Welcome to the Portland Section! From the Columbia River Gorge to the Oregon Coast, from Central and Southern Oregon, the Willamette Valley to Southwest Washington you’ll find our members making the most of their Mercedes-Benz automobiles. We encourage you to join us at an upcoming event!
President's Message
I'm a member of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association as well as MBCA. In the February issue of the AOPA magazine there is a nice article about a Diamond DA42NG four passenger airplane powered by two Mercedes-Benz 2 liter engines. It's the same four cylinder engine Mercedes installs in their “A” class cars sold in Europe. These “little” four cylinder turbodiesel engines produce one hundred seventy horsepower each. That's enough to haul 50 gallons of fuel, and 865 pounds of passengers (including baggage), at a cruise speed of 171 knots (196mph) for 980 miles. Another way to know that Mercedes quality is accepted by a large number of the world population. I don't know of any Cadillac powered airplanes.
I need to get this President's Message to our Newsletter Editor Allen Stephens by the 20th of June. That is enough time for Allen to compile our Sections newsletter The Northwestern Star, and present it to the printer in time for you to receive...about the first of each month. Therefore I cannot include in this “Message”, the fun we are going to have on the Texas Hold'em Rallye to Tillamook on June 26th.
I have two 20% discount certificates for use at the Mercedes-Benz club membership store. Want to use them? Call me...I'll mail them to you.
In my January “message” I commented on my '87 260E being out of service. My first thought was a worn out fuel pump. I concerned myself with how to prove this was the problem. The easiest way is to have someone standing near the gas tank. The fuel pump makes fuel pump sounds when the ignition is turned on. In a few seconds pressure is pumped up, and it quits making fuel pump sounds. That test proved the pump was not the problem. My next thought was having the car towed to Burback Motors for problem discovery and the necessary repairs. While thinking about all of the possible reasons for the failure, I remembered I had suffered a failure three years ago while traveling to Utah to see Zion, the Grand Canyon, Lake Powell, and Bryce Canyon (put on by Bob Cottam with the Las Vegas Section). That failure turned out to be a distributor rotor. I got a new rotor and was on the road in two hours. This time (after thinking a lot about the problem) I decided to check, and sure enough, the distributor cap had failed and took the new rotor with it. I learned a lesson...when you have a rotor failure, change the cap at the same time. Why the rotor failure in the first place? I don’t know. Possibly a coil that is putting out too much voltage? I'll have to look into that.
Last week I received a call from Hudson Giles with Auto Motive Consultants Inc. He was looking for an opportunity to bring a Mercedes AMG Display or some AMG vehicles for display in Portland, sometime in August. I asked Allen Stephens (who has a lot of knowledge of vehicle events going on during the year) to respond to Hudson's inquiry. I wonder if we might have a neat surprise later on this year?
All for now. See you next month.
I need to get this President's Message to our Newsletter Editor Allen Stephens by the 20th of June. That is enough time for Allen to compile our Sections newsletter The Northwestern Star, and present it to the printer in time for you to receive...about the first of each month. Therefore I cannot include in this “Message”, the fun we are going to have on the Texas Hold'em Rallye to Tillamook on June 26th.
I have two 20% discount certificates for use at the Mercedes-Benz club membership store. Want to use them? Call me...I'll mail them to you.
In my January “message” I commented on my '87 260E being out of service. My first thought was a worn out fuel pump. I concerned myself with how to prove this was the problem. The easiest way is to have someone standing near the gas tank. The fuel pump makes fuel pump sounds when the ignition is turned on. In a few seconds pressure is pumped up, and it quits making fuel pump sounds. That test proved the pump was not the problem. My next thought was having the car towed to Burback Motors for problem discovery and the necessary repairs. While thinking about all of the possible reasons for the failure, I remembered I had suffered a failure three years ago while traveling to Utah to see Zion, the Grand Canyon, Lake Powell, and Bryce Canyon (put on by Bob Cottam with the Las Vegas Section). That failure turned out to be a distributor rotor. I got a new rotor and was on the road in two hours. This time (after thinking a lot about the problem) I decided to check, and sure enough, the distributor cap had failed and took the new rotor with it. I learned a lesson...when you have a rotor failure, change the cap at the same time. Why the rotor failure in the first place? I don’t know. Possibly a coil that is putting out too much voltage? I'll have to look into that.
Last week I received a call from Hudson Giles with Auto Motive Consultants Inc. He was looking for an opportunity to bring a Mercedes AMG Display or some AMG vehicles for display in Portland, sometime in August. I asked Allen Stephens (who has a lot of knowledge of vehicle events going on during the year) to respond to Hudson's inquiry. I wonder if we might have a neat surprise later on this year?
All for now. See you next month.
Rus Eppler
President
