When we last left the Suddard clan, Classic Motorsports magazine Publisher Tim Suddard and his family were getting ready to take a 3,500-mile trip in their 47-year-old Mercedes to visit us at Hagerty headquarters.

They ran into trouble literally as soon as they left their driveway. Right off the bat, they realized that although they had ride-tested the car with what should have been enough weight to simulate luggage, they had miscalculated. The car was so low in the rear, the exhaust was actually dragging over bumps. So the first leg of the trip was a three-block journey before they returned home to jettison all nonessential items and redistribute the weight of the luggage.

Of course, the tools and spares were the first to go, as they were the heaviest.

After that, these Hagerty customers headed out into the Okefenokee Swamp. Tim Suddard, the car’s owner, says he figured it like this: “What could possibly go wrong? This is a Mercedes and we sorted out everything before we left. We won’t need tools and spares.”

Wrong. As darkness fell, the Mercedes cranked along with the driving lights on, the air conditioning blowing cold and the stereo cranking out some sweet tunes. The trip through the swamp seemed to be going great… until the lights started to dim. The newly rebuilt stock alternator was either not keeping up with the demands of all the equipment that had been added to the car—or it was failing.

Alternating between steadily dimming low beams and a very bright SureFire flashlight (with the lights off to allow the battery to recharge), our intrepid travelers made it to their first stop of the night very late, stressed and tired. Driving through the wilds of southern Georgia on a moonless night lit only with parking lights and a flashlight will do that to you.

A quick check of the ignition switch at that stop confirmed their worst fears: The car would not restart. So the weary family trudged into the hotel hoping that after a good, if short, night’s sleep, things would look better in the morning.

Things looked the same in the morning. The car would not restart, so a short walk brought them to a K-Mart, where they purchased a battery and some tools. In short order, the fresh battery got the Suddards back on the road. Although nothing was really fixed, they knew that during daylight hours, an old car uses very little electricity with all the accessories off, and the family hoped to limp to a friend’s Mercedes restoration shop a few hours away to address the underlying problems.

That friend, an old racing buddy of the senior Suddard, is Pieter van Rossum, owner of Silver Star Restorations (http://www.silverstarrestorations.com/) in western North Carolina. He and fellow “fintail” Mercedes enthusiast Drew Thibken tried to locate the problem, but were forced to settle for giving the Suddards some piece of mind in the form of a spare alternator and voltage regulator. With daylight burning, the family clambered back in their Merc and headed north through the smoky Mountains, eager for less adventure.

Hagerty customers can get more details on the Classic Motorsports project Mercedes by clicking on www.classicmotorsports.net/try to receive the next issue at no charge.