Ted170

A German staff car Horch at Kriva livada, 1916. /Kriva livada, nowadays a part of the small town of Kresna, is in Bulgaria, in the rear of the Salonika front/.

I am very glad that you like the photos! Won;t be able to show too many, as these are too rare. But going through my collection, still finding some:

The year is 1916, German made Mannesmann Mulag trucks lined at Gorna Djumaya /today Blagoevgrad/, a Bulgarian town in the rear of the Salonika front, a major point for traffic and distribution of the army materiel.

25 years fast forward. The year is 1942, the place is an old hangar at the Peynedrdjik seaplane base at the Black sea near Varna, Bulgaria. Surprisingly a few of these old WW1 vehicles have survived, stacked in there. Unfortunately all has been cleared postwar, today not a vehicle, not even a spare part is known to exist, neither from the WW1 cars, nor from the trucks.

But back to the ground and the four wheels: a truck convoy to the Salonika front:

The original pilot /named Stoufer or something similar/. Doesn't look unhappy

http://www.lostbulgaria.com/?p=3037

Detail with the aircraft, most likely AW FK3 Nr. 6219, landed by error in Bulgarian territory and used in numerous combat flights. The prop seems to be turning.

Detail with the cars

Here is another one, the HQ of the 2nd army plus German officers. Lots of staff cars and a captured British plane - a few British and french planes were captured intact or repaired, and used in combat missions by Bulgarian pilots.

The HQ of the 2nd Bulgarian army /commander gen. Todorov/ with some of the vehicles attached to it: from left, a couple of staff cars /Opel and probably NSU/ and the ambulances - Protos and Horch.

Published in a photo site archive site, but these are mine, too - a truck convoy and some trucks with their drivers. Most likely Benz?

Hi guys, as the Salonika front was mentioned in the Peerless thread, I'll share here some motoring photos from the other perspective - the Bulgarian/German positions. I'll add here photos from time to time, when dig some from my collection. Starting with a Bulgarian field repairshop, one of the men is the uncle of my late friend, himself a great oldtimer enthusiast and restorer. The car is most likely NSU, by the shape of the radiator.

Have you considered electrolysis? The result is as good as with the molasses, just the time it takes is like 2, 3 or 4 hours instead of 10 days. I am pretty sure you know it, but anyway - a bucket full of water with a couple of spoons of caustic soda /NaOH/ in it, the piece you want to clean, a useless piece of metal /about the same size as the one to clean/ and a car battery charger. Put the metals in the water solution /separated, not touching/, the useless iron connected to + wire and the part to be cleaned connected to - wire /that's important/. A slow reaction with miniature bubbles takes place and after 2-4 hours /depends on the size of the piece and the rust thickness/ the rust and dirt are lose, leaving clean metal surface. Same procedure of cleaning and painting follows, as after a molasses bath. There is black residue on the metal which must be removed by wire wheel or just water and a brush. Needs to be painted as soon as possible, as the metal surface is chemically clean and very easily starts to rust. What is important, the reaction has no effect on the good metal! Only the rust is removed, but the good metal is untouched! Also, bolts that are "welded" by rust and wouldn't move or would break, can be removed much easier after the electrolysis.

But don't use it on aluminum, zinc, etc. Use it on iron, steel, cast iron, also I believe it would not harm brass, although have not tried it on brass so far. The solution is a bit harmful to the hands, if too rich of soda, mostly stings any wounds on the fingers and gives some soapy feeling to the skin, but a hands wash instantly fixes that. Also, it is not aggressive to the drain, in fact the caustic soda is used for ages, for cleaning clogged drains - and this solution is very diluted.

    If you have some skills in the field of electricity, you can make the electricity adjustable, for best reaction. Or, you can do it like me /having no such sills/ - adding water or NaOH until getting the best solution, allowing strongest reaction without burning the car battery charger. BTW I have seen in the net that people use PC power units or specially built power units for the electrolysis. I always use car battery charger and the result is excellent.

For sure the new PC has remaining internal tensions, so please tell him to heat it to 550 degree C, keep it at that temperature for 2 hours and then leave it to cool down. After that the PC will work for years flawless!

As for the BMW, I have heard, that they did not choose new blocks, instead they were collecting high milleage blocks, making sure that after years of work, heating, overheating, cooling, any possible stress in the casting has gone.

The cast iron needs seasoning indeed. After casting, there are remaining tensions in the cast material. That is why it must be left for seasoning, sometimes for an year or more. Another way is heating - several hours at 550 degree C /if remember right/ and then slow cooling. The heating method extinguishes the internal tensions as well. IF the problem in the pistons has been caused by the cast iron remaining tensions, then the heat of the engine work has solved the problem. The engine heat has released the tensions, causing the pistons to deform, but also that has solved the problem and after straightening the pistons, there must be no further deformation. Same happens to the cheaper brake disks - they are perfect out of the box, then after some work, taking heat from the breaking process, these deform. After putting the disks on a lathe and cutting the deformations, these work again, heat again, but no deformations appear.

P.S. If just two of the pistons show problems, I would speculate, that these two got more heat. And not impossible, that in the future, after some harder work of the engine, the other two would heat and deform as well. Maybe it's a good idea to find instructions for the cast iron heating procedure and heat all the 4 pistons, just in case.

Please, save the photos, these threads are great!!

BTW what's the problem with the Photobucket account? Is it going to be completely shut down and the photos erased, or the photos will be there in the account, but the links to the forums will be broken? I am asking, because the problem for the broken links is already solved, there are add-ons both for the Chrome and the Firefox, which directly open the photos in the threads. No more broken links, the photos appear just like before, works like a charm!

Hi all, I see quite many British and US trucks from the WW1, more or less complete, more or less restored, but are there any Benz - Gaggenau trucks from the WW1 preserved, restored or not? I have seen in the net a photo of a green truck in the Mercedes museum and a fire engine, both probably pre-WW1. Any other survivors known, or even just major parts?

A few impressions from the Saloniki front:

Hi guys, can you please tell me a source for good quality babbitt metal, for a 1930s car engine? Not a vendor that I would need to go personally /I'm quite far from the UK/, but one that can be paid online and then would ship it to an address in the UK. Thanks!

It's just two holes, any simple approach is good And the one seen here is not the most simple, but very efficient. Great work, as always!

Bulgarian troops at the Salonika front, with quite an elaborate wood&canvas tank.

http://www.lostbulgaria.com/?p=4632

You are right, I should have thought a little while writing It's 300. For 75 mm cylinder that would make a quarter of a millimeter.

I've been told one old simple calculation for the ring gaps - cylinder diameter/3000. So, 75/3000=0.025 mm gap. That's a starter gap for a fresh repair, with time that would increase a little with the engine wear

What a beauty! It would be great to have it restored internally, mechanically. And just a little touch and few parts added to the exterior. Looks great the way it is!

The honing tools sometimes leave quite rough surface. Put folded fine sandpaper around the honing tool, wrap it in sandpaper cylinder. Folded, with sand-side inside and outside, to make sure that the honing tool will not rotate inside the sandpaper cylinder, but will rotate together with it. Pour diesel for lubrication and do that sandpaper-honing. The result will be very good surface, much better that just the ordinary honing. Same can be done on the engine cylinders, when the honing leaves quite rough surface.