Back behind the wheel of a W123

Today I got back behind the wheel of my old W123 280CE. The 15 minute and 5km drive is actually the longest I ever took in that car! This was a car I rescued more than purchased. The previous owner had it up on ebay with no reserve, had mis-spelt Mercedes and it was claimed to have a leaky radiator. Despite sitting in a muddy front yard, it didn’t look too bad a car and so I became its owner for $830.

I trailered it back to my warehouse and straight away I noticed that while it looked a bit […]

Tall drivers can comfortably drive a Series 1 E-Type

Pretty much all the buyers guides I read when researching E-Types say that drivers over 6 feet tall should avoid SWB E-Types. This means they are allegedly restricted to the S1 2+2, S2 2+2 and all Series 3 models. I was never a fan of the styling updates to the E-Type as it aged, so was keen on an early car. I also didn’t want an automatic so that left the S1 2+2 manual as my primary choice.

There were a few problems with that approach. Firstly, at the time I was buying my car (in the United States), 2+2’s […]

Traction Avant drivabilty improvements

The Traction Avant had a number of small issues that were impacting the overall drivability of the car. The car is now much nicer to drive after resolving them.

The original engine driven fuel pump had been bypassed by a very noisy electric pump There was severe vibration on braking Front suspension was worn Valves were out of adjustment on #2 causing poor running and smoke at idle The gearchange mechanism would occasionally get ‘stuck’ The gearbox had a bad oil leak

All the work on the car for these jobs was done by Jason at Pallas Motors. I was […]

Troubleshooting W126 Climate Control

When I purchased my 300SE, the A/C worked well. I assume the overall Climate Control system did too. I never did test anything more than max A/C as the weather was very hot. Everything seemed fine, except for the little aspirator fan which was noisy. Unfortunately 3 weeks after purchase, the A/C stopped working. I was sitting at red traffic lights and adjusted the settings and it went warm. This indicated that it was probably not a leak in the system somewhere. Just to be sure, I had the system checked and it was not low on refrigerant.

The first […]