The green Crayford /8 estate

Endlich wieder Meilen machen

2011-10-29T10:00:00.000-07:00

Zwar hätte es meine Gesundheit so richtig heute nicht zugelassen, aber es war nun mal alles vorbereitet und dann musste es halt sein.

Eine Runde mit dem grünen Crayford Kombi /8. Und das nicht nur zweimal über das Hallengelände sondern so richtig raus. Wie früher. Wie zuletzt 2009, bei der großen Reise nach Süddeutschland.

Nun, ganz so weit sind wir nicht gekommen. Erstmal was essen.

Und dann eine kleine Runde zur Jahrhunderthalle. Vorsichtiges Ertasten der Umgebung.

Das Auto rappelt und klappert, das Getriebe will nicht so recht schalten und hätte wohl gerne ein wenig Öl und einen neuen Filter, die Federung hängt auf Halbmast und der Motor klingt wie ein alter Diesel. Alles egal. Der Crayford Kombi /8 fährt. Mit mir.

Bester Tag seit Langem.

Night photography

2010-10-18T10:00:00.000-07:00

Breaker points

2010-09-03T10:00:00.000-07:00

After having set the valve clearances some weeks ago, I continued the little tune-up today with new breaker points. They had been delivered to my Mercedes-Benz agent who was surprised to see such an item again after a very long time. Then I visited the local BOSCH agency and obtained some special super-sticky grease for the distributor shaft.

At the car, the distributor cap and rotor were easily off, the distributor shaft cleaned and the new breaker points installed, with the gap pre-set to 0.4 mm when open with the help of a feeler gauge. The most difficult thing was to turn the distributor shaft for the contacts to be open. The car being automatic, there was no use in pushing it to and fro. The remedy was to simple slacken the distributor fastener and turning the whole distributor around its shaft. The ignition timing has to be re-set anyway. After everything was put togeher again, I fine-tuned the dwell angle by carefully moving the breaker points in the distributor and finally obtained the perfect 41-42 degrees.

After every little part of the tune-up, the engine runs smoother and the revs when the engine is idling are rising and rising. Obviously the car enjoys the care that is being taken.

Heavily sidetracked

2010-08-21T10:00:00.000-07:00

As announced yesterday, I planned to start celebrating the Crayfords birthday today with a few new parts. The actual status of the engine is: runs well, starts well, does not go beyond 120 km/h and drinks fuel at a very heavy rate.

As engine issues are always due to the carburettors, and carburettor issues are always ignition issues, and ignition issues are always just wrong valve clearances, I started with the latter. Re-set the valve clearances. Should not take more than an hour.

As if! Firstly, this car has twelve valves compared to my other cars eight. It then turned out to be a very long time ago that some garage checked or - god forbid - adjusted the valve clearances. The first adjusting nut was completely locked up. The remedy was to disasseble the rocker arm and then turn the adjusting nut with a suitable socket, instead of using the adjustment tool. The springs that secure the rocker arms are surprisingly difficult to reinstall. Now where do I know that from?

However, I adjusted my way through the twelve valves, the clearances of which were much to small. All of them. With disassembly (the viscous coupling has to come out to turn the crankshaft) and re-assembly this easy task took six hours. On the way, I also correctly set up the cold start unit (which had been renewed a few years ago) of the rear carburettor.

And finally a short test drive was undertaken and everything felt very well indeed.

Happy birthday

2010-08-20T10:00:00.000-07:00

The green Crayford /8 estate turned 37 today. It made it through all those years and is now the only one left on the road, with only one remaining brother that is somewhat alive. What an achievement! We wish it all the best and a lot of happy years to come. For celebration, lets see the car back at home, where it was born, at the Crayford factory:

I bought it a number of birthday presents (a new distributor cap and rotor and new breaker points) and am planning for new ignition leads and then a major overhaul of the two Zenith carburettors. It is about time that we get going again.

We have finally succeeded

2010-07-17T15:21:00.000-07:00

The title phrase was originally (well, perhaps not for the first time) coined by a group of 70s New York graffiti artists that did a "whole train" - paint ten subway cars in one night with a more or less continuous theme. I kind of feel like I did this tonight. But I finally succeeded - the green Crayford /8 estate is completed again and runs well.

Well, assembly is more or less the opposite of disassembly. So I put the car together again: refill the power steering system with fresh oil and fit a new filter, mount an almost new BOSCH alternator instead of the questionable (but very fashionable) LUCAS item, tidy up the wiring that connects to the alternator, complete all the balancer/pulley/belt stuff again and finally fit a radiator that actually stays at its designated place instead of moving around, because of the formerly missing and now introduced rubber guidings at both sides.

And the result? The radiator fits perfectly and the fan does not touch the radiator any more - finally. The new seals are holding back the oils fine and the car drives again. Did a little test drive. Very well. Dirty fingernails: plenty. Problems fixed: plenty. Lets go.

Running very hot

2010-07-10T10:00:00.000-07:00

Not the car, me! 33 degrees centigrade even at 8 pm. Consequently, work on the green Crayford /8 estate was very slow today, but nevertheless steady. Relaxing on my sofa with a pint of Old Speckled Hen in hand, everything is now fine again but in the workshop it was hot!

However, when I arrived in the morning the car presented itself still with the front mainly in parts. I pulled a chair to the car and started work. First task was to remove the power steering pump to clean it and replace the seal ring on the main shaft of the pump. To access the bolts to remove the pump you first have to remove the pulley. You need a special puller for that - a puller I did not own. The puller I eventually scrounged did only barely fit. With a combination of puller, parts from a spring tensioner, an hour of patience and finally a big hammer the pulley was off at last. Because I decided to remove the power steering pump completely, I unscrewed the hoses (one of which did not come off easily and needed a few seconds with a torch - which again I had to scrounge) and then replaced said seal ring with the pump safely on the workbench without much hurry. Then the pump went into the car again. All is well.

Next, in went the other seal ring, the one on the crankshaft. I had already removed the chromed ring on the crankshaft on which the inner lip of this seal ring runs on. The chromed ring was polished and installed again the other way around. After the new seal was carefully hammered in place, I started to reassemble the crankshaft balancer etc. Easy going. The temperatures had meanwile risen to their afternoon heights and I retired.

Work commences...again

2010-06-12T10:00:00.000-07:00

During the last week or two, I had a few thoughts about the future of the green Crayford /8 estate. The overall objective is to have the car on the road, at least a few times a year, to enjoy it and to show it at a club gathering or a similar event. The main problem is the german TUEV (the MOT equivalent) who is not happy about the condition of the bodywork of the car. The possible solutions were found as follows: 1. have the car restored to top condition (I cannot do this myself) 2. have the car welded up crudely so that it somehow passes the TUEV test or 3. enjoy the car as it is with a couple of 5-day temporary number plates a year (no TUEV approval is needed and you can drive virtually anything on them, hard to believe in Germany).

I had a great welder in to discuss solution no. 1 but did not like his attitude. There is another guy in Germany that is absolutely unbeatable when restoring /8, and I will talk to him eventually. This will be VERY costly, anyway. Solution no. 2 was out easily, I will not destroy this car. After some thinking, solution no. 3 was chosen as a temporary remedy for the next few years or so. I will try and find out whether I can live with it or not. Its main advantage is that the green Crayford /8 estate will be on the road again, soon!

So, work commenced again today. After being laid up for almost a year, the car started easily and I drove it onto my workshop lift and got to work. First thing was to remove the radiator - again, and I finally found the reason why the fan touched its housing all the time. The radiator was missing a rubber running down its side that secures its position relative to the body. This time, I removed the radiator together with the oil cooler, because otherwise its brackets would finally be destroyed during dismantly. This meant unscrewing the oil feed lines that were last touched almost 40 years ago, but everything went very fine. The radiator was out and cleaned, as was the fan shroud.

This was only foreplay, the main reason to attack the car was the huge oil leak from the front of the engine, and I suspected the front crankshaft oil seal was the reason for this. With the radiator out of the car, getting to the seal is not too difficult. You simply dismantle the car, beginning at the front. Both alternator and power steering pump had to come off to remove the respective belts, and both protested. A bolt securing the alternator was rusted solid in the alternator body (someone tried to remove it a long time ago and failed, but managed to damage the tensioning mechanism), and the power steering pump simply refused to surrender. Eventually, I won.

With the belts taken off, you remove the pulley on the crankshaft and then attack the balancer that is mounted to the crankshaft with a very sturdy bolt. Out came the impact wrench and on went the 1000 litre 8 bar air compressor in the workshop. The next half an hour was rather boring and very noisy, but finally the bolt gave up. Thirty minutes of continous attack! Next, I removed the balancer using a specially made extractor and collapsed.

The workshop looked a bit clattered by then, it was like in the good old times, a /8 on the workshop lift, tools all around and the scent of oil in the air. I simply love it. This is so rewarding!

Time for a refill

2009-07-25T10:00:00.000-07:00

During the preparation for the big trip to the south of Germany a few weeks earlier, the new aftermarket radiator did not entirely convince me: it did not fit properly and the fan hit the air ducting because of the poor fit. In the meantime, I managed to acquire an almost new original Mercedes-Benz/Behr radiator that had only been in use for a few months. So it was time to change radiators. Out with the old one. In with the new one.

This is always a little bit of work. Drain coolant. Disconnect coolant hoses. Disconnect hoses for the oil cooler of the automatic transmission. Part radiator from the oil cooler. Remove radiator. Then assemble accordingly.

While the whole lot was in pieces again, I decided to fit a new viscous coupling because the old one had lost its oil filling and looked like this:

and the new one had been delivered to my house from an eBay seller for the precise sum of 1 Euro a few days earlier:

Disassembly/assembly is so easy there is no need to describe it. That done, the car was completed with the "new" radiator in only a few minutes. After all the piping had been connected, it was time to refill the coolant. This was done in true british manner.

The green stuff is coolant, not "Old Speckled Hen"... Tastes differently, too. So finally, a radiator that fits correctly.

A sad day

2009-06-12T10:00:00.000-07:00

Today my insurance cover run out. No more driving the Crayford. A sad day.

I am still in the process of deciding how to continue with this fantastic car. Instead of a full restoration that might take it off the road for years, I intend to get the worst rust spots welded up (more or less crudely) and have the car TUeVed. So that I can take it for a drive if the weather is fine, like Rory did. And on a day like today, I would love to do that. Instead I had to attend Autobingo with my red /8.

Could be worse. But the Crayford would have enjoyed it.

Ornbau - the big gathering

2009-05-30T10:00:00.000-07:00

I set of at 6.30 am (see yesterdays posting to calculate how much sleep I got), drove the car out of my garage, closed the garage door behind me, turned right at the first crossroads and drove right away into the arms of an police control. Well, not quite, as the car decided to stall a few meters in front of them. What a start. But they only wanted to know whether I drank lots of booze yesterday or today, and I wholeheartedly answered "NO". The police officer stepped to the right (the right) side of the car, but he approached me in german. Kind of an half-hearted attempt. But very friendly, although being asked to show the car documents I answered (less wholeheartedly this time) "no". Well, I got away with it.

After collecting my co-travellers on the way, we set of for the big Mercedes-Benz club gathering at Ornbau, located in the most beautiful southern region of Franconia. As you can see, there was no time to visit the hairdresser.

Spirits were high, weather was best, the car behaved - almost, coming to a stop when we were nearly there, with fuel starvation. Filling up the tank helped. Calculating the fuel consumption (12 mpg) did not help. Readiness to travel restored. Oil level checked. Drops lots of it.

We then resumed our travel without problems and drove right into the huge gathering, with hundreds of cars and thousands of visitors.

The car got parked next to another Crayford, no stroke-eight of course but a W116 that was somewhat "improved" during its restoration. A very interesting car, and putting two Mercedes Crayfords together should not have taken place for some time.

The funny thing is, everybody has got an opinion about the Crayford stroke-eight. And although everybody got the same opinion about it, everybody needs to tell it to me. As if I never saw my own car before. And yes, I KNOW that the roofline is not perfect.

But what a wonderful way to spend a wonderful day. We talked, bought parts and in any way socialised for the rest of the day. Then Michael, one of my co-travellers, asked for the car keys and I gave them to him. A few minutes later, he appeared with the car right in the middle of the meeting and drove it into the club headquarter, where TUeV checks are carried out during the day. And then it all started.

The TUeV officer, a member of the Mercedes club, gave us very helpful advice on what to do so that the car will gain TUeV approval. From the technical side, there was not much to nag about, brake hoses at the rear and one or two rubber buffers. Examining the structure, there were more severe problems, and we were explained in detail what needs to be welded and what can remain like it is. We also got valuable advice about the procedure to acquire the german historic number plate, where special examinations and tests are carried out.

After all the good news, we put the car to rest and started to party in a serious way. A stroke-eight taxi took me to my hotel late at night. One of the things I still remember.

More work

2009-05-29T10:00:00.000-07:00

With the intention to take the green Crayford /8 to a big Mercedes-Benz gathering tomorrow, I set to work at about 2 pm. The first thing to re-assemble was the propshaft, featuring a new rubber boot and a new bearing (an of-the-shelf over-the-counter model bought from a bearing company for less than Mercedes asks for). The rubber boot is quite expensive at about 45 Euros.

The propshaft, well marked before disassembly of course and cleaned a bit afterwards, went into the car almost by itself. No problems here whatsoever. New self-locking nuts, of course. The flexible joint discs at the front and at the rear were checked and proved to be OK. Very rewarding.

Next on the list was the rear exhaust: pick up new part from workshop floor, hold it into direction of car, fit it. Easy.

The fuel tank got a new seal for its filter element and was also easily refitted. New fuel hoses and clips at the same time, of course. And the missing plastic locking cap for the boot floor (where the wires to the fuel sender unit pass the floor) was added, not too expensive a part at about 1,50 Euro.

Our prayers were then obeyed and the bleeding valves of all the brake calipers opened without ripping off, although they were quite rusty. So we bled the brakes, cleaning the brake fluid reservoir on the way. One of the three caps of the reservoir proved a bit leaky and a little spray of brake fluid eat itself into the paintwork of the engine bay. Most was rinsed off in time. But I forgot to rinse the left front wing. No idea how the brake fluid got there in the first place. Nice row of dots though.

I continued with little cosmetic improvements, like mounting new bonnet buffers.

Meanwhile it was time for dinner, and afterwards Felix started to clean the interior of the car out of pure kindness. I tackled another task, bigger this time. The leaky radiator.

This started well, with the old radiator easily removed (it includes an oil cooler for the automatic transmission and is mounted together with the oil cooler for the engine oil, so some wrenching was on order). The new radiator fitted in with more difficulties, as some details and the mountings for the fan shroud were quite different. After long hours it proved impossible to fit the fan shroud without the fan touching it, making loud noises. The resolution was to move the radiator forwards as far as possible, using a lot of force (it should not move anyway, so another problem) and locate it there with cable ties. 1 am by now. A quick fix but not a satisfying one.

Work was not finished and I installed a new-old Blaupunkt radio (with FM) so that we can listen to some radio/iPod during our trip tomorrow. Well, today. I finally took the car to my house, arriving there at about 2.30 am. A long day, a short night.

Lots of work

2009-05-24T10:00:00.000-07:00

and no photographs.

Yesterday was a recreational day after the little get-together on Friday, but today work continued on the green Crayford.

During the little outing on Friday the propeller shaft became very noisy, so today Daniel and I dismantled more or less the complete underside of the car to remove the propshaft. We finally extracted it from the car and disassembled it on my workbench. The bearing was fine, the rubber boot was completely shot. Unfortunately, you have to destroy the bearing (or at least damage it severely) to remove the rubber boot. We succeeded in doing that. New parts to be bought tomorrow.

Then we removed the rear silencer that had parted from its tube. The middle silencer is fine, though.

When we collected the car from Britain, Rory told me not to fill the fuel tank completely because he never did and he did not know whether it was rusted through on the top. So we drained (mega-yuk, I hate working on gasoline engined cars) and removed the fuel tank to find it in serviceable condition. A good clean confirmed that it is rusty on the outside but fine on the inside. I will change the seals for the fuel sender unit and the fuel drain plug, renew the hoses and simply put it back onto the car.

As I found the radiator to be leaky a few days ago, I ordered a new one but it has not been delivered yet. So I prepared the old radiator for removal, giving the connections for the automatic transmission oil cooler a good spray of WD40. The engine oil cooler can be parted from the radiator and will remain in the car. Daniel suggested not to remove the old radiator until the new one sits in my workshop, and I followed this wise suggestion. The car would be rendered completely stationary if something broke during removal of the old radiator.

Then I decided to continue with low-profile cosmetic improvements: replace the faulty switch for the rear interior light operated by the left rear door (the new switch looks very differently and will be exchanged for an originally-looking old part as soon as possible), removing the rubber from the rear bumper (finding the chromed bumper severely rusted on the left part and fine on the right part), clean away the rust and reassemble the rubber for a much-improved look, and firmly attach the "250" badge on the completely rusted-through bootlid (an operation during which the bootlid disintegrated in this area).

We began to clean the engine, which is very oily on the left side, but did not detect the origin of the oil dripping to the ground from the engine. The same goes for the fuel smell, it may simply originate from the shot rear silencer (engine running rich) or from the fuel lines at the fuel tank, which I will renew. The fuel hoses in the engine compartment are more or less new already.

So much for today. Collecting parts tomorrow.

One patient and many doctors

2009-05-22T10:00:00.000-07:00

A few friends came round to my workshop today, to celebrate the near-mystical appearance of the Crayford /8 and its faultless journey from Britain. A little drive with four on board was on order.

It is always a good idea to have competent Mercedes-Benz personnel with you.

Afterwards we fired up the barbeque and I did the little celebration with the Crayford /8 that I prepared when we brought it over from Britain - having a very nice pint of british real ale. Old Speckled Hen, if you insist to know.

Now the odds were against me: I wanted to celebrate, the crew wanted to inspect the car. After we chased away a north-african taxi, the Crayford changed from a place on the ground floor to the heights of my workshop hoist for the first time.

I then stopped taking photographs. But what happended next was like this (from "Asterix in Switzerland").

There was some (well, a lot of) rust, but not unexpectedly so. There was some oil that should better be on the inside of the engine. There was some water that should better keep itself in the radiator instead of dripping out of it. And there was a lot of noise from the silencer that had parted from its tube on the ferry. A new one is already lined up in my workshop.

And during the aforementioned small drive, the center ball bearing on the propeller shaft more or less desintegrated... More work to do.

Giving it a good clean

2009-05-18T10:00:00.000-07:00

Arriving at my workshop.

New tires on older but very serviceable /8 rims.

Jacking the car up for a good clean.

Front left wheelarch.

View from the engine bay. Left inner wing rusted off from the footwell.

Rear left wheelarch. Rusted through to the front and at the bottom.

Left inner/outer rear wing. Not much left there.

Front right wheelarch before cleaning. Rusted through to the footwell, too.

Front right wheelarch after cleaning.

Rear right wheelarch. No metal left at the bottom.

Visit from a differently coloured friend.

First small repairs: adding the missing rubber grommet at the left spring for the bonnet (see inset).

Next I removed the period Blaupunkt radio (that only plays LW and MW), the switch for the (now missing) electric antenna and the rotary knob for moving the radio sound to the front or rear. A similar radio that also plays FM is already on the shelf and will be installed when a missing rubber grommet is obtained. In the meantime, the original blanking plate for the radio, featuring the "250" script and found in the glovebox, found its way there.

The left red knob is for the hazard flasher and the right white knob is operating the heated rear window. What the black knob in between is responsible for was unclear to Rory and also to me until I examined the connections in more detail. The knob is connected to original Mercedes-Benz wiring. And the car features an interior light in the back that is normally operated by a switch in the dashboard. This car being a RHD version, the place for this switch is taken up by the handbrake. So Mercedes-Benz moved the switch for the rear interior light into the center console on RHD cars. After I added a small bulb into the rear interior lightning unit, there was light and the switch did what it was intended to - turn the light off and on. Success.

We have finally arrived

2009-05-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

This tale of our journey to Britain was kindly compiled by my fearless co-traveller Felix, who also took the pictures. Musik to listen to while reading this: "Mister Bloe - Grooving With Mister Bloe".

Today Felix and I collected the green Crayford /8 estate from Rory in Worthing, Sussex and drove it to my home in Germany.

The whole trip felt like a weird Top Gear challenge with us meeting in Düsseldorf at 4.30 am, packed with tons of tools, spares and a great variety of train, bus and plane tickets. So in the spirit of Clarkson and co. we spent the whole trip basically throwing Top Gear quotes at each other, laughing a lot and getting funny looks.

First leg: Düsseldorf to Cologne airport. A tram full of sleepy drunken people brought us to Düsseldorf main station where we switched to the ICE train to Cologne which of course was 20 minutes late. So when we arrived at the airport we had 15 minutes to get to the check-in and since there was no TV camera around we even ran at one point. Being a little out of breath we discovered that the plane was delayed, too, and we spent the delay waiting and grunting at all means of public transport.

Second leg: Cologne airport to London Victoria Station. Everything went smoothly on the flight so we hurried through the customs at London Gatwick airport only to find out that the bus which should take us to the London Victoria Station left just moments ago. After even more grunting we quickly emboarded a train that took us to London Liverpool Street; we then took the tube to Victoria Station and the train was pretty crowded with shoppers from outside London I suppose.

Remember this was on a Saturday morning. We arrived at Victoria Station with 20 minutes to spare in which Christian managed to get our tickets and I managed to get hold of some sandwitches. All in all everything went rather well, but the only thing we managed to see from London itsself was the Gurke on the way in and Battersea Power Station on the way out. Sightseeing? Well, another time. We were on a mission! But a funny feeling to rush through the London underground with the knowledge that this wonderful city is located just above us.

Third leg: London Victoria Station to Worthing aka THE TRAIN OF DOOM. The British have a great sense of confusing everyone who even thinks about taking a train somewhere. First of all you need a ticket in which case you should know where you need to be going. This is the easy part. You are then confronted with finding out which platform to take - something the British deliberately make so difficult that you are going to miss your train eventually. Even if you know the platform number, finding out where the right platform actually is is close to impossible. In our case the train departed from platform 16 and we were faced with two signs: "platforms 1-9: left" and "platforms 10-15: right" Great!

We somehow managed to get to platform 16 in time and then learned that the train is going to split after leaving the central London area. "The first four carriages are heading towards Worthing, the last eight carriages will be heading to (some place very very far off course)." But when they say "the first four carriages", where do they start counting? The signs contradicted the diagram which contradicted the numbers on the carriages which contradicted the man from British Rail we asked for help. Who contradicted himself by changing his opinion only seconds before the train took off. It turned out he (of course) placed us in the wrong part of the train which we noticed in the very last minute before we would have headed towards... well I don't know. Hell maybe?

But in the end we made it to Worthing and in front of the station there was Rory, the Crayfords former owner, already waiting for us.

Fourth leg: From Rory's to Westerham to Dover. Rory is a great guy who knows a great deal about Crayfords. He has been with the club for quite some time and owns a couple of Crayford convertibles which looked rather nice I must say. We enjoyed Rorys company very much and made plans to meet him at Goodwood in September, but we had to press on in order to do a little shopping and catch the ferry, so we turned our attention to the Crayford /8. It, of course, started up first time and felt really healthy as we set off and had to say goodbye to Rory way too early for our liking.

We then headed towards Westerham in Kent to meet Barry who is the long-term president of the Crayford Convertible Car Club. On the parking lot of the "Grasshopper Inn" Crayford took most of their pictures for their brochures. And it was the place where all Crayford employees had their pints after a hard day of work.

The former Crayford "factory" was just around the corner, the pictures taken at Squerryes Mede road show the place where almost all Crayfords were built, the house with the white 1st floor was the workshop. There was a garage-door at ground level and the window facing the street shows the location of the former construction office.

After half an hour of car talk with Barry we headed to a Waitrose and a Tesco where Christian stocked up on British ales and I bought basically one glass of every marmelade I could find, then we added potatoe chips and whatever you bring over from Britain. Good thing we brought an estate!

Fifth leg: Leaving Britain. The car perfomed absolutely fault-free and we arrived in Dover with time to spare.

We looked back and realised that at no point we even felt the need of looking under the bonnet. It had been a while since the car had seen a skilled mechanic, but it went smoothly. The list of faults compiled by now was pretty long, but nothing on it would stop us from arriving back in Germany. Things like unevenly balanced wheels, a disfunctional exhaust and a bouncy propshaft cannot stop a stroke-eight. Finally it was time to board the ferry and aknowledge that, sadly somehow, the car won't be returning to Great Britain for quite some time.

Final leg: Dunkirchen ferry terminal to Düsseldorf.

We refueled the car in France and pressed on through heavy rain, moaning. After midnight we arrived in Düsseldorf, exhausted but happy.

All in all we took a 36 year old car on the longest journey of its life with the only preperation being to bring tools and spares we did not even need. These cars are definetely built to last.

An afternoon in Sussex

2008-12-12T10:00:00.000-08:00

This is the beginning of a story.

I am a long-time devotee of the Mercedes-Benz /8 series, the beautiful Paul Bracq-styled saloon built in Stuttgart in the late sixties and early seventies. Until the winter of 2007, I was a happy and satisfied man with a collection of two very nice /8, both in exceptionally fine condition and with outstanding histories. The red 200/8 and the blue 240D/8 are featured around here somewhere.

Then words reached me that a super-rare Mercedes-Benz /8 estate conversion by the british coachbuilder Crayford was on the market. Except on a few blurred old press photographs, nobody in Germany ever had seen such a car.

Mercedes-Benz never built estates on the /8 chassis and a few coachbuilders jumped in, with the Westerham (Kent)-based company Crayford building about 400 of them.

I bought the car and collected it from its former owner in Essex. You can read the story in german here. What a trip and what an interesting car! It was in its original blue livery with red leather inside and a somewhat smallish 220 Diesel engine under its bonnet.

What was by then known as "The blue Crayford /8" turned out to be (and still is) a wreck. I expected it not to be in the best condition but the first thorough inspection gave no reasons for hope.

So I started buying original Mercedes-Benz body panels to resurrect the hull. While they are becoming expensive and are more and more scarce, most panels could eventually be obtained. What could not be obtained was any information about the Crayford bits in this unique car, first and foremost about the completely shot interior in the "estate" part of the car. The Crayford Convertible Car Club CCCC was very friendly but could not help, as Crayford did not keep records about this conversion.

But they put me in touch with Rory. Appearing out of the nowhere, suddenly a second Crayford /8 estate conversion came into my view. It had been owned by Rory for some years as it turned out. Rory is the membership secretary of the CCCC and kindly invited me to see his Crayford /8.

So, when I went to London to visit some friends of mine in December 2008, I drove to the south coast of England, to Brighton, and went for an afternoon in Sussex. And Rory really is the most amiable person. After he invited me to a cup of tea, my query going like "If you want to make me really happy, you could take me on a ride in your stroke-eight" was answered by getting a move on at once - lets take a ride with Rory. Now this is most fabulous, even very far from home you always feel at home in a stroke-eight, even when its right hand drive.

And then it became even better. Because this is Rorys stroke-eight.

Finally, the other Crayford stroke-eight! A most interesting car with an amazing history. The first owner bought the car from Crayford in 1973 to carry his racing pigeons (we are in England!). He passed the car within his family, and when the head of family was over 80 she simply called the former owner of Crayford - she has got a car that he converted earlier, would he like to have it back? He would, and handed the car over to Rory immediately.

The car is in very fine fettle, and now I can examine all the details of the conversion. Most of it is done extremely beautifully. The conversion was a luxus one, and it increased the price of the base model significantly. You can see this in the details.

And here they are, together:

Rorys car is in unrestored original condition, roadworthy and taxed. The former owner commissioned a repair to the rear left panel that was not done so well, the sills are patched here and there and in the engine compartment the side plates are not really perfect. The engine is an 250 2.8 that runs fabulously and all its horses are still there, while the automatic transmission is doing its job sweetly. The drive was most impressive, this car is full of life and the most beautiful about it is the view rearwards from the passenger seat, as the conversion appears light and harmonious from the inside. Being driven around in the only roadworthy Crayford stroke-eight is an experience of its own.

The car is in really good custody with Rory. And so we say goodbye and the stroke-eight returns to its garage.

This is the way I like to enjoy an afternoon in Sussex, there is no better way.

But the day out left me with question marks written all over my face. Looking back, I can state that I visited Rory with the only intention to see his car, out of blank curiosity, and to meet the man who owned it. I made no preparations to document the parts my Crayford /8 estate was missing. After the visit, I knew that there was another Crayford /8 and that it was well kept.

What happened next is inevitable, at least when looking back. To resurrect my Crayford wreck, Rorys complete and beautifully preserved car would be a perfect template, so to say. But it was much more than this. Rorys car had charmed me, as had Rory, who made great efforts to keep the car on the road although his main interests are more in the world of Crayford convertibles.

When Rory contacted me in spring 2009 to tell me that he wanted to sell his Crayford /8, I bought it.

This it the car this blog is about. I shall call it "The green Crayford /8".