Pagoda restoration

Still Going Strong – 1969 Mercedes 280SL (Pagoda)

It’s been a little while since our 1969 Mercedes 280SL (Pagoda) left the Bridge Classic Cars workshop. After undergoing an engine rebuild with us, it left the workshop to be returned to its owner a few months ago.

Since then, we have had some great feedback about the performance of the car and it sounds like it is very much at home being back out on the road.

Feedback from the owner includes:

“I have now done over 500 mainly motorway miles in the car and it is running well. Thank you again for the work you have done”.

and

“the car continues to run beautiful and was a pleasure to drive on a long trip to France a couple of weeks back”.

Hearing that a restored car is bringing enjoyment to its owner is something that makes us very happy. Classic cars like this are all about having the perfect driving experience so this is exactly the type of feedback we aim to achieve.

Going Together – Preparing Parts and Fitting the Gearbox for the Engine of the 1969 Mercedes 280SL Pagoda

The 1969 Mercedes 280SL Pagoda might just be one of the most beautiful cars we’ve had in the Bridge Classic Cars workshop at our Suffolk HQ. But, we want to hear it run and drive.

So, our in-house restoration technician Jon has been working on getting all the parts ready for the car and fitting up the automatic gearbox.

Jon has carefully inspected and refinished most of the reusable metal hoses for the 280SL so that each individual piece looks as good as the day it was new. He also dismantled many of the air and oil boxes/cans so they could be taken into our in-house paint shop and refinished.

Once all the pieces were back on Jon’s bench, he began to reassemble them ready for the engine installation into the car. But before then, a big piece of the puzzle had to be put in.

Jon and Paul prepped the engine to be mated to its automatic gearbox. This has been rebuilt and refinished so it looks as good as the newly built engine. Once the technicians had got the gearbox secured to the back of the engine block with all the internals correctly fitted up and spaced, Jon then began to test fit the various pipes and wires that go to and from the gearbox to make sure everything was present and correct before the next phase begins…