I'll let Dieter König's own words start us off:
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I'll let Dieter König's own words start us off:
Dieter's father, Rudolf started making little outboards with very long shafts for sailboats. People said he was crazy, but sailboaters liked the inexpensive fuel stingy outboards and he developed a steady business. Here is that J motor from 1935. As far as I know this was the first König racer.
Wish I had a flash & done more angles, but anyway. The first three are on a riverboat on a lake in West Berlin, celebrating 50 years of Konig Motorenbau. (1927-1977). The other two are some motors at the factory.
Is that motor next to the "side board" display motor a 3 cylinder radial 500cc?
I wish Dieter was still around to tell us about this stuff. :(
You mean the small little motor on the end? I don't think it's a radial, but I never looked real close. I think it was the style Rudolph first built for sailboats or rowboats. The shaft here was cut short for it to fit the display.
No, I meant the next one. I know about the one on the end. It was marketed as a "sideboard" motor that clamped to a board midships. I think the distributor "Bray" in England sold a whole lot of them for König.
Sam:
You've got a good eye, especially for a not too good photo. I never caught that before. I've wandered around Deiter's factory many days. He never had any restrictions, & I always had a camera or two, but I never remember seeing those motors. I snapped a couple of quick shots, with poor lighting, on the way to our seats on the cruise. I was on my honeymoon with my wife Debbie after the racing was done, & I wasn't really concentrating on the engine display.
There might be some more Eric, but this is the one I think of. I've posted a lot of Konig stuff here and there, but I had been planning on putting pics here, except I keep sidetracking. Not that it's bad to add to the subject on current threads, but it's easy to get lost when you try to go back for a second look.
Here is a Konig 125 that I raced for several years. We bought this engine and boat from Jane and Ralph Smith. The powerhead was pretty much "stock" from the factory. The only modification that I remember was water injection into the pipe. We ran this on 12:15 lower unit. I wish we had had an 11:15 back then. But I am not sure that the engine could have taken too much more vibration.
Can't believe it's been that long since anything has been added here.
These are some pics I took at the Konig factory in 1976. Dieter let me take pictures of anything I wanted. I wish I knew about the museum upstairs back then. I only heard about it a couple of years ago from Steve Litzell. Dieter was so preoccupied with the present, I guess he never stopped to think I would have liked a glimpse of the past.
These are castings for the FA Konig. I can't recall all the things Dieter told me about the making of these, but I believe his sister Margaret made them.