Today is National Motoring Heritage Day (NMHD) for 2026. It is held each year on the 3rd Sunday in May. The idea behind it is for all the national car clubs to organize an event on the same day so the public see historic vehicles out and about. This is presumably to promote the motoring hobby and showcases the depth of interest in it....
After a long drive, my 560SEL would leave a puddle of coolant under the car. The puddle wasn’t from the front, it was from the rear of the engine. The most obvious thing here was heater hoses, but I let the car get nice and hot put the heater on and there was no leakage. The next step was to run a coolant pressure...
My Daimler Double-Six, along with all Series 1 XJ’s and derivatives has four gauges in the centre of the dashboard above the rocker switches. These are: Voltage Oil Pressure Water Temperature Fuel They had all stopped working and I wanted to get them to work again, especially the water temperature one. I quickly ruled out a blown fuse, as many other things in the...
Back at the Easter weekend, I did my first long drive in the Daimler. Up until recently I had been mostly using the car for shorter drives, until I got it sorted out. After the recent service, a lot of the issues I was concerned about were now sorted out. I wanted to see how the car performed on a much longer day trip....
Today was the monthly St Ives Auto Brunch cars and coffee event. It was a lovely warm Sydney Autumn day and it was probably one of the biggest turnouts I’ve seen. After all the bad weather we were back on the main Oval and I think it was 80% full this time. Last time we were off to the side. I arrived at about...
My Daimler was off the road for some years before I acquired it. While cars that haven’t seen a lot of use can have advantages in terms of wear and tear on the interior and body, lack of use is often worse than regular light use for mechanical components. One of the things that became apparent in starting to use the car regularly, was...
Back in December, I had been driving the Daimler for a couple of weeks and noticed a few things I wanted to be looked at before I used it more: Soft brake pedal Dirty passengers side fuel tank and pitted chrome on fuel cap Dented rear bumper Tachometer not working after my attempted repair Fuel gauges not working properly The soft brake pedal seemed...
Last night was our first night drive since January, the February and March night drives both being rained out. After a bit of rain the night before, it turned out to be a lovely evening. This was also the first drive we using a new navigation app the club has purchased called ‘Tourboss’. I was quite keen to try it as at night. I...
Today was the monthly Auto Brunch event at St Ives. It had rained heavily in the 24 hours prior to the event, so while it was not cancelled it was moved back to the old area. The old area is much smaller, but given it was the easter long weekend, and the weather was poor, there was plenty of room. A bit of a...
In order to paint the roof of my 1990 300TE, the sunroof panel needed to be removed. However, on removal of the sunroof panel, the lifting arms disintegrated. This is a common problem on the W124 and second generation W126 cars. The lifting arms are the mechanism that is used to enable the tilt function on the sunroof. While the tilt function is nice,...
Today I attended the Wheels car show in Canberra. Wheels is the largest multi-marque car show held in the ACT. I’ve been a couple of times before, in 2022 and 2024. The ACT club normally try and make a theme of the event, as there are prizes for the best display. They have won it on a few occasions too. In 2022 they had...
Before my 300TE could be repainted, the rust uncovered in the rear window apertures had to be repaired. The rust was cut out and the area welded – we didn’t use any specific repair panels in my case. Once all the rust was repaired, the next step was obviously paint. Since the whole car was not being resprayed, just the rear quarters and roof...
With all the parts procured, my 300TE went into the body shop. The repair started out as routine, removal of the old bumper and disassembly. However, things quickly went sideways with the removal of the rear windows. While I was aware of the rust traps in the S124 rear window design, I wasn’t prepared for how bad the rust would be would be...
Back last year, my 300TE was in a minor accident. The rear bumper took nearly all the impact, other than some scratches to the paint on one side. Before I could get the car repaired, I had to source some parts for my repairer. The most obvious part was the rear bumper. Mine was cracked in a few places. My repairer said worst case...
Every two years one of the state based Mercedes-Benz clubs organizes the National Rally. I attended the 2022 event in South Australia. 2026 is being jointly held by the NSW and ACT clubs and the location was Bathurst. I think the club made a good choice to hold the rally outside Sydney. Sydney is no place for a car event Terrible traffic, expensive parking...
With 2025 completed a few months ago now, it is time for an update on the fleet. As with both 2023 and 2024, I drove my fleet of classics around 18,000km over the year. Unlike last year, I needed to be towed twice this year, although one of them was my own fault for running out of fuel and my wife’s modern cars also...
In my first drives of the Daimler, one of the things on my list to fix was the tachometer. When I first got the car, I had it converted to modern electronic ignition. The Jaguar V12 always had electronic ignition, however it originally used a system called OPUS. On my car, the ignition system had been messed with and the OPUS box wasn’t working....
Back in 2013, I visited the Louwman Museum. I’ve always regarded it as the best automotive museum I have ever visited. A few weeks ago I was in Belgium for work. I had a Saturday free, so decided to visit again and see if the collection had changed. Since I was in Brussels, It was just under two hours on the train to get...
Autoworld Brussels is a rather excellent car museum in Brussels, Belgium. I’ve been a couple of times, in 2013 and 2025. While the core collection doesn’t change all that much, there is a section that is probably about 20% of the museum that is for rotating special exhibits. When I visited last year, the special exhibit was for the cars of Maserati. I really...
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