My 250SE was sporting the stacked style of headlights, which are quite popular on these models. Personally, I prefer the original type. I had some original lights, but needed to restore them before they could be fitted to the car. The wear parts of the headlights are the reflectors that dull and rust over time, the gaskets that crumble (as can be...
In October 1955, Citroen unveiled one of the most innovative cars ever designed. There have been plenty of new cars that have introduced a new technology, or even a couple, but the DS was so radical that it immediately made everything else on the market seem old fashioned. And this was just the looks. Under the covers, the car contained a revolutionary...
I was down at the RMS today, putting my Traction on the new trial for a logbook style registration scheme in NSW. I really had been dreading putting the traction on the old historic scheme, but with so many cars I just couldn’t justify them all on full rego, despite how bad the old scheme was. Under the new rules, you get to...
The headlights on the W108, W109, W111 and W112 Mercedes are all interchangeable, which means many cars are no longer sporting the headlights they left the factory with. They are all based on a design introduced on the 300SL roadster in 1957. The W113, W114/5 and W100 all had similar designs based on this same theme, but those lights will not...
On the 17th of September, 1965, my E-Type rolled out of the factory in Coventry, and was dispatched on the 5th of October to Fayetteville North Carolina. The first owner, was Spencer Augustus Folsom, Jr. It shows how far car technology had come in the preceding 50 years, in that when this car was manufactured, a 50 year old car was a horseless carriage, yet...
The indicator lenses on my DS were all cracked, and the backing was in poor condition. I purchased a replacement set online, which look a whole lot better. I went to do the swap over today, but for whatever reason, the new indicators cannot simply plug into the factory wiring harness, they have spade terminals when the car uses bullets. Its not that...
Today was the annual Mercedes Club concours and while it threatened to rain all day, the weather held off and a nice variety of cars showed up, including a gaggle of 190SLs, four 600s including a 4 door pullman and a decent number of cars from the ACT. With all those 600s, I expected to see a dictator with a chest full of...
I don’t normally post about routine things such as oil changes, but in this case, there is an aspect to the oil change that is not obvious and is worth mentioning. In general, the DS oil change is well covered on the Internet, as are the warnings to ensure the filter housing is properly aligned when inserted back into the sump. The DS...
This year I took the 250SE down to the 2015 ACT German Car show, which I last attended in 2013. It was a lovely day to drive a convertible down to Canberra and as usual the 250SE performed very well. At freeway speeds the engine turns at 4,000 RPM, which is unusual for a modern car, but fits into the nature of the engine....
After restoring the 250SE to the correct wheel trims, the next step is to fit the correct headlights. The car is currently fitted with the stacked headlights. These are often known as Americana headlights. They are actually different to the USA style as they use halogens not sealed beams. This style was a common extra on the V8 W111’s and later a popular...
After becoming cynical from the normal spin and lobby group driven policy from Governments, I was very happy to see two very commonsense announcements from NSW Government minister Duncan Gay today. A trial for improvements to the NSW Conditional Registration scheme (Club Rego) A study to investigate higher speed limits on sections of the Hume and Pacific Highways The trial for improvements to NSW...
In this world of monster 4 wheel drives with inattentive drivers at the wheel, a horn is an important feature of a small, low sports car. However, the horns on my E-Type had not been working. I had previously checked the actual horn units on a 12v battery and got a very feeble croak out of them, so since they looked rather rusty, replaced...
My 250SE has been ‘wearing’ 280 style hubcaps since I got it, but I had always wanted to convert it back to the correct style. As it happened, a box containing the original headlights and the original hubcaps for this car was found by a previous owner and re-united with the car. The outer beauty rings were missing, but I had a set of...
Classic Mercedes have always had attractive chrome and painted wheel trims. Most people are very familiar with the ubiquitous one piece Mercedes hub caps that were available on nearly all models from the late 60s to the mid 80s. W111s (and associated models such as the W110, W112, W113, W108, W109) had a few different styles that are now rarely seen. Style 1:...
The British Car display is probably the best show each year in Sydney, and this year was no different. Although the Eastern Creek show is bigger and has a more varied mix of vehicles, plus the parade laps to see the cars moving, The British show has more cars that you keep coming back to have another look and always seems to have...
The Shannons car show at Eastern creek brings about 1700 cars from Sydney and surrounds to Eastern Creek raceway for a display and parade laps around the track. The show is always a great way of seeing interesting cars that are rarely seen on the road. It was a lovely sunny day in Sydney and so good numbers turned up. I did...
I seem to have a habit of buying Citroens that have ditch water in their cooling system. I spent quite a bit of time flushing out the system of the DS21, and now I need to do the same for the traction. The Traction currently has a habit of marking its territory after every drive with a nice dirty stain where the...
My Light 15 was awarded 2nd prize in the pre-1956 Citroen category at the 2015 French Car Day. I hadn’t planned to enter the car, but did since there were only a couple of Tractions there. 1st prize went to a nice Big 15. Without a lot of effort I should be able to do better as I was obviously marked down...
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