Sd.Kfz 222 and 223 Ausf A – Plaques – The Dueseneinstellung Plaque – Almost there - Inside Track | Renault TSF Tank Kent

This plaque has proven to be the most challenging of the plaques we have had to figure out to date. Even though we have had the benefit of a very clear image from a manual showing the front crew cabin area of a 3 Serie 221 (not 4 Serie as stated previously) it is not a photo. The book printing and its inevitable ‘pixellation’ upon magnification caused problems with the large lettering let alone the numbering which we left for last. Dueseneinstellung’s technical meaning now understood we set about the discovery process of locating all references to the Solex 32JFP vergaser (carburettor). We trawled through every reference to the Ausf. A armoured car series – all D vorschriften and then the Auto Union Werk Horch handbook on the 801 Series. This was done to throw up all possibilities for the text we were trying to decipher. We were forced back to months of trawling through all the relevant and irrelevant documentation in our archives to come up with some possible interpretation of what the indecipherable letters could mean. We utilised the image sharpening and noise reducing functions on Paint.net and managed to extract more clarity from the images and thus the titles. The top title was decoded to read Hauptduese. Now we had something to work from. This lead to the most useful insight into what the pixelated titles referred to - the manual D664 5 of March 3 1943 Einheitsfargestell 1 Bedienungsanweisung und Geraetebeschreibung. The problem was that this manual was dated 1943 and included references to the twin air filter system together with the standard single air filter. We had a start - could the second line refer to Leerlaufduese as listed in the manual? An early manual in keeping with the assembly date of the last Ausf A Sd.Kfz 222 and 223 4 Serie (ours) was not available so we would have to continue trawling through the documents. The third title on the shield was resolved in a Panzer 1 Geraetebeschriebung und Bedienungsanweisung manual. The word was the most difficult to decipher of all the titles and only some of the letters could be identified. Zeitabstanden came out of nowhere and settled as the only candidate for the last title. This made sense as the two numbers on the end of this title were standard timing settings. One of the easier areas of this plaque to resolve was the text at the base of the plaque. This referred to the OZ (Oktanziffer)regulation as to what types of petrol (Octane count) should be used in the engine. This piece was very close to a line off an early engine plaque from a Maybach HL42. The problem was now reduced to the numbers below the Hauptduese title. The longer sequence of numbers on the right we had resolved from the 1943 manual but the 3 digit sequence on the left were far too pixelated to be of any use. We will get there in the end but all of our current sources have been exhausted on this front.

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