Sunday, November 30, 2014

W124 / W126 / W201 : Euro Headlight Adjustment Vacuum Plumbing

Basic diagram in routing vacuum from the euro adjustment panel to the headlights. For cars with economy gauges in the instrument cluster, you can tap your vacuum in from there. Otherwise you'll have to route vacuum from the engine to the adjustment switch, back out to the engine bay.


1) Passenger headlight
2) Driver Headlight
3) Vacuum Splitter
4) Vacuum Splitter from engine vacuum
5) Economy Gauge
6) One way valve
7) Adjustment switch

Friday, November 28, 2014

W210: OM606 Fuel Line Parts List

Had to dig around, moral of the story, for just under $100 you can have all of the plastic fuel lines around the injection pump replaced and hopefully get rid of any bubbling.

Parts list:

605 070 1432 - Fuel Thermostat to Prefilter  ($10.08 @ AutohausAZ)
605 070 0732 - Prefilter to Shut Off Valve ($11.04 @ AutohausAZ)
605 070 0832 - Lift Pump to Shut Off Valve ($11.04 @ AutohausAZ)
605 070 1532 - Filter to Shut Off Valve  ($16.80 @ AutohausAZ)
606 070 0432 - Injection Pump to Filter  ($9.60 @ AutohausAZ)
601 997 0445 - Lines to Filter housing Orings x4  ($3.07ea @ AutohausAZ)
021 997 7548 - Shut Off Valve Oring to Injection Pump  ($0.98 @ AutohausAZ)

EDIT (12/21/14): ***These will essentially restore the engine fuel line system***
116 470 1475 - Fuel line from tank strainer to feed hard line
210 476 0426 - Rubber hose from engine to return hard line 
210 476 0326 - Rubber hose from fuel feed hard line to engine
124 470 0106 - fuel tank strainer 


I've actually found ECS Tuning to be a couple dollars cheaper all around for the fuel lines, however I typically use the free shipping over $75 at Autohaus to justify buying a couple other random maintenance parts I'd need for the the car. All the parts at AutohausAZ will be around $72, so throw a fuel or air filter into the mix and the money you'd have saved at ECS is just used for free shipping. Hard to beat the AutohausAZ stuff, especially since they sell the genuine Mercedes parts in the first place.

Once I get all the parts in I'll take some pictures and whatnot.

Thanks,
Allen

W210: Shifts nice, runs nice, but those damn air bubbles

Got the car back from my buddy and there were a ton of codes running through the cars computers. Most not vital to the cars operation, some yes, most no.

Here's the list of codes I got before he cleared and relearned the TCM:

055 Gear Compar Nega-Target Not attained
065 Control Module - N15/3
104 Reverse Gear/Park Lock Solenoid - Y66/1
114 Selector Lever Implausible
120 Right Front Vehicle Speed Sensor From ECM Implausible, CAN
132 ECM CAN Communication Or ECT Implausible
133 All CAN Communication Faulty
134 CAN Communication Disturbed Traction System
135 CAN Communication Disturbed Engine Management
136 Instrument Cluster
147 Gear Implausible on Trans - Slipping
151 Gear Not Attained
161 Control Module N15/3


So far 150 miles of driving and all is well with the transmission. New conductor plate seems to have solved the issues. I'm sure 234k mile trans fluid was partly responsible for clogging up or blocking some of the electric contacts throughout the transmission. New filter and fluid seems to be doing this trans well. I'll be flushing the trans system again come springtime, hopefully the fluid in there now is carrying any debris into the filter.

We'll see.

Sunday, November 23, 2014

S130: tie rods

Tein S13 inner tie rods with rack spacers 

With the extended control arms, the tie rods have to be longer as well. There's no comfort in running the stock tie rods at their max extension and it would be totally unsafe to put some force on the wheels with the tire rods holding with 1/2" of thread. That's asking for them to buckle. 

I think now though, they may be excessively long, but if they are, I'll be throwing S14 outers on to bring it back to reasonable. 

W210: New Bumper

So I'm still waiting to get a call about the trans reset, BUT I picked up a sweet front bumper to replace the totally screwed up one that's on the car now. Sweet. 


Friday, November 21, 2014

S130: High Back Time

Tired of looking at the granny seats that I had in the car, I finally got around to throwing in those high back seats I picked up. Damn this thing looks so much better now. Should have done this ages ago. 






W210: The wait

Waiting for a trans shop to finish scanning and testing trans systems in your car is justification enough for me to just invest in a Mercedes SDS system. I figure the amount of money I'll be spending getting my car scanned correctly would offset the cost eventually.

So we'll see what I can get together. Would be nice to have it that's for sure.

In the mean time, I was actually able to get a picture of the thing out in the sun.

W210: Those terrifying OM606 glow plugs

This project I picked up had all of the glow plugs dead. Actually getting to the plugs is the easy part, all the difficulty lies strictly in their removal. If you do it wrong, you break off the plug body in the head and you're stuck either removing the head to drill, or figuring out how to drill the plugs out with everything in the car.

There IS a trick to it all. The engine should be very warm or as hot as you can get it to allow you to still touch it. Take the thing out onto the highway for a good HOT run and bring it back to do the job.

I didn't do that as the car didn't run and wouldn't shift because of a trans plate issue, but I DID plug the block heater in for 2 hours before attempting this. It did a good  enough job that I was able to yank the plugs without any trouble. I used a 3/8" impact to break them all loose, I figured the hammering from the impact would break all the carbon holding the plugs loose.

Either way, they're out. Success.


Sunday, November 16, 2014

W210: Headlight Restoration

Went to work trying to get some more light out onto the road, I hate yellowed headlights so this was a no brainer.

Just my buffer, some rubbing compound, 10 minutes of my time and wax to seal em. Easy.


Friday, November 14, 2014

W210: "Pre-facelift Floppy Mirrors"

Anybody who has a pre-facelift W210 probably has had a problem with the floppy mirror syndrome. A car wash or somebody whacks your side mirrors and all of a sudden they become limp. Well here's a fix, just short of replacing the assembly.


The spring in my hand is what gives the mirror its return. It's ridiculously beefy and because so, it causes an issue with the assembly. 

 

Another pic of the spring. 



Now this is what happens that causes the floppy syndrome. The bracket that holds the spring was bent back under the force of the spring and let the spring go. Without the spring, the mirror will flop around as nothing is holding it tight to the car. 


Here's the bracket portion that I simply just broke off so I can do my fix. This housing is a bust anyway and there really is no way to reaffix the bracket. 



So, how do you fix it? Stainless chicken wire. Grab the end of the spring with a screwdriver and pry against where the bracket used to be attached to tension the spring. Have your wire ready and tie it off. It won't break, the tensile strength of the wire is plenty. 



That's all there is too it. The spring is ever slightly less tensioned that from the factory, but the springy-ness to the mirrors is back. No more floppy eared Merc. 

Why so Personal

Putting this stuff on madde me realize how truly dusty everything is. Can't wait until I can get this thing out into the sun again and clean everything up.

Picked up an old Personal Grinta and needed an adapter to mount it to my momo hub. Picked one up for like $20 and got a pretty sweet lanyard to go with it. I like how the neochrome center matches the color of the Personal tag on the wheel. Worked out nicely. 







Wednesday, November 12, 2014

79 S130 Highback's


Some guy was selling Datsun parts on craigslist and said he had some nice black seats from a 79. So here I am, with a set of nice black highbacks. Picked up a nice set of Zenki tails and a few set of the stainless B pillar trims. Rad.