The attempted night drive and the case of the flying spark plug

Last night was supposed to be the August 2026 MBCNSW night drive.  It was the first at our new time of 8:30PM, and revisited a good route we used a couple of years ago in Southwest Sydney.

I decided to take my Daimler on the drive.  While not a Mercedes-Benz, these drives are informal and its pretty common for people to bring other cars along.  I’ve done it myself.

Things were going pretty well – I was cruising along the M7 towards the start point when there was a big bang from the front of the car, followed by a smell and a pretty bad noise from the engine.  Balancing not wanting to damage the car with stopping in a safe place, I moved onto the hard shoulder near an upcoming onramp, so I was further away from the stream of traffic.

I wondered if I had hit something I couldn’t see on the road and the smell was dragging it.  But looking at the car I could see no external damage.  I next wondered if I had broken a belt or the fan was hitting something, but all my belts were fine and the fan spun freely.

It took me a while, but in the end I saw one of the spark plugs was out of the engine on the passengers side bank.  On one hand this was good news as it meant I probably hadn’t damaged the engine severely.   I wasn’t able to get the plug back in easily by hand, and my the tool on my toolkit wasn’t quite right – its from a series 3.   At that point I decided to abort the drive.

While a V12 will run quite happily on 11 cylinders, Its quite a difference doing a whole drive with no spark plug in the engine.  I also wanted to make sure there was nothing else wrong.  Therefore, I called some of the guys on the drive and told them to go without me, and then called the NRMA.

I figured it would be a simple matter of getting the car towed.  I was wrong.

Apparently the NRMA are not allowed to pick me up from the M7.  First the M7 tow truck has to come and take me off the M7, then they could pick me up.  There was plenty of room where I was for a regular tow truck to come, but apparently its not allowed.

The NRMA had to call the M7 control and tell them to come and get me.  It took an hour from when I first called NRMA to come. Apparently they also lowered the speed limit in that section of road.  I think it was unnecessary to do that, and we have such an obsession with lowering speed limits here in Australia.

Instead of sending a tow truck, they sent whole a fleet of them.  There were 3-4 large vehicles. It was like they had arrived to fight the Battle of Midway instead of retrieving an old Daimler.  I think some of them are to block the road of a car is disabled on a road lane, but since I was on the hard shoulder it all seems excessive.

With the Daimler loaded onto the carrier, the fleet sailed 700 meters to a truck stopping bay where I was unloaded.  There Admiral Spruance and his fleet left to fight the next battle and I called the NRMA again.

The NRMA tow truck was faster than the M7 fleet and after about 45 minutes the next tow truck came.  We re-loaded the Daimler.   I decided to have the car towed to my mechanic’s workshop rather than home.  I figured the spark plug hold probably needed a thread repair.   While I was waiting I realized I had lost one of my wheel trim rings at some point.  I don’t think it was related to the breakdown though.

The tow was about 45 kilometers, which given it was now about 10PM, wasn’t too bad.   At one point about 1KM from the workshop, it looked like my tow truck would need its own tow truck.  At the bottom of a long downhill section, the brakes on the tow truck went soft, and were not holding it at the lights.  I had visions of my tow truck, complete wtih the Daimler, being loaded on top of a larger tow truck, like those nested Russian dolls.

Thankfully, a third tow truck wasn’t necessary as the brakes cooled down, and the car was safely dropped off.

First thing this morning I went down there with the keys.  In the sunlight, we looked at the engine, and the thread actually seemed pretty good.  My mechanic noted that the seat looked a bit dirty.  The problem may have simply been that the plug wasn’t torqued down correctly when installed.

I left it with them, and after I returned a few hours later, that was confirmed.  The plug went in fine and it seems like there was no real issue.   At this stage it looks like it was all just a bit inconvenient.  I’ll take inconvenience over engine damage any day of the week.

Reflecting on the experience, I think the towing procedure for the M7 is over the top.  I can understand if one of the traffic lanes was blocked.   But given they take an hour to get there, its not like this process is making anything any safer.  It feels like nonsense like this is why everything is so expensive these days.