I've always been a slave to the 3 pointed star from a very young age, my father had never owned a Mercedes or really been in to them but i'd always loved them! I don't really remember much of my childhood except for when we used to visit my uncle in London, he had a big beautiful cream W123 that he used to drive with great skill at high speeds through the width restriction bars in his area?? I always used to breath in as we flew through them and hoped he didn't bash by far the nicest motor i'd be in.... Anyway so yeah I like Mercedes!!
I did however have a 1992 MX5 as a daily up until 3-4 months ago until I found out what was causing my bad back pain.... I had 3 curves on my spine curse word! Heres a picture with no custard of it...

But not wanting to give up completly on the 2 seater convertible I ended up getting one of the most sensible small 2 seater convertibles going.... Thank you Mercedes! :P




.....oh and probably the best thing about it....

Just over 22,000 miles when I got it with a service book as thick as my head, all central London main dealer with eye watering charges!

From day one its been getting faster for many reasons... some i'll admit were abit school boy error sort of stuff, when I collected it the women had kept the gearbox in winter as it pulled off slower and wasn't so 'racey' it took me 3 hours of driving it home to figure out she'd done that!! Then as the weeks went on it just got a little bit quicker, bit by bit as i'm guessing the ECU got used to proper driving ;D but finally after doing scienctive tests with a friend, a camera phone and the Dartford Toll Bridge it wasn't anywhere near the 7 odd seconds 0-60 it should have been! So as I was in Kent visiting my folks I decided to get it plugged in at the local Mercedes indie and see what they thought. The old guy came back and said everythings fine but it did come back that its missing some fuses. So off he went and came back 5 mintues later laughing his head off and asking me if he knew who had the car before me... I calmly said ''erm... a slightly older lady from NW1, how come?''
Well he said '' 3 fuses have been taken out of the ECU that control the supercharger, every single one has been taken out as to not cause any warning lights to show or panic the ECU, who evers done it has known what they were doing!'' .....Ok! So off he goes to pop the 3 fuses in and make a phone call, he comes back 5 minutes later laughing again ''so I rang Mercedes to see if they knew anything about this and they said at the first service the husband had asked the car to be slowed down as his wife was going to crash it!!'' ???

The drive from the garage was ammmmmmmazing! The charger now whines like a really whiney thing and the speed! Its not breath taking by any means but its completly changed the whole car.... I love it now! ;D

Plans so far, i've debadged the back for a cleaner look. Gave the drain holes a good motting out, WD'd all the roof bits. I've also finally found a front bumper to match the rear and sideskirts I got ages ago, the factory option AMG ones. I don't want to make an AMG replica, I just prefer no rubbing stripes or ugly black stone guards.
So hopefully from this -

To this -

Wheels are the next thing and i'm currently chasing some 3 piece jobbies 8-)
More charger noise, better breathing and blacking up the interior are future plans....

I'm slightly cheating here but skip forward 6 months and we're here....
the AMG bumpers didn't go on in the end as the costs were getting abit silly but the nail in the coffin was the second day at the body shop a SEXY SEXY SEXXXXY R129 SL came in for a small touch up and I couldn't pull myself away from it, it spoke to me, I spoke back.... I loved it!! So i'm soldering on with the SLK for now as i'm not in a postion to run a 500SL (the only one i'd want) ....Anyway on topic i've been having the legandary Mercedes 1996 - 2006 quality control issues....

This was the result of a hard stop, bloody clown car!

After the Meister-R'd MX5 I had started to miss the chuckabilty factor on the local mountain time trial course but once you settle in to the way of SLK driving, which is surprisingly fast in, letting the softer ride absorb the bumps and slightly faster out... not exciting but quite fast


The interior paint issue is still needing to be sorted but work on the W123 has got in the way. I did pick up some mint staggered AMG wheels for a silly price so now it looks like this....


Black/Red rear LED light clusters have been ordered to stop the known SLK fault, the brake lights melting the mounting bracket and circuit board, meaning blown bulbs and warning lights on the dash.... GRR!!

Nice car! But it looked much better on the old wheels, those are a little oversized and do make it look like a clown car, as you mentioned above.

Really needs the silver lower bumpers I think, the black stone guards make it look like it's sitting on stilts, especially with the AMG wheels.