My 1989 Mercedes 560 SEC

Do I see empty space front of coach? Room for (mercedes) V8 block table!

You know, I find myself strangely drawn to that idea... :lol:

Though it was much easier for the TG guys because they weren't particularly partial to any marque or motor type.. Whereas I'd have to find basically a seized M117.968 block for dirt cheap, which is not that easy...

M117 would make a cool table though.

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And it hold's 8 "vine" bottles ;) But to be different, instead of glass as a table, it could be part of roof or bonnet :rolleyes:
 
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Over the winter I've been trying to find out what's wrong with my electric antenna. It is the original Hirschmann one that came from the factory. Hirschmann electric antennas are extremely high quality and usually last for the lifetime of the car, but may require service and if neglected, may die completely. My problem was that one segment of the telescope was not extending and finally the antenna was getting veeery slow to operate and might not even come back down completely. My mission was to find out whether the electric motor was tired beyond repair or whether I could still salvage the thing with a service.

Untitled by jkohvak, on Flickr

The antenna is attached to the car basically with one bolt. Remove it, then remove the antenna wire, grounding wire, and power wires, and the whole camera unit can be wiggled down and out. There is also a trim nut on the outside that needs to be loosened but that's pretty much all there is to it.

Untitled by jkohvak, on Flickr

Here are the guts of the thing with 25 years worth of black crud removed. Very little of the original red lubricant was salvageable, it had turned into black goo with all the foreign particles that had been making their way into the antenna assembly over the years.

So basically here you have the electric motor that spins a transfer gear and the electronics which run the motor. The main gear, which has two sets of tooth, one for the drive and one for the antenna "spine". Then you have the wheel which collects the spine. Then the main housing which all the parts mount to.

The actual antenna box has clips on the outside lip which hold it shut. It's a good design, tight and not so prone to breaking even after quarter of a century.

Untitled by jkohvak, on Flickr

Here are the main parts mocked together. The antenna spine enters the housing from the top and of course runs with the tooth of the main gear. Roughly between the two screws is the drive gear of the electric motor. The electric motor drives that gear with a rubber belt. It appeared to be in excellent condition.

Untitled by jkohvak, on Flickr

Here is the actual antenna. Telescopic with 4 segments that collapse into the fat part visible in the first picture. Behind it all of course is the spine that is toothed all the way and permanently mounted to the uppermost segment. The spine was completely filled with crud to the point where it looked like it had no tooth. It cleaned up pretty well with brake cleaner. Worse problem is that over the years it has gained a curve as you can see here, and therefore it's a total bitch to install inside pipe-like parts with unreachable narrow openings inside.

In summary my efforts were 2/3 a success and 1/3 a failure. On the upside I got the fourth segment free by holding the antenna in the vice and wiggling the segment in question with some pliers. It was just stuck from.. getting stuck some time and then years of non-use. Also, upon cleanup and testing afterwards, it's pretty clear that the motor is OK and anyway most of the antenna assembly is in good condition.

The downside is that even after cleanup the operation of the antenna telescope is very jerky and the antenna gets stuck on just the electric motor. So I definitely need to do the "big service" which means buying a new telescope (with spine) for it. Thankfully it's a readily available part and should cost me about 85 EUR shipped. So I don't need a complete antenna package which costs multiple hundreds for a genuine Hirschmann.

I'll get on that, and in the meanwhile I have the antenna locked to the fully extended position so that I can use the radio.

We have had some pretty good weather recently and the snow is on its way out at least in Southern Finland. I plan to put the coupe on the road again if not next weekend then on one of the following weeks. I have a long-ish trip coming which would be fun to do with this car.
 
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Don't worry, once you get it working, it'll keep working with minimal maintenance. I refurbished the antenna in my W124 2 years ago, and since then I keep a can of lubricant (ballistol) and a rag in the trunk. Needs cleaning/lubricating every other month or so. It's still a little jerky, but that doesn't bother me... But that might just be because I put in a used teleskope that was still operational :mrgreen:


Also, wiping the antenna clean somehow always looks like you're jerking off the car, which some people will find hilarious :p
 
When sourcing distributor parts, would you always go OEM, Bosch, or is Bremi acceptable? Asking on behalf of a less-eBay savvy enthusiast who has a rather terrible 420 SEC in his storage barn.
 
I always recommend Bosch due to many terrible second hand experiences with non-OEM distributor parts, spark plugs and wires. Mercedes-Benz electronics for 80s cars (including ignition) are mostly Bosch.

I had a non-Bosch diz cap in the 300SEL and it looked and felt badly made compared to a Bosch part.

Unfortunately Bosch quality is going downhill as well. A new Bosch diz rotor my friend bought for a 420E failed in just a couple thousand km, and my new diz cap for the 300SEL had to be replaced after just ~4500km. But there's nothing we can do about that, it's still the best bet in my opinion. Also the failure of my Bosch cap might be due to a missing O-ring in the car that possibly lets moisture inside the cap.
 
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Thanks for asking! It has been some good and some bad. In fact the car is working quite well. I got into the dissatisfying end of the misfire problem in that I rotated the distributor around (adjusted timing) and unplugged/plugged some wires that go into the diz housing. After that I got no misfires anymore and was able to do successful test pulls many times over a long period of time. I was also able to complete the standing mile pull at the airstrip cleanly without misfires. I'll post the result below. Anyway, in the end there was not a clear cause for the misfires because I did nothing concrete and everything after the adjustments should've been the same as before. Only it worked afterwards. It really sucks, but on the other hand I've had a nice summer with the car working. I can only conclude that either there was a bad connection in the wire(s?) or the distributor had been set in a very slightly wrong position after the engine rebuild. And, anyone who claims to know anything about the ignition / Bosch CIS-E systems on these cars, says that supposedly the "system corrects itself". I can't really argue with that because I don't really know how it works.

Apart from that, the only new issue has been that some condensators finally went bad in my cruise control amplifier box. I took the box out and the condensators were totally bulged. I started investigating this because the cruise control started having intermittent issues (won't activate, accelerates irregularly, or deactivates while cruising). It's possible to have some new condensators soldered in so that shouldn't be too much of a problem, just need to get it sorted. Also, it looked like the box had been opened before. It was loosely put to where it sits in the driver's footwell, and the box had been gauged open. I assume some parts had been changed/resoldered before and I think I could even identify which ones.

I've spent some time investigating the power steering fluid leak and it's looking annoying. I cleaned it and followed up to look where it's leaking and it's looking like a hard issue to fix. Either a rebuild of the power steering box (new o-rings basically) or a new box. The leak might be in the seals of the steering input shaft side but it's very difficult to say because the fluid is spreading everywhere. However, it's leaking very little (I haven't added any this summer and there's still plenty in there.) So it's looking like I will ignore the problem unless the car literally starts failing inspection because of it.

My tires are getting pretty worn (like 2mm of tread left on average) but I'll try to push the issue until next summer.

To be really honest it's been so annoying to debug all the ignition problems and fluid leaks with the 560SEC (and also the 300SEL) that I've been considering selling them and moving onto some newer but still interesting cars. But that feeling tends to go away when I drive the 560SEC.


Quarter mile time (0-402 meters): 15.042 sec
Standing mile speed (1609 meters): 224 km/h
Measured on: 27th August 2016
 
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