What to do now? The next instalment of the DKW story

Here's what was wrong with Andy's broken DKW and what he did next....

Andy Eames

• adventures
• AndyEames
• DKW

What disasters awaited me inside the poor DKW's mashed motor?  Well, it was a sorry mess. There is a crankshaft of sorts inside a rotary engine, and one of the main bearings had collapsed, allowing the rotor to wobble about even more eccentrically than usual. This had caused one of the tip seals to fracture, and if you’ve ever seen the damage a broken piston ring causes on a two stroke when it gets jammed in a port, well it was much the same. There were large grooves in the rotor housing, the rear side plate was scored and there was a lump out of the rotor.
It couldn’t have been much worse really and I wondered where I could go for parts.  The only place that came to mind was company called Rotary Recycle in the States so I contacted them. Dear old Sam at Rotary Recycle (now sadly no longer with us) couldn’t be more helpful. He had everything, apart from the tip seals, and these I sourced from a Norton police bike, and the side plate I had machined flat again.  The rotor housings are roughly a figure of eight shape (epitrocoidal!) and have a nikasil like coating on them - so it was scrap!

All in all it cost about £600 to resurrect the old girl, and that was around eleven years ago. But  I was back on the road again and  I had a germ of an idea to change things!



My son (yes the one that broke it!) wanted to go racing and had acquired an old air-cooled RD250 Yamaha for early-stocks. Why not use it in another class then, I thought and the Classic racing club was the obvious place to start. The problem was, it would hardly be competitive in the Post Classic class, but how could we get it approved for the True Classic class?
The main problem was that although they were made in period (pre 1973) they only had drum brakes back then and mine had a disc as OE.  Sam came to the rescue again.  He told me that in late 1972 he had received four disc brake models as the US importer for appraisal, and he would be prepared to verify this with the CRMC.  In short, this is how I have the only DKW Rotary with a CRMC passport!


I did some light porting work (it is a bit like a two stroke inside) removed the heavy flywheel magneto and fan and inserted a bigger Mikuni carb.  I got a tank from a Suzuki GS400, a replica Aermacchi seat, and a Piranha infra red triggered ignition, running total loss from a battery.  Finally a Scitsu rev counter and an exhaust can from a 750 Kawasaki rounded it off...did someone say Bitsa? You bet!

Then I stumbled upon an unforeseen  drawback - my son decided that he didn't want to race anymore, (he was loved up!) so there I was with a 'kind of' race bike that I wasn't able to use! Aaargh! I had the pleasure of a little run round at the VMCC Festival of a 1000 bikes but that was it.

We had been going to Belgium to watch the classic there, so I thought it might be a nice idea to take the bike over there. Jehonville was the obvious choice but it was out of commission due to a tragedy the previous year. The replacement was an old military airfield near St. Hubert, so in August 2005 we arrived there.

After signing on with the organisers and scrutineering , all was going well until the secretary of the meeting informed me that due to lack of entries, the Classic demo laps had been cancelled! Whaaaaaaat?   it wasn't as though I had just nipped round the corner for this meeting!  After calming me down the secretary told me that they had entered me in the 350 race instead!  It was a hot day, and you’ve never seen anyone turn from bright pink to ghostly white so quickly.  I told him it couldn't be done, I hadn't raced since the 1980s, and I didn't have a licence.  You’ll be ok he says, and don't worry, we’ve granted you a day licence!  I was feeling really faint by now, but there was no possibility of backing out, I needed to sit down!  By the end of the day... I had a 6th in class and some points in the Belgian Championship, a DNF, (broken gear linkage) and a massive headache.


The great thing about a bike like this is that it opens doors that would be otherwise be closed to an ‘also ran’ like me. Since then we’ve been to Denia (Spain) 2009 an event that such as Agostini and Jim Redman, amongst many others have appeared in. Cagnotte in 2009 which is local to me in France, a charity event held on a public roads hill-climb. My favourite though was in 2011 at Jarama on the former Spanish GP circuit. Now that was really something.


What next ?  Well I wouldn’t mind doing the Coupe Moto Legende at Dijon next year, pension permitting.  Stay tuned!

Thanks for another great story about living life adventurously Andy - we will watch this space!
Wemoto