Production Date
One of the most common emails I receive is: "What year is my Heinkel?".
If your VIN tag is in place AND it has the model year stamped, the answer is easy. Otherwise, the answer is less clear.
My Spotter's Guides list the production dates for each Tourist model.
However, USA dealerships often assigned the year based upon the year the Heinkels were sold. I've heard of many 103A1s whose owners claim they are 1962. (Even though the factory stopped production in 1960.)
If you have a burning desire to fine tune the production date of your Tourist, I can give you a few places to look to help solve the mystery.
Date stamps can be found on several Tourist parts. Specifically:
- Speedometer. Pictured at the right are the back sides of an A0 and an A1 speedometer. You can clearly see "4.56" on the A0 speedometer and "11.60" on the A1 speedometer. These numbers correspond (of course) to April 1956 and November 1960.
- Speedometer Drive. Similarly, the speedometer drive shows May 1956. This drive came from the A0 whose speedometer is displayed above.
- Crankshaft. Most owners will likely not see their crankshaft. However, if you do split your engine cases grab your camera. You will see a verbose date stamp similar to that shown - "April 1960".
- Wheel Rims. Wheel rims for the 103A1 and 103A2 models occasionally have a date stamp as well. Pictured is a rim from September 1961. For some reason, not all rims have the date stamp. I suspect rims without a stamp are aftermarket. But this is only my guess.
Of course these clues only provide the production dates for the various components used to build your Heinkel.
If I assume that the speedometer and drive from the A0 are original, then the A0 has a production date of May 1956 or afterwards.
I hope this information is useful!