We met up at Hawkins Lookout, as with last time.  Unusually, it was quite busy, being used a staging point for a roadworks crew.  We left before they started.   The route took us north from the ferry along the river and it is a nice winding road with almost no traffic.  After about 50km, we then reached Peats Ferry road which is much faster with sweeping corners, and then a short windy section of the old Pacific Highway until our stop point at Moony Moony Bridge.

Our group was quite small this month.  It had rained heavily earlier in the week, which probably put quite a few people off.  The weather was actually excellent.

I took my 1981 240D.  I had originally planned to take my 560SEL.  However the door striker on the rear passengers door wasn’t latching.  I managed to round off one of the hex bolts trying to get it out.  Due to the price of diesel, I hadn’t taken the 240D out on a longer drive.  This seemed like a good opportunity.

On the drive we had my 240D, a 300E and a C4 Corvette. All three cars did well and the new starting time meant I was home at 11:30PM, which is much easier to get up the day after. On the motorway on the way home in the 240D, I was thinking that there are probably not too many cars that can cruise along at 90% of their advertised top speed all day, temperature at 80c and do it when 45 years old.

The post MBCNSW September 2026 Night Drive – Wisemans Ferry appeared first on Classic Jalopy.

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.

The post The attempted night drive and the case of the flying spark plug appeared first on Classic Jalopy.

After battling bad weather the first half of the year, this month was a lovely winter evening.  I took my 1978 450SE and was joined by a 380SEC, a 300E, an E320 Cabriolet and three moderns.   One of the moderns was new C class hybrid, under review for a feature article in the Club Magazine.   I find a lot of the features in new Mercedes-Benz rather garish like the huge logos broadcast on the ground when the doors are open.  I’m sure the technology is quite advanced but its not really my sort of thing.

The new car is quite large for a C class, considerably larger than the 124s it was parked between.  Interior room didn’t seem to be all that great though.

The route took us into the National park at waterfall and down through Lady Wakehurst Drive.  We kept off the motorway until finally taking Bulli Pass down to the McDonalds at Woonona.   It was a pretty good drive and I enjoyed it.

The cruise back in my 450SE was pretty uneventful.   I passed 118,000km in the car on the trip.

The post MBCNSW July 2026 Night Drive – Royal National Park appeared first on Classic Jalopy.

Finding a location where we can do a drive plus have good parking options for the cars is not easy.  Most places are inner city which doesn’t work for us.  Instead, I found a dessert truck in Bonnyrigg which allowed a drive near the new Badgerys Creek airport and then a decent run into the dessert truck.   Like a lot of these late night places, it’s sort of attached to a petrol station.

I did the test run about a week  before in the 450SE and the weather was great.  On the night of the drive it was rainy.  Not enough to call off the drive, but there was steady light rain throughout the night.   The route was pretty cruisy so there wasn’t a big impact.

I took my 300TE along.  Due to the weather, it was a smaller turn out with a 320CE Cabriolet, 380SEC, 280CE 123 and my wagon.  The rain was decent on the way to the drive, but it was generally ok once we got started.   The Dessert truck, while not cheap had a pretty decent Dubai chocolate Acai bowl which I went with.

Doing drives like this that are a bit different breaks things up a bit.  We will look to find more options like it.

The post MBCNSW June 2026 Night Drive – Callum Crepes Dessert Truck appeared first on Classic Jalopy.

I drove up to the blue mountains via Bells Line of Road and then took the road from Oberon to Goulburn before heading back home on the motorway.

Overall the car did really well, and I found it to be very comfortable on a much longer drive.   The drive was a good mix of suburban streets, back roads and motorways.  This drive took me over 1,000km with the car, which is probably the most its has driven in less than a year since going from Melbourne to Adelaide back in 2005 as a new purchase by a previous owner.

The driving experience really is very good.  The power is effortless and I think the 3.31 rear end ratio really suits the nature of the car.   I’ve never driven one of the later HE V12s, but they had much taller ratios for fuel consumption.   The ride quality is excellent and it handles both back roads and the motorway equally well.   It started to rain, so I took it very easy around corners.

When driving the car, its easy to forget it’s well over 50 years old.  Comfort and ride are superior to a newer car.  Handling isn’t, but that’s not what this sort of car is about.  There are only a few areas that showcase the age of the car.   The first is wind noise.  The drag coefficient of the series 1 XJ isn’t all that good and there is a lot of wind noise a freeway speeds.  This doesn’t bother me a great deal, but its quite noticeable against an 80s car, and especially something modern.   I am curious if a series 3 is much different.

The next is the windscreen wipers, which are a bit average.  Glass coverage is a bit mediocre, and there are only two speeds.   The final one is the presence of quarterlight windows.  Since the A/C isn’t working, I see this as a big positive.  On a rainy day, I was able to have the quarterlight open, and get plenty of airflow with minimal water ingress.  Its a shame they died out.

The drive also identified a few things I need to sort out on the car over time:

• There is a really annoying rattle from behind the dash somewhere.  I fixed one of the a/c vents being lose, so its something else.
• I lost my gauges (volt meter, fuel, temperature, oil pressure).
• My Tachometer sometimes stops working
• I can’t get my newly installed rear view mirrors to aim correctly.
• The 2000’s era CD player is terrible and seems to work only through one speaker.
• There is no way to charge a phone on a longer trip.  I used a power bank.
• At the last fuel stop close to home, The car ejected some coolant after sitting for about 3-5 minutes.
• My wiper blades won’t wipe all that well, and while the fast speed works well, the slower speed is a bit hit and miss.  Sometimes I have to got fast speed first before going to slow.   They also don’t park perfectly.
• The kickdown doesn’t seem to work.
• I had a slightly soft brake pedal down a long steep section.

The above seems like a long list, but only a couple of them are urgent.  I filled up three times to be safe, and the consumption wasn’t too bad.   The first tank was probably a bit off from having the fuel tank replaced.  I got 16l/100km out of the second and 14.5l/100km out of the third.  Not bad given the reputation of these cars for thirst.

Ultimately I want to keep any of my cars in the condition that I could get in them and drive to Melbourne and back with no issue.  I am getting much closer to that with the Daimler, but still have work to do.

The post First long drive in the Daimler appeared first on Classic Jalopy.

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 can really only see two cars behind me, so its not always clear if the group is still together or not.   The tourboss app shows me the locations of all the cars on the drive.

We had a pretty good turn out, probably a combination of the good weather and not having had one for a couple of months.  I took my 1978 450SE.   As well as my car was a C123 280CE, R107 280SL, C107 450SLC, C126 380SEC, W124 300E x2 & E320 and S124 300TE.

We had originally planned to meet on the eastern side of Galston Gorge and include that in the route.  The Gorge had been closed earlier in the year for roadworks. There was a lot of conflicting data about if it was open at night or not.   Since it wasn’t that clear, I decided not to include it.   I left a bit early to get to the drive, and found it was in fact open.

Our new starting location was outside Galston shops. From there we headed out to Cattai Ridge Road, before taking Wisemans Ferry Road up to the Old Northern Road and then the Old Northern Road back down to Dural Maccas.   This is a route we’ve done a few times before and I always really enjoy it.   There is generally not a lot of traffic at night and there is a nice mix of tight corners and faster sections.

Overall I thought the tourboss app worked reasonably well.   I used it to Navigate to the start point.  That experience was so-so as the route it took wasn’t the one I would have chosen. More importantly it lacks speed camera location information, and Sydney is bristling with them.   So in future I would probably use Waze to get to the location.

The experience for the users on our drive was pretty decent.  I set the route up in the admin portal which includes all the waypoints.  Tourboss the generates a six digit code.   That code was in our event booking system, along with details of how to get the app.   Everyone turned up with the app installed and with the code entered, so they were ready to go.

When the event is started, it then shows the location of all the other cars.  It also pre-downloads the maps, which is quite good if going through areas with poor mobile coverage.   As the ‘tour leader’ I had a few different views I could use. One as a normal navigation system and then one where it was more about showing me the location of the other cars.   Without reading glasses, I couldn’t see the actual names of the people, but that probably wasn’t important as I could see the spread of the icons.   For example, for a while two cars fell behind for a bit and then later caught up. Something I was able to see in real time.

One of the best things was that you don’t need to hit ‘continue’ when you get to a waypoint like with google.  For a pre-planned route it was pretty seamless.  On the downside, the lack of speed camera, roadworks and hazard warnings that waze gives you is a negative, as is the lack of dark mode at night.   We also had one member who has a phone with a square screen and the app couldn’t handle that.

There was also one situation where it went a bit haywire.  All of a sudden it thought a roundabout that was 7km away was actually 250 meters in front.  Then it got confused and started slowly increasing the distance to where it was.   I knew that section of road pretty well, so it was obviously nonsense, but it would have been confusing if I hadn’t.  It wasn’t just me that experienced that, and it happened on a bit of the drive where the route crossed over itself, which may have been the cause.

Overall my verdict is that the app is pretty useful for running a group driving event. In an ideal situation I would probably want two phones running, one for this and one for waze.   It will be a useful addition to our night drives.

The drive itself was great and all the cars performed well.

The post MBCNSW April 2026 Night Drive – Old Northern Road appeared first on Classic Jalopy.

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 etc.   A regional centre is a much better choice.

I didn’t do the whole rally but when the club announced they would offer day passes, I decided to go up for the Saturday.   The events on that day were much more in line with my interests than some of the other days.   The programme was to a convoy lap around Mt Panorama, led by former racing driver Colin Bond.   Then a show and shine at pit lane, followed by a tour of the Bathurst racing museum.

I decided it would be a perfect day to take my 250SE Cabriolet and two of my kids wanted to join me.   We left early, departing home at twenty to six, as the start of the guided lap was 9:30.  It was absolutely perfect weather for a convertible after weeks of hot and muggy weather in Sydney.

Complicating things were the surge in petrol prices due to yet another pointless middle east war, plus the structural failure of the convict built Victoria Pass, the main road over the blue mountains from Sydney.   I would have normally taken bells line of road anyway, as I detest the great western highway.  However the media were predicting it to be a parking lot.   Turns out it was totally overblown and the traffic was even less than normal.   We used the extra 20 minutes for a pitstop at McDonalds Lithgow.

Coming out of Lithgow, all of sudden i heard something, like there was something on the road that had hit the underside of the car.   I figured perhaps a stone or something like that.  Nothing else seemed to be amiss.  However, going around the next corner i realized I no longer had power steering.  Water temperature and the charge light were both fine, so it looked like I had lost my power steering belt.

Since there wasn’t much I could do by the side of the road, I proceeded to Bathurst.  The car was perfectly drivable, but with increased steering effort.   Lower speed and tighter turns were obviously a lot more effort.

We arrived at the Rally at 9:35AM, perfect timing as the convoy was just assembling for the lap of the track.  We joined up the rear behind a 420SE.   It was quite a cool sight driving behind over 100 Mercedes-Benz around the track.  We ended up doing four laps as it took quite a while for the cars earlier in the convoy to get into pit lane and parked.   The extra laps certainly gave my arms a good workout.

I was surprised how many of the cars were moderns, I had assumed more classics would attend.   I’m not sure if it was due to the fuel prices, or that is what people planned all along.  Certainly I am sure that some people dropped out altogether and I’m sure more would have come up from Sydney from the day too.  Having said that, while the prices are very high, they are not substantially higher than they have been over the last couple of years.  I filled the 250SE up at 2.539 per liter, and looking at my fuel log, it was only 10c less than this at the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

As well as all the moderns, there were some nice classics on display from interstate.  My favorite was a Horizon Blue 280SE W116 from Queensland.  Apparently it had been in long term family ownership and it’s a real credit to the family for keeping it in such nice original condition.     Not too many older cars, although a couple of roundies had come in from interstate which was awesome.

There were some new MBs on display.  Chief among them was a massive Maybach SUV.   I don’t see the appeal at all.  To my eyes, it was tacky and overdone and more of a conveyance for footballers and rappers to be seen in than anything else.  I would have the blue 280SE any day of the week.

It was also good to catch up with a few interstate members that I know at this event.

Lunch was at a food truck near the event which was overpriced and had a massive wait. The quality wasn’t worth the wait either. I would have thought the day pass should have included lunch, as it wasn’t cheap.

After lunch we went to the museum which is quite good.  I covered this more extensively for Youngtimer Sacco day 2024.  The tour back then was more comprehensive, at the Rally it was more of an introduction to the museum.   There are some very interesting cars there and its well worth a visit.

We left at roughly 3:30PM.   As with our arrival, the traffic from Lithgow to Darling Causeway was less than normal, so we made good time, finding more traffic through Dural and Pennant Hills than the area with road closures.  Taking the W111 through these roads sans power steering certainly gave my arms a good workout.   We arrived home at around 7PM after covering 472km for the day.

The post MB Clubs National Rally Bathurst 2026 – Day Trip appeared first on Classic Jalopy.

Due to the W123 event and the Australia Day long weekend, we had the drive a couple of weeks earlier than normal.  January can be quite hit and miss when it comes to attendance.  Some people are still away but on the other hand people who are around are generally less busy.

However, it had rained quite heavily the day before and it was a very overcast day, which kept numbers down.   In the end the rain mostly held off, and we experienced only occasional light showers.  It was possible to see the big storms in the distance over the ocean, it looked like the scene out of Lord of the Rings where the huge storms over Mordor can be seen from Minas Tirith.

We had three cars on the day, a pair of SECs, my Nautical Blue 560SEC and a Lapis Blue 380SEC.   We also had a late model VW golf, primarily so the owners son could build up his hours on his L plates, not ideal for his pristine W124.

Due to the time of the year and the threat of rain, there was almost no traffic.  It turned out to be quite a cruisy drive.  The route took us up the Old Pacific Highway from our meeting point at McDonalds Mount Colah.   Instead of turning into the section that goes down into Gosford, we turned up along Peats Ridge Road, and did the loop with its long sweeping turns, back towards Gosford that way.  We had originally meant to take all back roads, but I got a turn wrong so we did one exit on the motorway.

Meeting point was McDonalds Gosford West.  Unlike some McDonalds which advertise being open 24 hours, but actually only have the drive through open, this one was properly open.  That meant we could get a snack before the drive home.  Even with the smaller numbers it was a good drive.  I was home by almost exactly midnight.

The post MBCNSW January 2026 Night Drive – Old Pacific Highway and Peats Ridge Road appeared first on Classic Jalopy.

Instead of a big drive, the focus of this one was to try a late night dessert truck in Homebush.  To get at least a reasonable drive in, we met at McDonalds in Thornleigh.  This allowed a very simple route into Homebush.  One turn out of McDonalds onto the Comenarra Parkway, and then straight down the A3 to Homebush.   I try to avoid city night drives as its so hard to keep a group together, but this simple route meant that it didn’t matter so much.

We had a good turn out at McDonalds.  It was a very hot day, still over 30C when I left home around 8PM.   I took my 560SEC, primarily because it has excellent air conditioning.   We had a pretty good turn out at Thornleigh, dominated as usual by the 124 and 126 models.

For the 124s, we managed to get all the main body styles.  Two 300E saloons, a 300E coupe, a 300TE wagon and a 320CE cabriolet.  We didn’t have the six door airport taxi, but they were never sold in Australia.

On the 126s, we had a pair of coupes, a 380SEC and my 560SEC, as well as a lovely original 280SE.   And as well as the 124s and 126s, we had a very original 300GD with the OM617 engine.

The drive down to the Comenarra Parkway was pretty uneventful, as was our route down the A3.  The dessert truck was pretty good, although on the expensive side – the main problem was parking.  We were only able to get three of the cars into the parking lot for the truck and parking in the area was difficult.   When we have visited the Chubby buns burger trucks in the past, they are located at closed service stations.  That means we can park in the service station if the parking next to the food truck is busy. Homebush being busier, didn’t have that option.

Overall it was a good drive and a good way to finish my last club event for 2025.

The post MBCNSW December 2025 Night Drive – Dusty and Delights Food Truck appeared first on Classic Jalopy.

Our destination is Royal Gardenia, which is in Bilpin not far from the Blue Mountains Botanic gardens.  Royal Gardenia is owned by a club member who opens up late for us and serves us apple pie and pizza.

We usually get a pretty good turn out for this drive and 2025 was no different.  I decided to take my 250SE Cabriolet – a good evening to drive with the roof down.   It was good weather down in Sydney, but actually got quite cold up towards Bilpin.

Late on a Thursday night there is minimal traffic, so its a good time to cruise up and Bells Line of road is quite an enjoyable road to drive in that state.

On the drive we had a usual good variety of cars.  My 250SE was by far the oldest car there, but we also had a lovely R107 500SL, three 126s in a 300SEL, 380SEC and 420EL, a 123 280CE, a good selection of 124s – two 300E, 300CE, 300TE, a modern E400 convertible and also a Toyota Cressida.

As well as our usual drive and chat over Pizza and apple pie, we also had some club awards, of which I was lucky enough to get one, alone with one for a 500,000km award for an E220 wagon.

Its always a good evening, but a late one.  It was good to take the 250SE out for a drive, and I had to push it pretty hard to keep up with the 500SL, although I was generally able to.

The post MBCNSW November 2025 Night Drive – Bilpin Apple Pie appeared first on Classic Jalopy.