Folks,
I just signed aboard this morning and want to take a moment of your time to introduce myself and my SL. I'm currently an impecunious elementary school librarian in southeastern Virginia. I've had the same SL and the same wife for a bit over 20 years. We bought our SL while spending four glorious years in Germany with the American Red Cross, so this is sort of our honeymoon car. We had hunted all over the continent for a nice example we could afford and found this one by running an ad in Auto Motor und Sport. It was originally a US-spec version, delivered to a German engineer in southern California. He hit it pretty hard and shipped it back to his brother in the Fatherland and had MB rebuild it. I got it with 58K on the clock and, I'm sad to say, have only put another 5K on it since. It's gotten a bit creaky with all the sitting in the garage, but I'm now working on sorting it out so my wife can put it to more frequent use. I just finished replacing the last brake caliper am about to do the shifter bushings, am staring hard at the new heater levers (I hear 8 to 10 hours of tedious work for those), have an Becker Europa on my bench almost ready to go, and have unboxed the 3.27 rear end I hope to swap in soon. Of course, it’s past time to work through the suspension, the top’s shot, the French Dunlops on it are 20 years old, and it needs new carpeting. We’ve moved around a lot and it’s picked up a number of dings during the transfers, so at some point a body shop is going to get involved. I still turns heads, though.
I'm going to have a bunch of questions for you folks.
Did I mention all this is going to have to be done on the cheap?
I’ll attach a shot of the car from way back when we bought it.
John
PS Anyone remember Bobby Baker, Lyndon Johnson’s protégé? I first became enamored of the W113 when Bobby’s not unattractive daughter showed up in one at a party of my uncle’s in Bethany Beach, DE. This was probably about 1967. I think her SL was silver, but I can’t swear to it.
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John Livingston
Newport News, VA
1968 280SL 4 speed