| The third day of our classic Mercedes road trip was focused on a MBCV Garage Day. The subject was electrical troubleshooting. However, before we could have the MBCV Garage day, we had to get there. We started in Traralgon, and drove to Ferntree Gully (A suburb of Melbourne) to the MBCV club rooms for the garage day. For the once and only time on this trip, we took the motorway. I guess in keeping with this trip, while it carries the ‘M’ designation, it wasn’t really a proper motorway as it didn’t bypass many towns. The drive in was uneventful, […] The second day of our classic Mercedes road trip between Sydney and Melbourne focused mostly on driving the Great Alpine Road (B500). On Day 1, we started in Mt Victoria and ended up in Tumut. We started early, at 6:30AM to maximise daylight hours. Our destination was Corryong for a breakfast stop. This first leg was rather scenic and we stopped a few times to get some good photos of the cars at various spots. At Corryong, we had breakfast at a country bakery, before heading off to our next destination, which was Myrtleford. The road between Corryong […] Today was the first day of our epic road trip to Melbourne in 9 classic Mercedes Benz. Our goal was to head down for the annual MBCV concours event and a tech day they were running the day before. I previously covered the plan for the trip. Our destination today was Tumut. Before we even started, we lost one of the cars. One of our group had purchased a lovely ‘new’ W108 280SE 3.5 earlier this year. It’s a really nice car, but it had not seen a whole lot of use in recent years. Unfortunately all the work required […] Last year, I went on a 4,000km road trip with some friends from the Mercedes-Benz club to the National Rally in Adelaide. We all took classics, and we took the scenic route there and back. In may ways, the trip there and back was better than the event. For 2023, while there was no National Rally, we were keen to do another. We picked the Mercedes-Benz Club of Victoria’s annual concours event. I’ve wanted to go to this for years, as I had heard the standard of the cars at this show is very good. In addition, at a S124 […] Last night I finished the installation of the refurbished W124 instrument cluster. I’m really happy with it, and its really lifted the car. I ended up installing it as part of my failed attempt to change the centre vent. Even after changing the bulb, the vent illumination was not working. I realized that it must require the instrument cluster to be plugged in. This proved to be the case, and also fixed the illumination for the outside temperature gauge. Before I re-installed the cluster, I added more ATF to the speedometer cable. This is an attempt to lubricate it and […] One of the items on my todo list for the 300TE was to replace the W124 centre vent. A couple of the slats were broken, so I could not direct the air, and the open/close control was not working either. The open/close control is especially important in winter, as heat doesn’t come out of the centre. I was told that the RHD part is different to the LHD part, so when I saw a reasonable deal on the RHD part, I purchased it. The part number (at least for my car) for the W124 centre vent is A124 830 08 […] In a previous article I had been undertaking a 300TE speaker upgrade. I started with the rears which were very simple. Next was the fronts. As I outlined in the first part, the W124 uses an odd size and mounting system for the front speakers. They are 12cm and use these clips on the side rather than the normal mounting ears. I guess this system was used in a few European cars of the era, as there are still a couple of manufacturers who offer speakers like these. I went with the Crunch DSX120, in a kit for the […] Today was the third annual Youngtimer Sacco day. This is an event run by the Mercedes-Benz club to celebrate the cars of the legendary designer, Bruno Sacco. As with the last two, the event was held at HARS. HARS is an aviation museum located at Shellharbour Airport in Albion Park NSW. The event is focused on the cars designed by Bruno Sacco, but other cars could attend. Sacco was lead designer for Mercedes-Benz from 1975 to 1999. His era covers a number of key models in Mercedes-Benz history such as the W126, W201, W124, R129, R230 and more. Sacco […] I wasn’t very happy with the sound from my 300TE. The front passengers speaker rattled badly and the sound wasn’t the best. As I’m taking the car on a road trip in January, I wanted better sound. I’ve already put the Becker 1402 back in, so all I needed was some decent speakers. In researching what was possible, options were not extensive for the S124. The front speakers are both an unusual size (12cm) and an unusual mounting system. The rears are are a more common 10cm size, but mounted in the door handles. I personally don’t think much of […] I had previously replaced the front speakers in my 1987 560SEC. Now it was time to look at the rears. As I outlined in the article about the front speakers, I am replacing the W126 rear speakers with Crunch 16.5cm speakers. These speakers should fit into the factory brackets and underneath the factory grilles. Changing the rears in the second generation W126 is a bit more of a fiddly job. For starters the factory grilles are now very brittle. Not only are they over 35 years old, but the Australian sun is not kind to plastics. It is quite common […] | |
