| After all the recent work done on my 250SE, I wanted to take it for an extended test drive. Its had motor and transmission mounts, front crank seal, re-sealed power steering pump, injectors, distributor cap and rotor, points, condenser, coil, plugs, alternator, voltage regulator and more done. The spark had been quite weak and the engine was carboned up. The Mercedes-Benz club have started running mid-week pop-up drives. I’m not normally able to attend mid-week events but I have a bit of time at the moment. This weeks drive was down to Berry via the Royal national park then back […] On the way back from the September night drive my 250SE stopped charging properly. I was able to make it back home about an hour on the battery. Even using the headlights the 250SE does not use a lot of power. As it happened, a friend of mine had a rebuilt alternator that was correct for my car. He drives a 280SE 3.5 W108 which uses a 55A Bosch alternator. The earlier cars (to 1969) used a 35A alternator which is what he had. This is the correct 250SE Alternator. Initially I assumed I would replace the alternator myself. It […] Over the last couple of months I’ve had issues with the M129 rough running in my 250SE. The car was hesitating, idling poorly and just not running very well. I’ve done a few things over the last few months to improve this situation. One of the first things I did was change the injectors. The stutter when accelerating and hard starting when hot felt like a symptom of poor injectors. I also didn’t want the situation of a leaky injector washing down my cylinder walls. While not as cheap as the K Jet injectors, the MFI injectors are still available […] A couple of weeks ago I installed the Classic Auto Sound Becker Tribute Radio in my 250SE. I’m really happy with it, it worked really well on my recent drive down to Canberra. One of the only things I thought could have been improved on the radio was the buttons were unlabeled. The real radios had LMKUU buttons. Classic Auto Sound, who build these radios have recently improved them with stickers for the LMKUU buttons. They were good enough to send me a set of the stickers for my radio. What great customer service! The LMKUU stickers really make a […] This weekend I traveled to Canberra for 2019 ACT German Car Show. I’ve been to this show a few times before (2013, 2015, 2017), but this is the first time I have formally entered a car. In prior years I have driven down on the day and arrived around 11ish to see the show for an hour or so. This year I decided to do it properly and stay over in Canberra Saturday night. The NSW Mercedes club were doing a convoy on Saturday, but I had a lot to do before I left so elected to drive down myself […] Today I completed the install of the Classic Auto Sound Becker Tribute. In the first part, I removed the old Clarion, and installed the the Retrosound wiring harness. I also tested the radio and it was working fine. The new radio looks great and is a huge improvement over the Clarion CD player. Installation Step 4: Convert the Becker Tribute radio to DIN At some point in its life, somebody cut the dashboard of my 250SE for DIN. To fit the new radio, I also needed to order a DIN kit. The radio was supposed to be already set […] I have been wanting to change the radio in the 250SE since I have owned the car. It was a basic Clarion unit that looked totally out of place. The dashboard in my car has been cut to DIN size, meaning going back to the original Becker wasn’t really an option. Unfortunately many W111’s had their dashboards cut up in the 70s and 80s as owners demanded cassette decks and CD players. My plan was to customize a Retrosound radio with a real Becker face plate. I even went to the point of purchasing the face plate about 18 months […] Most Mercedes from the mid 50s to the late 60s had a similar set of controls for the heater. There are four horizontal levers controlling the amount of heat and the direction of the air flow. At least on the W111, the lever on the top left controls the amount of outside airflow. The top right controls the direction of the airflow. The two bottom levers control how much heat on each side is allowed in. There is no provision for A/C as this was not integrated into the controls until the mid 70s. The levers were originally chrome, for […] The OzBenz forum is one of the online resources I use to maintain my Mercedes-Benz’s. The forum has evolved over a 15 year period, starting with the Mercedes Veterans mailing list, branching off to the OzVets mailing list. This became the OzVets forum and then later the OzBenz forum. I joined very early on and found this a great set of resources to attempt small jobs on my then 230E W123. This included things like troubleshooting the central locking myself, quite a saving as a university student. Over the time I got to know a bunch of people, some of […] I like to fit a battery disconnect switch to all my cars. It ensures the batteries don’t run down and prevents fires. Fires are a real risk from cars with old wiring. I had put one of those cheap on terminal switches on the 250SE when I got it a few years ago. Of late it had been playing up and was difficult to reconnect each time. I also wanted to close the bonnet on the car when connected to the trickle charger, but the alligator clips were too large. Most of the battery disconnect switch models available online were […] | |
