Guest Post: SLK230 – Installing a Pippins wind deflector

Editors Note: This is part three in a series by Nick Gruzevskis about owning a Modern Mercedes convertible – in this case his R170 SLK230. The first part can be found here and the second part here.

There are times when you feel like you’re making progress on a classic car and other times it just feels like you’re procrastinating. As I have just completed an interior, I was feeling positive, so decided to strike while the iron was hot.

Since putting the interior back, I’d used the car on freeways several times and noticed the steering wheel shuttering […]

560SEC battery tray

On my trip to Victoria last last year, the alternator on my 560SEC packed in. I was able to limp the car home by swapping batteries with a friend in another W126. I also purchased another battery on the road. When I arrived back in Sydney, it was this new battery that was still in the car. I was just going to leave that one there, until I noticed a slight creaking from the bonnet hinge. The bonnet was also a few mm too high.

Turns out the new battery I bought along the way was slightly too big. It […]

New tyres for my W111 250SE

I recently drove down to Canberra in my 1965 250SE. This was the first time I had taken the car on a longish trip in a couple of years. The main reason for that was the running issue had been experiencing with the car over the last few years. I finally solved this issue last year by fitting a new electronic distributor.

On the way down I noticed how bad the ride was. The car was quite bouncy and not very enjoyable to drive. While the car didn’t do any long trips, I was using it quite a bit on […]

W124 Blower motor replacement – part 1

I’ve known that the blower motor needed replacement on my 300TE since purchase. It didn’t like to work on low settings and would make pretty bad squeaking noises. The second to last owner had even planned on replacing it, but ran out of time before he sold the car. I had it on my list to do and ideally planned to do it before the trip to Tasmania in December/January.

I looked into this and found an excellent video from ‘MMWA’ on youtube on how to replace the W124 blower motor. If you own a W124 and you don’t subscribe […]

MBCNSW February 2024 Night Drive – Heart Attack Run

This months night drive fell on a leap day, September 29. The next time a leap day falls on a Thursday will be 2054, so it was a night not to be missed. The main part of the drive was to drive the back roads of southwest Sydney, starting with Mulgoa Road.

Last year we had a drive that started from Krispy Kreme Penrith. It was quite popular, as a few people bought a box of doughnuts to take home for the family. This seemed like a good place to start this drive, as it was on the Mulgoa road […]

MBCNSW January 2024 Night Drive – Princes Highway

We started our 2024 night drive schedule with a drive south. This month’s drive was held a week earlier due to the holiday long weekend and the absurd double demerits regime in NSW. In the days before the drive, there had been torrential rain, but luckily the weather fined up on the day and it was just a bit overcast.

The recent rain did have one impact – we had to change our route along the way. This was to be the same route we did in July 2022. However, McKel Ave, which would have taken us down into the […]

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 […]