Great road trip in my 280SE 3.5 sedan

[rutger kohler]

Have just finished a 3 week week trip with a total of 3500 km. The only issue we had was the alternator packed up and I had to have it rebuilt. This only took about 1 hour.  The fault first showed itself by the engine missing without the alternator light coming on so I thought spark plugs, however a bit further on the alternator light came on too.

After the trip I calculated the average petrol consumption was about 15.5 litres/100km (18.24 miles/ imperial gallon) which is a little high compared to a modern car but what a pleasure to drive. Some of the journey was quite hilly and I often filled the petrol tank right up which added to the overall weight, however on the return part of the trip I got quite good at running the tank from half full only.

Once I figured out how to adjust the drivers seat height my wife enjoyed driving it too, which is a huge bonus! She described it as a low flying jet.

[wwheeler]

Very cool!   Congratulations.

[rutger kohler]

Hi Wallace, thanks for that. I kept the old bearings and if anyone is interested I can post the bearing sizes.  My alternator is a 35 amp Bosch.  I noticed the old bearing were only sealed one side albeit with a metal seal, the new ones were sealed both side.  It would be great if there was a site dedicated to this model, the only forums seem to be part of a larger one covering many models and there doesn't seem to be anything like the Technical Manual on this site.

[wwheeler]

I agree. There is no tech manual quite like this one. The good news is that most of the mechanical items in the manual are easily transferrable to the W111 cars. The alternator is a good example. I would be shocked (no pun intended) if the alternator body and guts were different from the W113. You might post that and see if anybody concurs.

There are a few times when I get confused by what I read here versus what is on my W111. Usually though it is easy to use logic and figure it out. The other good news is that many people have both a W113 and a W111. So the same people can help out. Indeed a wonderful site.