Hi,

@Kerry: It still has the original rear shock absorbers (hydropneumatic ones indeed). The problem is, I did not find a heavy duty solution, Mercedes Benz did not manufacture that. I do have heavy duty coil springs though, in the front and rear.

The first modification I did was installing a new Webasto waterheater (there was an original DBW43 Webasto -if my memory serves me well-) which was replaced for a brand new one with remote control.
I also adjusted the Mercedes to drive on straight vegetable oil, this is an Elsbett kit.
Then after some trips I finally raised the car with only OEM stuff (heavy duty coilsprings and heavy duty shock absorbers in the front).
There are also these distance rubbers, I used the largest ones.

I also bought the imperial from King Ping, including the rooftent, sand plates, Airjack, compressor, fuel tanks. All this was ready exactly on time before departing to Africa. One thing I still missed was the oil carter protection, that trip I needed it the most, but it all went okay.

Ready for departure to Africa.


This year I managed to get the original Mercedes-Benz metal protection plate, but in the last few days in Turkey this year I hit a stone -very- hard so it's bended right now (I had to get it off in Turkey on our way back).



I also installed very cool AT tyres, which are used in the auto rallies here in Europe (but it's completely thorn apart already, this happened in Jordan)

I used a Garmin GPS Cx60 this year, which is portable.

The mileage was...




Somewhere in Africa I had this cool mileage:


This one is on the way back this summer:



It now has 195292km on the clock.


I am not sure where you can buy a King Ping imperial. Rooftent might be possible to buy in the US, maybe someone on expeditionportal.com can help you with that. It's unfortunately very expensive though.

I found a shock absorber specialist who tried to make handmade heavy duty shockers for my T model, but he did not manage to finish it on time this year, so that project failed. But again, the -original shockers- just survived again, after all the heavy bumping and the +2 ton gross weight!

I am busy writing the whole story, from the moment I found this Benz until now, but lots of translating/writing still needs to be done.

I try to make some progress this weekend again.

Here are some pics of the various countries the Benz has been to.
My W123 in various countries

Thanks for the warm welcome!

Greetings,
Jurgen