National Automobile Museum of Tasmania

While I was in Launceston earlier in the week, I visited the National Automobile Museum of Tasmania. This is a nice little museum quite close to the centre of Launceston. I had driven down to Tasmania in my 300TE, and had a few hours to kill before picking up my family from the airport. The National Automobile Museum of Tasmania was a perfect way to do that.

The museum seemed to have a dual theme of Australian Motorsport and cars that were significant to Tasmania in some way. It also had a huge collection of Motorbikes. As I understand it, […]

Sydney to Launceston Road trip

I’m currently in Tasmania on holiday with my family. Our goal on this trip is to tour around Tasmania so a car was a must. On a trip like this, I had two main options. The first was renting a car – either paying an arm and a leg for a miniature van, or squeezing a family of five into something horrible like an MG ZS. The second was driving my own car down and touring around in that. This could have been my wife’s modern car – an S211 E350 Mercedes, or one of my classics. For me, it […]

Preparing my 300TE for a family road trip

In January, I’m taking my family to Tasmania on holiday. Instead of renting a car down there, I’m driving down and taking the Spirit of Tasmania. I’ll collect my family from Launceston Airport as they will fly down. Due to the cost of the Spirit of Tasmania, its actually cheaper to do it this way. It works out well, as they are not interested in the long drive down.

I’m taking my 1990 Mercedes 300TE on this drive. Now I could have taken my wife’s modern car – a Mercedes E350 Wagon. However, I far prefer driving the 300TE. The […]

MBCNSW December 2023 Night Drive – Galston Gorge

Our final night drive for 2023 was an old favourite. I ran a poll a few months ago for some of the regulars on the night drives to identify drives that there was interest to revisit. The drive from Galston Gorge to Cattai Ridge Road, Galston Gorge road and Old Northern Road was one of the most popular. I really enjoy this drive myself as it has some sections with tight ocrners as well as some faster parts along the old Northern Road.

Generally the roads are in good order, except for the section of Pitt Town Dural road which […]

450SLC lug bolt replacement

I fitted a set of original AMG Penta wheels to my 450SLC two years ago. At the time, they did not come with lug bolts. Luckily, I had a set from the replica Fuchs wheels that were on the car when I purchased it. The replica Fuchs wheels were the Australian made copies that were so commonly fitted on Mercedes of this era that were not sold originally with alloy wheels. My 280SE had the Italian copies.

The set of lug bolts I had were quite scruffy, so I attempted to clean them up by soaking them in a metal […]

MBCNSW November 2023 Night Drive – Bilpin

Thursday was the annual MBCNSW Night Drive to Bilpin for Apple pie. This has turned into an annual event and despite being a very late night is always popular. It seems amazing that another year has flown by, as it doesn’t seem all that long ago that we did the last Bilpin night drive. On that drive, I swapped cars with a friend and drove his 450SE up to to Bilpin while he drove my 280SE. This time I was also behind the wheel of a 450, this time my 450SLC.

Considering it threatened rain all day, the turn out […]