As the season ends, we recap the story of our rally car experience.
Every car deserves a name. We named our Mercedes – The Colonel. So what’s with The Colonel you ask? Well, we love cars with stories. Our 230S was originally purchsed by a US Army Colonel while stationed in Brussels.
Our introduction to the 230S on eBay with this image.
Original documents from Belgium
It is a European specification model with those gorgeous headlamps (5 bulbs in each lamp). He was transferred to Puerto Rico briefly (the badge on grill is from Puerto Rico) and shipped the Mercedes with him. From there, he went to Seattle. The Mercedes stayed in the family until 3 years ago when a M-B fan purchased it with the intention of making it his wife’s daily driver. That plan unraveled when they left for Europe for a year. It sat with fuel putrefying in the gas tank. We found it on eBay and 2 weeks later, the car you can (as the seller states) “get in and just drive” arrived at my mechanic’s shop. I made it about a 1/4 of a mile before it choked to death on contaminated fuel. That signaled the beginning of a systematic rebuild/refresh to make it a reliable and competitive vintage rally car. First things first – get the fuel delivery system clean. The gas tank had to be removed, boiled and re-lined and the entire fuel system cleaned. We added an electronic ignition, all new filters, then a complete fluid/lubrication refresh to benchmark it.
Work begins in January at Auto Turismo Sport in New Milford, Connecticut
The shipper (DAS) destroyed the rear shocks but that gave us the opportunity to get a set of adjustable Konis.
The handy work of Dependable Auto Shippers. You can’t see all of the damage while the shock is in place.
