Monthly Archive: September 2015

My E-Type rolled out of the factory 50 years ago this month 0

My E-Type rolled out of the factory 50 years ago this month

On the 17th of September, 1965, my E-Type rolled out of the factory in Coventry, and was dispatched on the 5th of October to Fayetteville North Carolina.     The first owner, was Spencer Augustus Folsom, Jr.    It shows how far car technology had come in the preceding 50 years, in that when this car was manufactured, a 50 year old car was a horseless carriage, yet...

DS Front indicator swap pt 1 1

DS Front indicator swap pt 1

The indicator lenses on my DS were all cracked, and the backing was in poor condition.   I purchased a replacement set online, which look a whole lot better. I went to do the swap over today, but for whatever reason, the new indicators cannot simply plug into the factory wiring harness, they have spade terminals when the car uses bullets. Its not that...

2015 Mercedes Club NSW Concours 1

2015 Mercedes Club NSW Concours

Today was the annual Mercedes Club concours and while it threatened to rain all day, the weather held off and a nice variety of cars showed up, including a gaggle of 190SLs, four 600s including a 4 door pullman and a decent number of cars from the ACT.   With all those 600s, I expected to see a dictator with a chest full of...

Citroen DS oil filter o-rings 0

Citroen DS oil filter o-rings

I don’t normally post about routine things such as oil changes, but in this case, there is an aspect to the oil change that is not obvious and is worth mentioning. In general, the DS oil change is well covered on the Internet, as are the warnings to ensure the filter housing is properly aligned when inserted back into the sump.    The DS...

2015 ACT German Car Show 1

2015 ACT German Car Show

This year I took the 250SE down to the 2015 ACT German Car show, which I last attended in 2013.    It was a lovely day to drive a convertible down to Canberra and as usual the 250SE performed very well.    At freeway speeds the engine turns at 4,000 RPM, which is unusual for a modern car, but fits into the nature of the engine....

W111 Headlight Upgrade Pt 1 0

W111 Headlight Upgrade Pt 1

After restoring the 250SE to the correct wheel trims, the next step is to fit the correct headlights.   The car is currently fitted with the stacked headlights.  These are often known as Americana headlights.   They are actually different to the USA style as they use halogens not sealed beams.  This style was a common extra on the V8 W111’s and later a popular...

NSW Roads Minister Duncan Gay is my new hero 1

NSW Roads Minister Duncan Gay is my new hero

After becoming cynical from the normal spin and lobby group driven  policy from Governments, I was very happy to see two very commonsense announcements from NSW Government minister Duncan Gay today. A trial for improvements to the NSW Conditional Registration scheme (Club Rego) A study to investigate higher speed limits on sections of the Hume and Pacific Highways The trial for improvements to NSW...

Bad Jaguar horns 0

Bad Jaguar horns

In this world of monster 4 wheel drives with inattentive drivers at the wheel, a horn is an important feature of a small, low sports car. However, the horns on my E-Type had not been working. I had previously checked the actual horn units on a 12v battery and got a very feeble croak out of them, so since they looked rather rusty, replaced...

Changing the 250SE back to the correct wheel trims 2

Changing the 250SE back to the correct wheel trims

My 250SE has been ‘wearing’ 280 style hubcaps since I got it, but I had always wanted to convert it back to the correct style.   As it happened, a box containing the original headlights and the original hubcaps for this car was found by a previous owner and re-united with the car.   The outer beauty rings were missing, but I had a set of...

W111 Mercedes hub caps and beauty rings 3

W111 Mercedes hub caps and beauty rings

Classic Mercedes have always had attractive chrome and painted wheel trims. Most people are very familiar with the ubiquitous one piece Mercedes hub caps that were available on nearly all models from the late 60s to the mid 80s.   W111s (and associated models such as the W110, W112, W113, W108, W109) had a few different styles that are now rarely seen. Style 1:...

Classic Jalopy