Another esoteric judging question.

[Shvegel]

Just curious if anyone knows if using a Sanden compressor or single pass AC condenser is a deduct in scoring at an MBCA event?  If the judging standard is as it left the factory isn't the AC in and of itself an add on and therefore a deduct?  I know it is a stretch but figured I would ask.  I started down the path of updating the AC and bought all the proper compressor etc and now am backtracking back to the original system.

[Tomnistuff]

Is it even true that the factory installed AC, or were they all dealer installed?

[ja17]

I have judged many national and local MBCA concours. In a strict MB concours, I would suspect that only the dealer installed, factory approved AC units of the day would be acceptable without deduction, especially if the interior fan and condenser unit is not correct.  A few point deduction may not be worth the drawbacks of the early, more original units.

[Tomnistuff]

Thanks Joe. 
Shvegel, I don't mean to insult the MB engineers, after all we are 50 years farther down the road now, but as I used to say in the auto industry, "if I wanted something that didn't work, I could have got it much cheaper."  That's a bad joke, but at the same time, I don't think it is fair that Mercedes should be judged on aftermarket parts installed by dealers.  I would like to be a purist, but I won't be a masochist.  My home-designed AC system may not work because I haven't tried it yet, but I installed a Sanden compressor and a single pass condenser.
But who am I to judge anybody.  The previous car I restored was "pure", beautiful and except for the power train, a piece of junk.  It wasn't a Mercedes.
Tom Kizer.

[Jonny B]

It would be a small deduct as Joe states, perhaps a ½ point. The dealer installed period correct A/C units would not be a deduct.

If you read the later brochures, near the end of production, they state that A/C was available from the factory. Don't really have a good way to substantiate beyond the brochure.

[Shvegel]

There was a part of me that wanted to do all original hoses and R12 refrigerant(I still have 30 pounds) but since the penalty is so small I won’t bother. For even a point I wouldn’t be a masochist.

[MikeSimon]

In the 60s and 70s, A/C was very much market driven. One of the issues was, there was no A/C compressor manufacturer in Germany. None of the German car manufacturers offered A/C.
In markets where they had a demand, they left it to the dealers to install it.
Bear in mind that in Central Europe, to this day, few homes have air conditioning.
When Daimler started to use power steering, they looked to the US for a pump manufacturer and finally persuaded Vickers to supply a pump to them, although Vickers had made  the decision to pull out of the automotive market.

[Shvegel]

Mike,
That leads me to my favorite BMW story.  When BMW retired the E12 5 series in 1981 the US market begged the company to increase the capacity of the AC on the new E28 edition.  The German response was along the lines of, “Perfectly Adequate.”  The US representatives persuaded BMW to send 2 engineers to a meeting in Kansas City.  They were greeted by the US delegation and ushered to the parking lot where they were told the Meeting would take place in Texas in 2 days.  They were given a Black E12 with a black interior.  The air conditioner was fully functional but the windows were disabled.  They reached Oklahoma before they gave up.

[Mike Hughes]

In the middle 1950's Sir William Lyons was present for the unveiling the new Jaguar MK8 saloon at the New York Auto Show.  After the festivities a businessman from upstate N.Y. approached Sir William and began to really give him a hard time about the ineffectual heater in his MK7 saloon and asked him if Jaguar had improved the heating system in the new model.  Sir William was said to have replied, "Your heater is perfectly adequate, sir, you just need to dress for the weather!"

[ksalzer]

Totally off topic, but I just noticed you, Tomnistuff, had one of the few 113's with a turquoise interior. That color MB tex is, as far as I know, unavailable, as is the leather. The one other turquoise interior I know of (leather), besides my own (MB tex), had hides custom dyed for his restoration, which was fairly costly. Out of curiosity, what did you do with the old seats and trim?

[Mike Hughes]

Sorry to continue with the off-topic topic, but Alex Djuric in N.C. also has a 250SL with turquois M-B Tex interior.

[ksalzer]

Alex’s turquoise interior is the one I was referring to where he had to get the hides dyed - it looks spectacular! (I think he may have changed from MB Tex to leather.) Don’t know of any others besides mine and his with that color interior...

[Alex D]

Hi, Alex did not have his MB Tex dyed, it is all original, and showing a little patina at this point is nice. I looked into re dying the orginal MB Tex but could not get a guarantee it would be an exact match, and can not take any chances of anybody screwing it up either by dying or removing/installing, if it gets screwed up some how I'm really up a river without a paddle. I did speak to one of the major leather suppliers about replacing it with leather, and was told it would need to be a custom leather dye and would have to buy 6 cars worth of leather hides as a minimum. 

The carpet on the other hand was replaced.  After searching the planet earth for 4 years trying to find turquoise carpet in German Square Weave and was unsuccessfully, finally discovered I had to take drastic measures.  Had to take a white German Square Weave and have it custom dyed by North Carolina State University department of Textile Science, and it was truly done with science and technology.  Another member of this group from Australia liked the carpet so much, he had the same thing done and is very happy with the results. 

The pic show the original faded carpet and the new dyed carpet. The new dyed carpet color was matched from a sample of unfaded carpet from under the parcel shelf. 

[ksalzer]

Apologies for continuing this off-topic: Looks like I got my facts a little muddled regarding Alex's carpet and Tex... sorry for that. Nonetheless, the huge effort and results really are amazing.

[Shvegel]

Sanden it is.  Now I am considering going with the 4 speed as opposed to my factory Automatic.

[Tomnistuff]

Ksalzer, my turquoise mbtex was stained, cracked and torn so I replaced it with Navy blue leather and scrapped the mbtex about twenty years ago.
Tom Kizer