This evening I took my 450SLC for a drive up the old Pacific Highway. I wanted to check the impact of re-connecting the vacuum advance on the distributor. I had discovered the line was broken when doing some maintenance. With the advance enabled, mid throttle response seems a lot better. I do get a little pinging when cruising on the motorway, so I am going to try 98 instead of 95.
During the drive, the SLC reached a big milestone:
That’s right, the SLC has finally reached 300,000km. I purchased the car in 2003 with 262,000km showing. As there was a 6 month period when I was driving the car more that the odometer didn’t work, I can probably assume I have driven this car 40,000km over 16 years. This equates to a rather low 2,500km per year. Overall, the car has been driven on average 7,150km per year.
If I assume that the car has used roughly the same amount of fuel all its life, then it has consumed 63,600 liters. Enough to fill 2-3 petrol tankers. To buy all that fuel at today’s prices would cost over $100,000.
To get to 300,000km its had more than 40 oil changes and has driven the equivalent of 7.5 times around the earth or 80% of the distance between the Earth and the Moon.
The car has likely been driven for around 7,500 hours in its life, equating to 312 days of driving. This is only 2% of its life. The other 98% it has been parked. I already have the 250,000km badge for the car, the next one is not due until 500,000km. if the car is still driven 2500km per year, it will only take 80 years!
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