Mercedes-Benz
Editors Note: This is part three in a series by Nick Gruzevskis about owning a 1978 Mercedes 450SE W116. The first part covered the purchase and cosmetic restoration and the second covered some further maintenance. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to write, as after work hours my focus had been on organising the MBCV 2025 Mercedes-Benz Concours d’Elegance. As the event...
When I purchased my 450SLC, it had tinted windows. The tint wasn’t new, as there were already a couple of minor areas where it was lifting. In the 20+ years since, it had slowly become worse. Removing it had been on my list for the last 5-10 years, and I finally got around to it recently. The worst of it was on the rear...
Recently one of the halogen headlight bulbs in my 450SLC went out. While the light is pretty good, I thought it was an opportunity to see if I could get some kind of improvement. I use the 450SLC quite a lot for night drives, so a bit more light would be welcome. To achieve this, I really had three options: Replace the reflectors Upgrade...
Last year, I replaced the speakers in my 450SLC. As part of this process I was quite keen to go back to the original rear speaker trims. A friend of mine helped me get a set of the original speaker trims for the car. However, even though I used 5″ speakers at the rear, they didn’t fit under the original speaker trims. As a...
The prominent grille is one of the most obvious design features of the W123. A scruffy grille can really let down the car. On my 240D, the grille was in pretty good shape, but the plastic insert was starting to go chalky. In addition, one of the clips that holds on the metal strips had broken and a previous owner had used hot glue...
I recently noticed that the A/C on my 1981 240D wasn’t cooling so well in heavy traffic. On closer inspection, the W123 auxiliary fan was not kicking in at all. This is supposed to kick in when refrigerant temperatures are high to blow air over the condenser. I had a quick look at the wiring diagram to start troubleshooting. On the W123 diesel is...
W123 instrument clusters are notorious for jumpy temperature and fuel gauges and mine was no different. This problem seems to impact other Benzes of the era, but is particularly pronounced in the W123. I don’t really like not being able to trust my gauges to be generally correct, so I wanted to see what I could do about this. The issue seems to be...
I’ve had the 420SEL parts car for a few years now, and I have been rather slow and stripping it and getting rid of the carcass. I had done a deal to sell it about two years ago, but the buyer messed me around for about a year before he finally decided he didn’t want it after all. Based on that, I decided to...
This weekend I took a road trip to Brisbane in my 240D. It was my first ever road trip in the car and I wasn’t sure what to expect. While I think the 240D is at its best in the city, it did very well on the road trip and I really enjoyed the experience. The trip to Brisbane was fairly last minute. There...
My 1981 240D was sold new with a Becker Europa 596 Cassette. The Becker was still in the car when I purchased it, but it would not stay tuned. It would randomly drift out of tune and need constant adjustment. I found that rather annoying, I removed it to be serviced and put in a Europa II temporarily. A friend in the Mercedes club...
Editors Note: This is part four in a series by Nick Gruzevskis about owning a W210 430. The previous instalment can be found here. I’m beginning to feel a sense of satisfaction, given that I’ve fixed a lot of small but annoying issues myself. My confidence has grown over this time, even though several of the parts I’ve used have been non original, as...
Editors Note: This is part three in a series by Nick Gruzevskis about owning a W210 430. The first part can be found here. Finding parts for my 1998 W210 E430 has been hit and miss. Some parts have been very easy to find, like the climate sensor motor, found at Pelican Parts, while the fan regulator was found on Amazon. There have been...
Back in September, when I started to deal with the algae problem in my 240D, I noticed the car was quite hard to push. At that time I tested to see if the brakes were grabbing and it was clearly the fronts that were to blame. The rear wheels spun freely ever after a hard push on the brake pedal. Since I had the...
In the last update, I ruined my W123 fuel tank. Luckily, a friend in the Mercedes Club was able to find me a very good tank as a replacement. The new tank is much better than what I had, and probably far better than a home resealed tank. It was from a 280E, which means it is an 80 litre tank. I will have...
Editors Note: This is part five in a series by Nick Gruzevskis about owning a Modern Mercedes convertible – in this case his R170 SLK230. The previous entries can be found here. After two years of ownership, I now feel I’ve just about sorted my SLK230. Many will know the challenges of sorting a car. Yes, the major issues are sorted quickly, but...
In the last part, I used a fuel tank sealing product to seal my W123 fuel tank. This seemed to go quite well, but it turns out I had made a fatal mistake. Once I had coated the inside of the tank, I very carefully cleaned the openings for the sender unit and strainer. I made sure the threads were clear of any sealant. ...
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