Bark (built-in motors)
Bark was a German manufacturer of built-in motors for motorcycles in the 1930s. The company's headquarters were in Dresden .
The Bark company was the successor to the Kühne Dresden light metal works founded in 1917, which manufactured built-in motorcycle engines. Otto Bark took over the company in 1929 and continued to build engines. Due to the increasing volume of orders and additional armaments orders, Otto Bark founded Bark-Motorenbau GmbH in Obercunewalde in 1943. In the factory halls of the former IG Große weaving mill, the company manufactured oil pressure feed and coolant pumps for engines for fighter and bomber planes (including the JU87 dive bomber). The 450 employees, mostly women, including prisoners of war and forced laborers from Poland and the Soviet Union, worked on 150 machine tools. In addition, an air force test site was set up on the site.
The 200 to 600 cm³ two-stroke and four-stroke engines were used by motorcycle manufacturers Ardie , Hercules , Imperia , HMK Ruhrtal-Motorradwerke and UT Motoren- und Fahrzeugbau . The engines were considered to be robust touring and touring sports types. The four-stroke engines had a fully encapsulated valve very early on.
During the Second World War , Bark mainly produced aircraft parts and was therefore dismantled in 1945.
The dismantling of the machine park of Bark-Motorenwerk GmbH Obercunewalde could be prevented. In 1946 there was a delivery contract between the Soviet design office No. 10 (SKB 10) in Chemnitz and Bark-Motorenbau GmbH for sample production of 20 motorcycles of the DKW design, forerunners of the RT 125 and the BK 350.
literature
- Seidel, Gerhard: International motorcycle type show 1928–1944. Iberia, Vienna 2nd unchanged edition 1951. It contains an overview of four-stroke Bark engines from 200 cm³ to 600 cm³ displacement.