Rather than go to the Pinehurst Concours with a rather mundane old Mercedes-Benz sedan, we decided to play up the rally heritage. In fact, we added some faux-rally details to make the car more interesting and hopefully compelling for the judges.
To that end, we acquired some driving lights from a friend’s Mercedes-Benz parts car. There’s a circuit in the car’s wiring harness for extra lights. This circuit is not only switched so that you can’t leave the lights on, but it’s also wired into the headlights, so as soon as you turn off your head lights, the driving lights also turn off.
We mounted an old Lucas switch under the dash, so we could choose when we wanted the light to be on. We’d previously picked up that switch at the Carlisle Import & Kit Nationals.
From there, we went to a local graphics house and had some rally numbers made up. We got two sets for $36. We could take off the first set for road trips, then add them again for track events later.
Another local graphics house made us some replica Monte Carlo entry plates. We chose No. 66, since our Benz is a 1966. By then, Mercedes had largely stopped running these cars in International rallying, however.
Our final rally twist: Mount vintage rally clocks on the dash. We made up a thin steel mounting plate to go behind the glove box handle without drilling. The clocks could then come on and off with minimal time and effort.
We got the clocks and mounting brackets from Jason Len of XKs Unlimited. Now we were ready to enter the Pinehurst Concours. In less than four months, we’d restored this old, beaten Mercedes.
Stay tuned, though, as we still have a rear end to rebuild and more performance modifications to make.
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Update by Tim Suddard to the
