out Tim's bench to me that I can remember, but I figure it was where the motorcycles were. These pics were taken in poor lighting and I didn't have my flash. Color balance is all wrong and I wasn't really trying to take good pics....just snapping some pics of Dieter with the bikes. I really didn't know anything about them. I just took some for posterity. Now, I wish I would have done more detail pics. So sorry about the quality, but maybe you can pick up something here you were curious about. I'm sure the motor was for a bike, although this one doesn't have the heads with the angled spark plug holes. I think that came a year or two later. These were taken in February 1975. The exhaust system I think is related to the bikes, but I'm not positive. This is the same type of guts that you would find inside the "can" exhaust. In Europe they slid them. The few short years we ran the "cans", we just fixed them close to the top end setting. I have some other pics of these bikes, one showing a different exhaust system with pipes on both sides. I will post them later.

    I had responded a few days earlier regarding what happened to Jerry Waldman. Some of the dates were wrong and I merely planned to insert the correct date, plus a brief background and description of what happened. I got carried away when my mind drifted back to that tragic day and I spent over an hour going into detail about what we were up to with Jerry, his success with Quincy and the details of the most frightening half lap I ever ran. I knew I would be logged out by the time I was ready to post, but I knew how to get back in to get it posted.......except one stupid finger hit an extra key while I typed in my password and that killed everything. Writing that took it all out of me and I didn't have the mental energy to do it again. You can find out more detail by looking around in other threads on BRF.

    I look forward to more of your info on Kim and connection with Dieter Tim. I will try to fix the tape as well as look into my journal from that visit to the factory in 1975.

    ADD: Now that the pics are posted I took another look at the heads and they do appear to be the ones for the angle plugs only these holes were drilled straight.

  10. #330
    Team Member Smokin' Joe's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Smokin' Joe View Post
    Very nice, Sam! I read recently that the remains of the König factory went to the Czec Republic, and that the new style motors are manufactured under the name Konny (and are sold in Atlanta).

    The mistake written above is now corrected. Konny got none of the König factory.

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