Fixing Leaks from the Traction Avant oil cap

The Traction Avant has a fairly large oil cap that at least on my car is a loose fit. Underneath it there is a metal plate with holes in it which let the oil drain into the engine when filling and presumably stop the oil from splashing out.

Unfortunately on my car, these holes had been significantly enlarged and that means oil was dribbling down both sides of the engine and creating smoke when it hit the hot exhaust manifold.

My assumption was that the extra holes were leading to excess oil splashing up and leaking out of the cap. […]

450SLC Rust

The big Achilles heel in the R/C107 chassis is its propensity to rust. They are pretty much bullet proof mechanically, but the rust proofing from the factory was poor and there are a lot of areas where they can and do rust, even in climates such as Australia that are not prone to it. Once the rust gets to a point, the cars are pretty much scrap.

My car is pretty rust free – but I had some rust cut out about 10 years ago. There were four places and they are all common rust points in these cars

near […]

Book Review: Rover P5 & P5B: The Complete Story

I am a fan of the Rover P5, but I don’t have the time, room or funds to purchase one. So the solution is to buy a book!

I purchased this book: Rover P5 & P5B: The Complete Story by James Taylor and overall I am happy with the purchase.

The book does a good job of covering the events that led up to the launch of the car and then the major changes that took place during its life cycle. It covers all the different series of car, as well as the Coupe and Saloon. It also features […]

Mercedes Club drive to Wollombi

Today I joined the Mercedes Club on a drive to Wollombi, which is a small town on the way to the Hunter Valley. The town was used in the 1840’s for convicts to stay while they built a road from Sydney to the Hunter and ultimately beyond. The Mercedes club has been organizing some rather interesting sounding drives recently so it was good to be able to come along – the roads in this area are very scenic and apart from idiots on motorcycles rather nice to drive on.

It was a lovely autumn day here in Sydney, so a […]

Mercedes Microfiche

There are three main ways of getting Mercedes-Benz workshop manuals. The most common these days is via CD-ROM. However the quality of the scans are woeful, and the pictures are generally next to useless (the diagrams are ok if not too detailed). You can also find the old printed manuals on Ebay. Many sellers want silly money for the manuals, but they are available if you persevere, especially on USA Ebay. I’ve slowly built up a collection of the printed manuals, although not a complete set.

The other way is via Microfiche. These manuals were typically available to workshops, but […]