Konig History

[WaltZucher]

Wish I had a Sharp edge knives & done more angles, but anyway. The first three are on a riverboat on a lake in West Berlin, celebrating 50 years of Konig Motorenbau. https://www.viberate.com/tools-for-i...list-pitching/ (1927-1977). The other two are some motors at the factory.

That's an impressive milestone! It's amazing to think how far the company has come in that time. What an incredible journey it must have been for the company and its employees. Do you have any other photos or stories about the company's history?

[Master Oil Racing Team]

I have lots more pictures and some stories. I will try to add some more in the future. My last trip to the Konig factory was in 1981, but there are a lot more people out there who can you you more about from the early 80's until the factory closed down. It was a sad ending.

[Ketzer]

Off Konig topic, but on factories that produce internal combustion engines, I went for factory training at the Lycoming (aircraft engine) factory in Williamsport, PA, around the same time, early 80s, and, boy, was that an eye-opener. Somehow, I was expecting a high-tech situation, but found the factory looked like something out of the 1920s, redbrick building and all. But what impressed me most was the engine parts everywhere: valves here, crankshafts there. And those darn valve cover screws that were always falling out and missing when I went to inspect an engine, forcing me to scrounge around in my tool box for a used one, I saw a plastic lined bin that must have had thousands of brand new ones in there. As I walked by the bin, it crossed my mind to grab a handful and put them in my pocket, but didn’t. So, Wayne, did you score any parts at the Konig factory?

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Nope, but I sat on the floor and mic'd every single A block for ports with specs that Louis Williams wanted. They were all the same and not what Louis was looking for. But I found one that was the closest. One set of ports was a little bit close, the other cylinder was same as all the rest.

There were stacks of heads, blocks, carbs, flywheels, crankplates, etc. cranks were on racks and tower housings, lower units and the like were lined up side by side. You can see photos way back at the beginning of this thread.

Two valuable things Pete Voss and I both bought and brought back were 6 and 8 mm allen head socket type wrenches on a screwdriver handle. They were ball shaped kind of like a soccer ball look so that you could loosen or tighten a bolt quickly at various angles.. There was nothing like that in the states at that time.