My 1989 Mercedes 560 SEC
- Thread starter Jupix
- Start date
Hey, those wheels look pretty nice!
D
D-Fence
Guest
BBS LeMans, 245/40ZR18, 8,5 in the front, 9,5 in the rear.
Build was on German TV, annoying show GRIP:
Thankfully, he ripped the stupid wing right off again
Build was on German TV, annoying show GRIP:
Thankfully, he ripped the stupid wing right off again
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Man, it hurt watching that presenter. He was very rough-handed with cars that were still owned by someone else. But he did seem to know what he's doing. He knew the trouble spots pretty well. Anyway, too bad I don't speak German, could only understand scattered words.
How much were the 2 cars that he went to look at? Somewhere around 3 grand? The first one was falling apart. Made me feel pretty good about mine.
I could post at a certain Mercedes site and they would rip the guy apart for "ruining" a pretty nice original SEC.
Surprised that a new cam fixed the knocking, I would be worried about damage already done to other stuff there. But yeah, that cam didn't look very healthy at all :lol:
I think he was talking about aluminium parts, did he say the bootlid is also made from alu? The engine block and hood are, that I know for sure.
Was interesting to see an original exhaust on film, I hadn't until now. Weird that they would only do the tips and leave the rest as is. That car should shout.
How much were the 2 cars that he went to look at? Somewhere around 3 grand? The first one was falling apart. Made me feel pretty good about mine.
I could post at a certain Mercedes site and they would rip the guy apart for "ruining" a pretty nice original SEC.
Surprised that a new cam fixed the knocking, I would be worried about damage already done to other stuff there. But yeah, that cam didn't look very healthy at all :lol:
I think he was talking about aluminium parts, did he say the bootlid is also made from alu? The engine block and hood are, that I know for sure.
Was interesting to see an original exhaust on film, I hadn't until now. Weird that they would only do the tips and leave the rest as is. That car should shout.
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D
D-Fence
Guest
This presenter is just an annoying fuck. Trust me, if you understood German you wanted to rip your ears out, he basically talks some slang bullshit......oh so cool.
First car, 318.000km, 4000?, he tried to get it to 2000?, managed to go to 3400? and passed
Second car, 236.000km, all Service done at MB, 5500? managed to go to 4200?
Trunklid and engine lid are Aluminium
And remember, this is a TV Show, so they had some stuff the producers said they had to do, like the stupid wing. This is how the car looks now:
http://www.mercedes-fans.de/autoderwoche/autoderwoche_artikel/id=1114
Oh yeah, that tuning shop they went to is around the corner from me and the worst hell for any person who likes cars and is not a stupid ricer.
http://www.duw-shop.de/
First car, 318.000km, 4000?, he tried to get it to 2000?, managed to go to 3400? and passed
Second car, 236.000km, all Service done at MB, 5500? managed to go to 4200?
Trunklid and engine lid are Aluminium
And remember, this is a TV Show, so they had some stuff the producers said they had to do, like the stupid wing. This is how the car looks now:
http://www.mercedes-fans.de/autoderwoche/autoderwoche_artikel/id=1114
Oh yeah, that tuning shop they went to is around the corner from me and the worst hell for any person who likes cars and is not a stupid ricer.
http://www.duw-shop.de/
MacGuffin
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- Mar 29, 2008
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- Wilhelmshaven, Germany
- Car(s)
- '17 Ford Mustang GT Fastback
The first one was 4000 Euros, the second one 5500. And yes, the bootlit is also made of aluminium.
At the end he paid 4200 Euros for the second one, because the first one too much ridden down.
About the camshaft: As far as I understood, there is no problem replacing that, when the problem is fixed after that, which obviously was in this case.
I think he's ok. I mean at least he knows, what he's talking about. He talks slang but he also seems genuine in his way -- if you like the Ruhrpott mentality, that is.
At the end he paid 4200 Euros for the second one, because the first one too much ridden down.
About the camshaft: As far as I understood, there is no problem replacing that, when the problem is fixed after that, which obviously was in this case.
I think he's ok. I mean at least he knows, what he's talking about. He talks slang but he also seems genuine in his way -- if you like the Ruhrpott mentality, that is.
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D
D-Fence
Guest
He is _NOT_ Ruhrpott - I know because I am from there . Det is Nordic, grew up in Cloppenburg, can't you hear his nordic accent? Ralf Richter is as Ruhrpott as it gets though (and I met him once ) .
I like Det somehow, he knows his cars but he could seriously cut back on the bad slogans he keeps popping...
. Det is Nordic, grew up in Cloppenburg, can't you hear his nordic accent? Ralf Richter is as Ruhrpott as it gets though (and I met him once ) .I like Det somehow, he knows his cars but he could seriously cut back on the bad slogans he keeps popping...
MacGuffin
Forum Addict
- Joined
- Mar 29, 2008
- Messages
- 8,329
- Location
- Wilhelmshaven, Germany
- Car(s)
- '17 Ford Mustang GT Fastback
Eeew... Cloppenburg, that's evil. All chicken and pig farmers there. If you have a date with a girl there, the father waits with a shotgun behind the door, when you bring her home.
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OK, so I was able to locate a set of reasonably good Gen2 Pentas in Finland. I got very lucky in that it was a known fellow at a certain Mercedes forum, and he was willing to drop the wheels off at my end for free.
Here's what they look like. They are 8x16" ET11's, running Continental friction tires.
I believe they were manufactured in 1985. These were painted blue, and when the current owner got them he did a little prepwork and rattlecanned them grey, and of course applied a clearcoat. As they are now, there are some stone chips and scratches but other than that, they are pretty well preserved. One of them is ever so slightly warped but all of them balanced out nicely with normal weights.
The paint will probably not last very long, so I'll probably have them refinished in a few years. These wheels will be my winter wheels.
The valve job is underway, will probably be completed in 2 or 3 weeks. Had to order new valves from Germany, shipping takes a while.
Here's what they look like. They are 8x16" ET11's, running Continental friction tires.
I believe they were manufactured in 1985. These were painted blue, and when the current owner got them he did a little prepwork and rattlecanned them grey, and of course applied a clearcoat. As they are now, there are some stone chips and scratches but other than that, they are pretty well preserved. One of them is ever so slightly warped but all of them balanced out nicely with normal weights.
The paint will probably not last very long, so I'll probably have them refinished in a few years. These wheels will be my winter wheels.
The valve job is underway, will probably be completed in 2 or 3 weeks. Had to order new valves from Germany, shipping takes a while.
ZeDestructor
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2008
- Messages
- 2,321
- Car(s)
- 1994 Toyota Tercel
OK, so I was able to locate a set of reasonably good Gen2 Pentas in Finland. I got very lucky in that it was a known fellow at a certain Mercedes forum, and he was willing to drop the wheels off at my end for free.
Here's what they look like. They are 8x16" ET11's, running Continental friction tires.
I believe they were manufactured in 1985. These were painted blue, and when the current owner got them he did a little prepwork and rattlecanned them grey, and of course applied a clearcoat. As they are now, there are some stone chips and scratches but other than that, they are pretty well preserved. One of them is ever so slightly warped but all of them balanced out nicely with normal weights.
The paint will probably not last very long, so I'll probably have them refinished in a few years. These wheels will be my winter wheels.
The valve job is underway, will probably be completed in 2 or 3 weeks. Had to order new valves from Germany, shipping takes a while.
Awwwweeeeesoooome!
Lucky bastard >_>
Car was outside today, with all 4 Pentas on, so here's a couple more pics.
They are noticeably more "correct" offset-wise than the BBSes, since they bulge outwards 12mm more, but the oldtimer look of the inward-offset BBSes is nice too.
They are noticeably more "correct" offset-wise than the BBSes, since they bulge outwards 12mm more, but the oldtimer look of the inward-offset BBSes is nice too.
Pentas are ET11. That 12mm difference was a guesstimate based on the BBSes possibly being ET23. I just always get 23 and 24 confused, there are both offsets on the market for W126s.
And yes... I immediately thought of you when I looked at that Ford :lol:
And yes... I immediately thought of you when I looked at that Ford :lol:
After I found out about the need to reseal the BBSes, I had basically 2 choices:
- have them resealed by someone who knows what they're doing.
- sell them as is, and buy something else.
I took my sweet time pondering what to do. Soon after the problem initially surfaced, I created a thread at a Finnish Merc forum asking for help: I needed to find someone who would, for a fair fee, disassemble, sand, clean, reseal properly and assemble the rims. Unless I found that helpful soul, I was sure I was going to let the wheels go and cut my losses.
However, a man did offer to help. He was 3 hours away but would do the job for a reasonable price. In a rare strike of luck, a friend (the same one who lended me the Kanaldeckels for a while) was headed in that exact city soon-ish, and offered to take the wheels there. I gladly accepted unless there was an offer of help nearer until the day he was going, and there wasn't, so off the BBSes went.
The guy was a hobbyist who posts at the aforementioned forums every once in a while, and dangles with rims & cars & etc. Of course, he had a workshop for stuff like that. He seemed pretty knowledgeful of multiparter rims and BBSes in particular, and had done stuff like this before.
It took some time (about 2 weeks) for him to get my nonfunctional Sika seal off the rims, do the prepwork and the job itself. I know it must've been pretty awful to remove the Sikaflex from the rims as I did a bulk of that removal job myself the day before the rims were gonna go out. It was fuckin' solid. Incredibly adhesive and would not peel off. It would crumble into small pieces before letting go of the rim surface, despite me having not sanded the surface before applying the stuff like Sika recommend when dealing with aluminium.
Anyway, while the dude was working his magic he thought to ask if I'd like some stainless steel valves for them. Well, I'd heard that most hobbyists use them, they do look pretty nice and really are the "correct" kind of equipment for high-end rims like these, aren't very easily obtainable for BBSes in this country, and he wasn't asking much for them, so I said why not. They do look great on the rims.
Once done, he did an awesome job packaging the wheels up for a bus ride back home. That freight service did cost an extra 35 eur, but what's most important is that they got here undamaged.
There is now a seal between the parts, and in the valley on the outside:
It's also Sika so good luck disassembling the rims ever again, but once some tires were mounted they did finally hold air.
Speaking of tires, when the BBS project was nearing completion, enough time had passed that summer tires became a topic of much pondering. I had workable friction tires on the Pentas and the brand new GoodYear frictions in storage, but no summers yet. I had again two choices.
- Get some ContiPremiumContact2's off the interwebs and have them mounted at a local tire shop.
- Get something cheap for a nice round number at the aforementioned shop. This became an option when the tire shop I'd bought the GoodYears from had started treating me really well as a customer, letting me debug the BBSes using their equipment and personnel for free. They made me a really good offer on some cheapo tires: Point-S Summerstar2 205x55 R16 (also designed by Continental) for 350e including mounting, balancing etc. ContiPremiumContact2's would've been around 400e from the interwebs, not including mounting which usually comes to about 20-40e, so this time I decided to make my first foray into cheapo tires, grabbing the wannabe-continentals off the shelf and saving some cash.
Quality aside (which shall become known a bit later into spring), there were a few points about these point-sroll. First, tire size. This car should actually run 215s at a minimum and preferably 225s. Trouble is, those are expensive. I mean they're an absolute fucking ripoff. They were charging about 1/3 or 1/2 more for a set of 215/225 wide tires depending on profile. I thought since the difference is cosmetic at best, and worse comfort at worst, I'd just keep going the 205/55 route like I had with the winters.
Second, obviously the tires aren't gonna be as good as real Continentals. But I thought about it this way. My driving over the summer is not going to be hardcore enough to warrant the difference. In the summer months there's always going to be plenty of grip. I don't ever really accelerate hard, I like wofting. And this car's not for fast cornering anyway - it's an S-Class! And when it rains, this car will most likely be tucked inside. My #1 concern is tire noise. I asked about this, and they're supposed to be somewhat quiet, though not as so as real Contis. All in all, I think I'm gonna be good with these.
The valve job / engine rebuild has now been completed and took 5 weeks in total. 2 of them was waiting for parts to arrive from Germany, and the rest mostly queuing for the mechanic's time.
I'm going to skip a little ahead since you've seen pictures of the air filter box being off and exposed cams. Here's everything above the block removed.
Much to my delight cylinder walls looked pretty much pristine. There was a very slight completely symmetrical circular edge on top of every cylinder wall, but apart from that they were mint. Piston rings for cyls 1 and 5 were inspected and appeared very healthy.
Three things were wrong with the valves. First, The rods that control them were very worn and jiggled about almost humorously. Second, the valves themselves were worn in the same way. Third, the corner in each valve, and the corresponding corner in the head were worn in a way that made it impossible to get a perfect seal.
Put those together and no wonder there was no compression.
Got new valves, rods and seals/gaskets from Germany and the heads went out to be machined back into health.
Old stuff:
Refurbished heads:
After all this was said and done it was time to start reassembling the engine bay again.
Gaskets etc.
These spark plugs are 2007 NGK BP6ES's. They're supposed to be the best fit for this engine. They've been driven 3 summers and still look almost new. Nice.
It took about 2 days to put the engine back together, debug etc. It went pretty smoothly. The engine bay is damn crowded when you begin to do stuff like this, so glad I had a mechanic do it. After some timing adjustments, tightening fuel lines and bleeding air out the coolant system she fired right up. For a little while she ran fine but started coughing and shaking again. After some debugging it was obvious that one of the spark leads was bad. I had a set of new Bosch leads I'd ordered over the winter, so after having it thrown on today, she started running perfectly. And man, what a difference!
You can tell just by ear that it's running well. V7 does sound very different to a V8. Now it sounds like it should, and it's a very different sound to the one I recorded back when the Magnaflows were installed. Apart from the sound, the shaking and coughing is of course totally gone. She pulls strong and smooth. There's oodles more power than before and I haven't even been on true full throttle yet, too much ice and snow and running on winters.
Did I mention it sounds absolutely awesome now? It's slowly warming up outside enough that I can cruise with the window down, and let me tell you, it's everything I hoped for when I started planning the exhaust. It's somewhat quiet but somehow not. Inside there's this calm feeling, but even if you're just slightly on the throttle, or when you give it the beans, you get this distant thunder and a fantastic soundtrack bouncing off surrounding buildings.
This concludes engine maintenance. To recap, over the winter I went through everything: new timing chain, timing chain guiderails, valves, head refurb, new seals&gaskets everywhere and new spark leads. Spark plugs, distributor cap & rotor (Bosch), pistons, piston rings, block, cams, etc. all look and feel almost mint.
After the valve job the gearbox was a bit asthmatic. Wouldn't change up if I was even slightly on the throttle and let the engine rev a bit too much. This turned out to be an easy one, the wire that goes from the throttle linkage to the gearbox is adjustable from the assembly between the engine and firewall, so after loosening that the gearchanges are back to normal. I'm thinking of loosening it some more, for extra wafting.
At the very end of the final engine reassembling we stumbled upon the cause for the high idle problem. It was a vacuum valve in the intake manifold that had a broken plastic air line. Replace that and 30 euros later, I'm idling at about 700-800 rpms in neutral and 500 rpms in drive. Fantastic! Finally!
Drove the car home yesterday for the first time since all the shit started last month.
It's been snowing almost daily for a week now, with 5cm and sometimes (like last night) almost 20cm of new snow. But like I said, it's warming up and with efficient ploughing the streets are mostly snow-free in daytime. According to forecasts the snowy period should now be ending, with average temps rising above 0 and snowfalls being replaced by rain, which should take care of the rest of the snow.
Right after Christmas the passenger side orthopaedic seat controller broke in the same way the driver side one did last fall. I was able to source a replacement from a donor W124 diesel. Worked perfect, no hisses inside again.
Current todo list:
- Clean up interior since the dirty stuff is now complete. (imminent)
- Detail engine bay also. (imminent)
- Have paint buffed. (In the spring, when snow's completely gone)
- Derusting a spot in the driver side rear wing, between a horizontal surface and the bumper. After that, rustproofing. I will probably do these next fall.
- Rework exhaust tips. They were supposed to be stainless, but aren't. Also, I'm thinking of changing the design very slightly. This will probably happen soon(tm).
- Replace or repair driver seat and armrest upholstery. Will look into this next summer.
- Fix some interior wood trim. Epoxy up one strip near the front passenger side air vent (soon). Try to locate some donor parts for cracked-lacquer ones in the doors. (ongoing)
- Replace antenna mast seal (soon).
- Adjust driver window position to fix wind noise (soonTM).
- Rip out accessory alarm and maybe bring back original Merc one. (I wish)
- Fix gear selector lights. Probably a loose wire. Requires taking apart the center console again, so not a top priority.
- Debug sunroof controls. Doesn't work exactly like it should, although both the functions are there and workable. Probably miswired or the switch is broken. Need to look further into this.
- Source a donor Webasto and bring back to factory specs using the stuff that's left from before the malfunctioning burner was ripped out. (again, "I wish")
- Keep trying to find an OEM leather gearknob. Changing it requires disassembling the center console also, so will probably happen when I can be arsed to do that.
- Find a silent diff with the visco LSD still working. (During the next 3 years probably)
Kovaa ajoa!
- have them resealed by someone who knows what they're doing.
- sell them as is, and buy something else.
I took my sweet time pondering what to do. Soon after the problem initially surfaced, I created a thread at a Finnish Merc forum asking for help: I needed to find someone who would, for a fair fee, disassemble, sand, clean, reseal properly and assemble the rims. Unless I found that helpful soul, I was sure I was going to let the wheels go and cut my losses.
However, a man did offer to help. He was 3 hours away but would do the job for a reasonable price. In a rare strike of luck, a friend (the same one who lended me the Kanaldeckels for a while) was headed in that exact city soon-ish, and offered to take the wheels there. I gladly accepted unless there was an offer of help nearer until the day he was going, and there wasn't, so off the BBSes went.
The guy was a hobbyist who posts at the aforementioned forums every once in a while, and dangles with rims & cars & etc. Of course, he had a workshop for stuff like that. He seemed pretty knowledgeful of multiparter rims and BBSes in particular, and had done stuff like this before.
It took some time (about 2 weeks) for him to get my nonfunctional Sika seal off the rims, do the prepwork and the job itself. I know it must've been pretty awful to remove the Sikaflex from the rims as I did a bulk of that removal job myself the day before the rims were gonna go out. It was fuckin' solid. Incredibly adhesive and would not peel off. It would crumble into small pieces before letting go of the rim surface, despite me having not sanded the surface before applying the stuff like Sika recommend when dealing with aluminium.
Anyway, while the dude was working his magic he thought to ask if I'd like some stainless steel valves for them. Well, I'd heard that most hobbyists use them, they do look pretty nice and really are the "correct" kind of equipment for high-end rims like these, aren't very easily obtainable for BBSes in this country, and he wasn't asking much for them, so I said why not. They do look great on the rims.
Once done, he did an awesome job packaging the wheels up for a bus ride back home. That freight service did cost an extra 35 eur, but what's most important is that they got here undamaged.
There is now a seal between the parts, and in the valley on the outside:
It's also Sika so good luck disassembling the rims ever again, but once some tires were mounted they did finally hold air.
Speaking of tires, when the BBS project was nearing completion, enough time had passed that summer tires became a topic of much pondering. I had workable friction tires on the Pentas and the brand new GoodYear frictions in storage, but no summers yet. I had again two choices.
- Get some ContiPremiumContact2's off the interwebs and have them mounted at a local tire shop.
- Get something cheap for a nice round number at the aforementioned shop. This became an option when the tire shop I'd bought the GoodYears from had started treating me really well as a customer, letting me debug the BBSes using their equipment and personnel for free. They made me a really good offer on some cheapo tires: Point-S Summerstar2 205x55 R16 (also designed by Continental) for 350e including mounting, balancing etc. ContiPremiumContact2's would've been around 400e from the interwebs, not including mounting which usually comes to about 20-40e, so this time I decided to make my first foray into cheapo tires, grabbing the wannabe-continentals off the shelf and saving some cash.
Quality aside (which shall become known a bit later into spring), there were a few points about these point-s
roll. First, tire size. This car should actually run 215s at a minimum and preferably 225s. Trouble is, those are expensive. I mean they're an absolute fucking ripoff. They were charging about 1/3 or 1/2 more for a set of 215/225 wide tires depending on profile. I thought since the difference is cosmetic at best, and worse comfort at worst, I'd just keep going the 205/55 route like I had with the winters.Second, obviously the tires aren't gonna be as good as real Continentals. But I thought about it this way. My driving over the summer is not going to be hardcore enough to warrant the difference. In the summer months there's always going to be plenty of grip. I don't ever really accelerate hard, I like wofting. And this car's not for fast cornering anyway - it's an S-Class! And when it rains, this car will most likely be tucked inside. My #1 concern is tire noise. I asked about this, and they're supposed to be somewhat quiet, though not as so as real Contis. All in all, I think I'm gonna be good with these.
The valve job / engine rebuild has now been completed and took 5 weeks in total. 2 of them was waiting for parts to arrive from Germany, and the rest mostly queuing for the mechanic's time.
I'm going to skip a little ahead since you've seen pictures of the air filter box being off and exposed cams. Here's everything above the block removed.
Much to my delight cylinder walls looked pretty much pristine. There was a very slight completely symmetrical circular edge on top of every cylinder wall, but apart from that they were mint. Piston rings for cyls 1 and 5 were inspected and appeared very healthy.
Three things were wrong with the valves. First, The rods that control them were very worn and jiggled about almost humorously. Second, the valves themselves were worn in the same way. Third, the corner in each valve, and the corresponding corner in the head were worn in a way that made it impossible to get a perfect seal.
Put those together and no wonder there was no compression.
Got new valves, rods and seals/gaskets from Germany and the heads went out to be machined back into health.
Old stuff:
Refurbished heads:
After all this was said and done it was time to start reassembling the engine bay again.
Gaskets etc.
These spark plugs are 2007 NGK BP6ES's. They're supposed to be the best fit for this engine. They've been driven 3 summers and still look almost new. Nice.
It took about 2 days to put the engine back together, debug etc. It went pretty smoothly. The engine bay is damn crowded when you begin to do stuff like this, so glad I had a mechanic do it. After some timing adjustments, tightening fuel lines and bleeding air out the coolant system she fired right up. For a little while she ran fine but started coughing and shaking again. After some debugging it was obvious that one of the spark leads was bad. I had a set of new Bosch leads I'd ordered over the winter, so after having it thrown on today, she started running perfectly. And man, what a difference!
You can tell just by ear that it's running well. V7 does sound very different to a V8. Now it sounds like it should, and it's a very different sound to the one I recorded back when the Magnaflows were installed. Apart from the sound, the shaking and coughing is of course totally gone. She pulls strong and smooth. There's oodles more power than before and I haven't even been on true full throttle yet, too much ice and snow and running on winters.
Did I mention it sounds absolutely awesome now? It's slowly warming up outside enough that I can cruise with the window down, and let me tell you, it's everything I hoped for when I started planning the exhaust. It's somewhat quiet but somehow not. Inside there's this calm feeling, but even if you're just slightly on the throttle, or when you give it the beans, you get this distant thunder and a fantastic soundtrack bouncing off surrounding buildings.
This concludes engine maintenance. To recap, over the winter I went through everything: new timing chain, timing chain guiderails, valves, head refurb, new seals&gaskets everywhere and new spark leads. Spark plugs, distributor cap & rotor (Bosch), pistons, piston rings, block, cams, etc. all look and feel almost mint.
After the valve job the gearbox was a bit asthmatic. Wouldn't change up if I was even slightly on the throttle and let the engine rev a bit too much. This turned out to be an easy one, the wire that goes from the throttle linkage to the gearbox is adjustable from the assembly between the engine and firewall, so after loosening that the gearchanges are back to normal. I'm thinking of loosening it some more, for extra wafting.
At the very end of the final engine reassembling we stumbled upon the cause for the high idle problem. It was a vacuum valve in the intake manifold that had a broken plastic air line. Replace that and 30 euros later, I'm idling at about 700-800 rpms in neutral and 500 rpms in drive. Fantastic! Finally!
Drove the car home yesterday for the first time since all the shit started last month.
It's been snowing almost daily for a week now, with 5cm and sometimes (like last night) almost 20cm of new snow. But like I said, it's warming up and with efficient ploughing the streets are mostly snow-free in daytime. According to forecasts the snowy period should now be ending, with average temps rising above 0 and snowfalls being replaced by rain, which should take care of the rest of the snow.
Right after Christmas the passenger side orthopaedic seat controller broke in the same way the driver side one did last fall. I was able to source a replacement from a donor W124 diesel. Worked perfect, no hisses inside again.
Current todo list:
- Clean up interior since the dirty stuff is now complete. (imminent)
- Detail engine bay also. (imminent)
- Have paint buffed. (In the spring, when snow's completely gone)
- Derusting a spot in the driver side rear wing, between a horizontal surface and the bumper. After that, rustproofing. I will probably do these next fall.
- Rework exhaust tips. They were supposed to be stainless, but aren't. Also, I'm thinking of changing the design very slightly. This will probably happen soon(tm).
- Replace or repair driver seat and armrest upholstery. Will look into this next summer.
- Fix some interior wood trim. Epoxy up one strip near the front passenger side air vent (soon). Try to locate some donor parts for cracked-lacquer ones in the doors. (ongoing)
- Replace antenna mast seal (soon).
- Adjust driver window position to fix wind noise (soonTM).
- Rip out accessory alarm and maybe bring back original Merc one. (I wish)
- Fix gear selector lights. Probably a loose wire. Requires taking apart the center console again, so not a top priority.
- Debug sunroof controls. Doesn't work exactly like it should, although both the functions are there and workable. Probably miswired or the switch is broken. Need to look further into this.
- Source a donor Webasto and bring back to factory specs using the stuff that's left from before the malfunctioning burner was ripped out. (again, "I wish")
- Keep trying to find an OEM leather gearknob. Changing it requires disassembling the center console also, so will probably happen when I can be arsed to do that.
- Find a silent diff with the visco LSD still working. (During the next 3 years probably)
Kovaa ajoa!
thatis all I can say.