There’s nothing flash about Jim Peters’ 1995 Mercedes-Benz 2435 but it does the job well.
For Jim, 350 horses under the hump of his old V8 Mercedes 2435 are plenty.
His usual running is between Newcastle and Sydney, and he says the truck is “fine” for the freeway – on the flat parts at least.
“It doesn’t go up hills too quickly,” Jim says, adding that he can generally keep the 13-speed Roadranger in the top box.
The gearbox and the hub reduction diffs are the only major parts of the truck Jim’s had to get done up, after an employee driver didn’t treat them too well, he says.
The combined cost of the repairs was $40,000, which is $2,500 more than he actually paid for the whole truck when he bought it a decade ago.
At that stage it had 650,000 kilometres on the clock, having carted lamb between Mudgee in central western NSW and Newcastle.
It’s now up to 1.2 million kilometres and still going strong.
There was a bit of rust in the Mercedes when Jim bought it, and a lot more in the back of it more recently, so Jim was tossing up whether to replace it.
“It’s a nice comfortable old truck, it’s reliable, so I thought I would get the rust cut out of it, get it re-sprayed and tidied up,” Jim says.
“I’m not saying it’s a good job,” he adds, but it looks fine to the casual eye.
For the full story on Jim Peters’ 1995 Mercedes-Benz 2435 see the May issue of Owner//Driver, on sale May 13