If you ever have wondered if taking the time to post pictures or share advise on this website it helpful, allow me to share with you a success story in way of saying thanks to all of you! I have always wanted to work on cars. When I bought my 230sl I finally had my chance. Unfortunately, my car knowledge was limited to knowing how to put gas in them and check the oil. Well, thanks to all the thoughtful, insightful and educated individuals who responded to my posts, and the search engine on this site, today I finished fixing my passenger door! I did it all by myself, I might add -- not bad for a girl!
My passenger window had collasped inward and I was afraid it would break if I shut the door without the window rolled down. So I took off the door panel and found the "guide jaws" were sitting in the bottom of the door well. I ordered the replacement guides from Ray and installed them. After I finally got them on -- the door glass still was really wobbly. I decided to go ahead and put the original guide jaws back on. So I removed the felt guides, cleaned the tracks (again) and put on the guide jaws. OOPS! I put them on backwards! I carefully removed the jaws, glue and cleaned the tracks again. I put them on the right way and IT WORKED!!! The window rolls up smooth and perfect flush with the weather stripping. Speaking of weatherstripping. Mine was cracked and old so I placed an order with Ray and got new rubber stripping. I carefully applied the glue to the weather stripping and applied it to the door. OOPS -- I covered up all the holes with weather stripping so the screws wouldn't go in. I took off the weatherstripping, cleaned off the glue (again) and reapplied (minus the holes). It to turned out perfect. In the mean time, I had to try to screw screws in between the door jam so I bought a tool I thought would work...actually, I bought a lot of tools and tried to set the screw. After 7 hours, I finally figured out that the "socket wrench" needed to have a "philips head bit" in the end inorder for it to work. (I thought the end of the socket wrench went around the outside of the screw). I cleaned out everything, put the plastic on as advised and followed every piece of advice I read.
Thanks to all of you who have come before and been kind enough to put together the technical manual, answer "newbie" questions and share your valuable iknowledge.
In case your wondering, the next project is to replace my dark blue soft top--mine is so old it won't even open up. I can't wait to start my search to see how to do this next challenge. Wish me luck!!
Marti
63 230sl Euro