By: Chris Greacen - 11/15/2023
The Woods & Barclay guys shared a video recently of a pristine 300d specimen with about 1500 miles on the odometer that they found through its owner north of Montreal. Take a peek at this thing which is as shiny and new as the day it rolled off the line.

It's especially a treat to have someone so knowledgeable point out all of the details. I have to imagine that there are parts of that car that even an expert hasn't seen before - the crispness and texture of the dash. It's worth scrubbing through the video to see how deep they go on this vehicle.

There are so many of these old things on the road in the bay area, many running biodiesel or veggie oil. People like that these things are sturdy, long-lasting, and tough. It's easy to forget that these things were the top of the pyramid in luxury and engineering in their day.

The convo at the end of the video brings this into perspective - even though it's the same model, daily drivers are really a different breed from a showpiece like this one-of-a-kind vehicle. Most people can get what they need from a re-furbed vehicle with 250000 miles on it (or 350 in my case).

By: Chris Greacen - 10/22/2023
I've been really enjoying the videos that George Karellas have shared on his Soup Classic Motoring channel on YouTube. His lockdown restoration of a

Just watch one video and you'll get the gist -- cool music, mesmerizing narrative, clear steps for working on these things (the stop-motion disassembly is strikingly effective). How is he able to make the rebuilding of a front-end so interesting?

All of these strip-down, brush-down, repaint scenes scratch the cleaning fetish itch too. A fetish which I certainly lack -- BUT I have noticed that I'm cleaning the engine bay of my 300td more frequently.

The Irish sideshow at the end is especially magical. Watch this end-to-end if you can.

Parting thought, I think I might need to make a new 'category' for these W123 videos and photos as I think there will be more that show up on this blog.

By: Chris Greacen - 10/19/2023
I recently wrote a post on Lab Zero's blog on the topic of recognizing sources of technical debt. This caught the attention of one of the organizers of the Bay ALN meetups and they invited me to present on the topic.

I put a brief talk together based on the outline of that blog post and delivered it the other night. I think I can embed a couple slides from the deck I used...

The presentation followed this path through the story.

• Intro, caveats
• Tech debt background
• Recognizing trouble
• Two common sources
• Recognizing progress
• The real casualty
• Two questions for you

Give this a listen if you're curious about how this went or if you're interested in Technical Debt.

By: Chris Greacen - 10/14/2023
I've been working on getting my 1984 300td back onto the road after a long hibernation during the pandemic. I got this thing in the early 2010s and it's been a joy to drive. If you're familiar with these things, you know exactly what I mean. For the uninitiated, I'll break it down for you.

These w123 cars were designed and built by Mercedes during a time when the company gave incredible amount of power and permission to its engineers. It was an engineering-led effort to design and build these vehicles. This resulted in a ridiculously expensive and long-lived vehicle.

In 1984 dollars this vehicle cost around $36k, which would be about $100k in 2023 dollars. I bought it for about $2500.

It's steel. It leaks a little oil. I've replaced the engine during the time I've owned it (long story). It needs a little bit of work pretty often at this point, but it's still on track to reach a million miles.

I run this thing on biodiesel thanks to the availability of B20 at the nearby Biofuel Oasis. But I know that this isn't exactly an eco-conscious car when you look at the particulate, COx, and NOx emissions.

There's a great video that I came across that's really a love-letter to these w123 and w115 cars. Worth watching if you're interested/curious. If you scroll up to 14:13 on the video, the host addresses the environmental trade-offs and impact of driving this kind of car. Take a peek:

It was surprising to see the mention of tire particulate pollution. I have a hunch we'll near more and more about this as more people convert to electric vehicles. We live near many highways and I'm pretty sure that we're bathing in these particles. More on this in another post.

If you see me driving around, honk and wave!

By: Chris Greacen - 10/12/2023
Couple of great photos worth sharing from our double-double on Saturday 10/7 shot by Paul Ivey.

We're grateful for the chance to share these songs with friends at a place like Tamarack. Grateful also to the other bands who played: Da Pupz and Cassowary. Would do this again in a heartbeat.

Next up for us: we have to record some music. We've started work on Record #3 and we haven't even really done #1 yet. We'll get there...

More about Doubleplus Alright over on the website.