IWL Pitty

At the same time as we picked up the Doppelport, we collected a predecessor of the Troll. With a 125cc 3 speed motor from MZ the IWL Pitty was similar to the Goggomobil, and a few other scooters of the time, in having a bulbous all enclosing front shield. The paint is hammer effect blue and appears to be original so when this makes it way into the garage I wont be repainting it, but giving it a coat or two of Owatrol. However the wiring needs looking at as it is the original rubber insulated with laquered cotton sheathing and its cracking up.

An oddity from Augustusburg

A prototype engine seen in the motorcycle museum in Augustusburg. Acording to the plaque this was the IFA L60 from 1948 with "Kolbenladepumpe" and "Kardanwellenantrieb" which if my German is right is a piston supercharger and a shaft drive transmission. However a power output of 2.2KW ( approx 2BHP) was probably dissapointing!

A little jewel

Well another year rolls by and for my birthday Jan has bought me a pocket knife. Not your run of the mill pocket knife. This is hand made my Trevor Ablett, one of the last of Sheffield Little Mesters. 68 years old, he has been making knives since he was 15. He still makes around a hundred knives a month of various designs.It was ordered in December and arrived in March, such was the backlog of orders since he appaered in the national press. I chose this beauty, a clip point blade, with double brass bolsters and a rosewood handle. It will outlive me!

MZ Brochure Art No 1

Mark and I collected original MZ brochures. These would end up with me for scanning and cleaning and quite a few ended up on t-shirts.

The rarest of MZs?

While Im looking to get time to start on the Troll I thought I would look at the projects in the queue once the IWL sooters are done.
High up on the list is the MZ ES250 Doubleport. It's hard to know how many of these were built. Estimates vary from 800 to 8000.A few years ago I found the remains of one on eBay.de and won it for what I thought was a reasonable price ( and NO im not telling you how much I paid)It was a punt in the dark because there was only one photo and it showed a lot of parts missing.

OK a lot of bits were missing but it was a Doppelport.. the holy grail of MZers!

Anyway, seeing that I didnt have a car licence at the time, I managed to convince my better half to drive a transit to Germany with me, to pick up the doppelport, a IWL Pitty and an MZ ES250/0 ( which I bought, on eBay for 100 euro the day before we left) And it wasnt as bad as it looked! It had the rear wheel and seats.

However the front wheel and front mudguard were wrong and the engine was seized solid.

The right front wheel came from eBay at the bargain price of 10 euro, the mudguard was a hell of a lot more and when it arrived it was probably not original. Over the last few years a few more parts have been bought and its now close to being worth starting the restoration. Will it be worth it? Well for once the answer is probably yes. the last restore one to sell on ebay.de went for in excess of 11,000 euro. But then again it did look like this

IWL Troll

So this, for those of you who have never seen one before, is an IWL Troll, a product of 1960s East German design. Mark was strangely proud of somones description of it .... a fridge on wheels! It is registered in the UK so thats one less job that needs doing and was in use until quite recently.

Mark Dicker, Chairman of the Yorkshire Regional Soviet

Mark came late to computers, luddite that he was he couldn't see the point of them. Then he was introduced to the wonders of eBay.de and was hooked. He had a blog, describing his bikes and his love of riding and discovering the wonders of the UK. After Mark's death, Gresh took on the unenviable task of sorting and disposing of Mark's collection with the help of other friends, described in the More weird old bikes blog. So my collection has now grown by one Troll, and one and a half Berlins, and its with these I'm going to start