Newsletter No.122

25th August 2010

ACT German Autofest

M.B Spares will once again be at the Mercedes-Benz Club of the ACT Concours as part of the German Autofest. If you are a local come along and have a look it is a great day. If you are from out of town consider a weekend in Canberra. There is a dinner on the Saturday night and Canberra's other great attractions to see. A .pdf file for the Concours information and entry form can be found on this web page.

240 Turbo

Here is a interesting car, used to be a W115 200D, but is now a 240D with an STT Turbo conversion. It has a huge 73.5kw of power (up from 53kw) and a manual transmission so it is actually quite fun to drive. I have never been impressed with any of the locally done turbo conversions, but this one is quite neat. Body is quite rough, but serviceable. We have brought it in as a vehicle to dismantle, but would consider selling it as a whole. It has ACT rego until mid September so could be driven away.

New W124 500E for sale.

Check out this 500E that was listed on ebay and didn't sell at $35200USD. 589miles from new would make this a very unique car to own….

One owner 300 Cabriolet from 1952.

There is a story going around about a guy who owned a Here is a 1952 Type 300 Cabriolet that until very recently was a one owner car, the chauffeur is now aged 99!

What have we been doing.

Heaps is the answer! As explained above the phones ring nonstop and the orders keep piling in so no time for the Newsletter. But here in point form are a few highlights from the last 6 months:

- Helping to build the W116 race car that is pictured top right hand margin (click on them to enlarge), short wheel base W116 with a NEW (yes that is correct) 6.9 engine, custom brakes and suspension. The photo is of it entering "The dipper" at Bathurst on the Easter long weekend.

- Restoring underneath a 280SE 3.5 coupe, yes underneath. This is a great car, with excellent paint and interior, but was very lacking underneath. So it has spent two months on a hoist having everything stripped out, painted, polished, or plated back to original specification.

- One odd thing that we do have at the moment is two RHD 280SE 3.5 cabriolets in the workshop at the same time as the 3.5 coupe. (see picture) it would not be very often that would happen here in Australia….

- Importing parts, lots of them in fact. People are really waking up to the kind of savings that can be made if you can wait a few weeks for the your parts. For example a Bi-zenon headlamp for a current series CLC200 is over $4000.00 from a Mercedes-Benz dealer here in Australia. A customer recently found this out after hitting a kangaroo with his new pride and joy. We imported the part from Germany and sold it to the panel shop doing the repairs for $2000.00! This is a huge saving. Also check out the picture of the Rocker cover for a rare 190E 2.3-16 that we sourced. These are made from a magnesium alloy and are very easy to damage if over tightened.

- We also continue to source hard to get parts for Classic cars. Mercedes-Benz are dropping more and more lines from there price list. The latest significant part to vanish is A113 820 03 90 which is a RHD headlamp lense for the Pagoda series (230SL-280SL). LHD lenses are illegal for use here in Australia so anybody with one of these had better look after their headlamps until we can find some old stock of these.

- And finally dismantling a lot of cars, check out the picture of the A160. More deatils on that one next month.

That 's it.

So, that's it for now, short and sweet and hopefully a little more regular… See you next month…

John & Sandra Green.