Tagged: 1965 250SE

250SE Concours runner up 0

250SE Concours runner up

I heard this week that the 250SE was the runner up in its category at the recent German Car show and Mercedes-Benz Concours.  The German Car show functions as the 2016 MBCNSW Concours.  The category was for the W111/W112 Coupes and Cabriolets.    This was the first time I’ve displayed the car with the correct headlights and wheel trims and the car is the...

250SE Freshening up 0

250SE Freshening up

I had ordered a few parts for the 250SE a few months ago but had not yet had a chance to fit them.   The first was the winder knob for the front quarterlight on the drivers side.  I had found a reproduction one of these on ebay and mine was slightly warped, so the inner disc that hides the screw kept falling out....

New tyres for the 250SE and the DS 2

New tyres for the 250SE and the DS

Every classic car community has an issue that polarizes opinion and spawns countless threads on Internet discussion boards. For the Citroen DS, that issue is what is the right tyre for the DS?   Michelin were the owners of Citroen during the entire production run of the DS.  During that time they pioneered the radial tyre, which was introduced in 1949.  The Radial was...

My 250SE was built 50 years ago today 0

My 250SE was built 50 years ago today

My 250SE Cabriolet was produced 50 years ago today, or at least I presume it was, since it has this date noted on the data card, and the first service was December 1965.     The Original owner was the Australian Diplomat Brian C Hill, who collected the car from the factory and apparently took it with him to various diplomatic postings around the...

W111 Headlight Restoration 2

W111 Headlight Restoration

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...

W111 Headlight Restoration 0

W111 Headlight Upgrade Pt 1

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...

Changing the 250SE back to the correct wheel trims 2

Changing the 250SE back to the correct wheel trims

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...

Grand Pacific Drive 1

Grand Pacific Drive

I had wanted to check out the Grand Pacific Drive for a while, and had a few hours free the other day so took the 250SE.   The 250SE’s transmission linkage was still playing up, so I didn’t make too many stops (as I didn’t want to crawl under the car and reset it every few times I put it into park), but once you...

250SE Auto transmission linkages part 2 1

250SE Auto transmission linkages part 2

After using yet another bulldog clip to temporarily move the car, I went to look in my parts cupboard and found that I had two of the upper bushings from my old 250SE Coupe that came with some parts. They looked like the right part and had a 112 part number, so seemed correct.   Like the lower one, it was quite an easy fitting....

250SE Auto transmission linkages 2

250SE Auto transmission linkages

Like most W111, my 250SE has a column shift.   This means that there is a fairly complex set of linkages to connect the column shifter to the auto transmission. After I had used the 250SE as a wedding car, one of the bushings for the linkages broke, so today my job was to fit the new ones I had ordered.   This isn’t...

My 250SE was built 50 years ago today 0

Road trip to Canberra

I had to go to Canberra for work today, so I decided to take the 250SE on a road trip.    I hadn’t taken it for a long drive for a while, and I thought a road trip would do it good.   It was too cold to open the roof, but It was nice to get the car out on the open road....

Classic Jalopy