Classic Jalopy Blog

Sydney to Launceston Road trip 2

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...

Preparing my 300TE for a family road trip 3

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...

MBCNSW December 2023 Night Drive – Galston Gorge 0

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...

450SLC lug bolt replacement 1

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...

MBCNSW November 2023 Night Drive – Bilpin 0

MBCNSW November 2023 Night Drive – Bilpin

Thursday was the annual MBCNSW Night Drive to Bilpin for Apple pie.    This has turned into an annual event and despite being a very late night is always popular.    It seems amazing that another year has flown by, as it doesn’t seem all that long ago that we did the last Bilpin night drive.   On that drive, I swapped cars with a...

The Concours Run 2023 – Summary 4

The Concours Run 2023 – Summary

Last year I did a road trip in classic Mercedes to the National Rally in Adelaide.   The friends I went with all agreed that we wanted to do it again this year, and in many ways the road trip was better than the actual event.   This year without a National Rally, we picked the MBCV Concours in Melbourne as our anchor event.  We dubbed...

The Concours Run 2023 – The Cars 1

The Concours Run 2023 – The Cars

On the Concours Run, we had 9 cars on the trip.   While I don’t mention people’s names on this site for privacy reasons, this article goes through the cars that came on the drive, with some background on them and how they went.  All the cars made it back under their own power, and there were few mechanical issues to speak of. They are...

The Concours Run 2023 – Day 5: Leeton to Sydney 2

The Concours Run 2023 – Day 5: Leeton to Sydney

The final day of our road trip came up quickly.    After a pleasant evening in the historic Hydro hotel in Leeton, it was time to head back to Sydney.     Our first stop for breakfast was a bakery in West Wyalong.     The drive was 130km, and went through far more farmland than we had seen yesterday.   I guess this all part of...

The Concours Run 2023 – Day 4: Melbourne to Leeton 4

The Concours Run 2023 – Day 4: Melbourne to Leeton

Day 4 was a very busy day for the Concours run group.   Not only did we spend the morning at the excellent MBCV concours event, but we planned to drive 520km.   Part of this was getting to the MBCV Concours event, but the majority of it was our road trip home.   Our stop for the night was Leeton.   Our group was reduced by two...

The Concours Run 2023 – Day 4: MBCV Concours 5

The Concours Run 2023 – Day 4: MBCV Concours

Today was the MBCV Concours event.   This was the show that we built this whole trip around.    I had wanted to attend this event for years, as I had always heard the standard of the cars was high.   It always looked like a big event and with more rare older cars than we get in NSW. The event was held at Wandin East...

The Concours Run 2023 – Day 3: MBCV Garage Day 2

The Concours Run 2023 – Day 3: MBCV Garage Day

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...

The Concours Run 2023 – Day 2: Great Alpine Road 2

The Concours Run 2023 – Day 2: Great Alpine Road

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...

The Concours Run 2023 – Day 1:  Mt Victoria to Tumut 6

The Concours Run 2023 – Day 1: Mt Victoria to Tumut

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...

The Concours Run 2023 – Summary 3

Planning a 2023 Classic Mercedes Road trip – The Concours Run

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...

Refurbishing a W124 instrument cluster – Part 4: Installation and testing 1

Refurbishing a W124 instrument cluster – Part 4: Installation and testing

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. ...

Failing at changing the W124 centre vent 2

Failing at changing the W124 centre vent

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...

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