Starting a sleeping car

[Bonnyboy]

As noted earlier I purchased a 69 280sl a few years back and now I want to go and pick it up from its 20 18 year sleep.  Its 750 miles away and I will be showing up with a truck and trailer and would like to bring home a running vehicle.  I am going to try to get it running because I'm that kind of guy but any major failure along the way will see me bring home a non-running lump.  Based on my review of previous postings on this board I plan on trying the following procedure to resurect the car and see if I can drive it onto the trailer.  If you have any ideas to a step I'm missing or one that is out of place please advise - am I missing anything.

•   Put air in tires
•   Pull car out of cave
•   Install new battery and hook up
•   Pour couple quarts of oil into the rocker cover and drain oil to get to safe level.
•   Remove plugs.
•   add bit of oil to each cylinder
•   Open cover to fuel injector pump and free rack if necessary.
•   Drain gas from tank / replace with new gas
o   Discharge pressure of fuel line
o   Disconnect the injector lines on manifold and pump old gas into bucket until new gas comes out (need flex hose for injector lines)
o   Change main fuel filter
o   Clean injectors
•   Check pressure and output of the electric fuel pump: the delivery pressure with the ignition on (minimum terminal voltage at the pump of 11 volts) at a point "behind the fuel filter" should be 0.8 to 1.1 atm. I would check it on each side of the filter just to see what the difference is.
•   clean and re-gap the plugs
•   Take the tappet cover off and pour some oil over all the moving components
•    Disconnect lead to coil
•   Try to turn engine and make sure valves open and close
•   Replace coil lead, tappet cover etc and try to start vehicle
o   Check for oil pressure
o   Check for leaks
•   Try to drive it backwards / forwards

[Jonny B]

One of the major items not mentioned in the list is not so much about getting the car going, but getting the car stopped. After all that time sitting, the brake lines, hoses, etc, would be a big concern and you will need some stopping power up and down a trailer. There are plenty of threads on the site about waking up a sleeping beauty.

[al_lieffring]

•   Open cover to fuel injector pump and free rack if necessary.

I would not do this step unless you find when cranking the motor over that one or more of the injections lines are not pumping any fuel to the injector.

I imagine you are refering to the rectangular steel side cover, This would not realy help because it is not the rack mechanism that sticks, it is the pump pistons that stick and preventing the rack from moving, attempting to break the rack loose by forcing the rack can cause damage, stuck pump pistons need to be tapped lose from the top by removing the fitting below the injection line, then removing the internal check valve then tap the piston down until it contacts the cam.

[Benz Dr.]

It's a silly idea. If all you want to do is drive the car on to the trailer get a wench and pull it up. My expirience has been it takes a lot more to get a car going than you might think. Save it for when you get home and you can take your time.
Ask someone who's had to start a car that's been sitting for 5 years, or 10, or 15. Just get the thing home first.

[ctaylor738]

I think he meant "get a winch," but you never know about Dr. Dan ...

[IXLR8]

My "battery minder" at $20/hr could pull it up on the trailer for you.

I don't call her a wench as she might stop serving the hot toddys.


Joe

[wwheeler]

Dan is right. Why risk screwing up something very expensive when you can take your time and go through it very well.

Haste makes waste.

[Benz Dr.]

No...... I meant wench. I didn't think anyone was that sharp around here. No doubt the lack of spell checker will mess someone up some day. 

 Can't be any worse than when I was at a club meeting as chair and there was this rather well endowed young lady sitting in the front row with her mother. 
Somewhere during the meeting I said '' breast '' but meant to say best.  Well, some members started giggling at the back of the room and I stopped dead in my tracks.

  So, in an effort to save the moment I said, '' Always knew that would happen one day, folks, '' and kept right on talking. 

Young lady turned about six shades of red. She was kind of cute too.......her mother wasn't though. 

[snowyt 69]

Having woken up a sleeping car (10 years in a garage, top down), I can only concur with the general thread and say take your time.
Besides a busted fuel pump, a gas tank that could never be cleaned, and various and sundry other flaws, the most extreme problem I encountered was when I pulled off the radiator hoses. The inlet hose to the block was completely plugged with solidified coolant. I’ve never seen this before, but I sure am glad that whatever this substance was I didn’t suck it into the cooling passages of the engine. The thermostat was covered in the same sort of morphing slime, which looked like it came out of a bad science fiction movie from Japan in the 50’s. Besides my initial shock and lots of “Well, what is that exactly?” I simply cleaned the stuff off and away I went. I put the same thermostat back in the car by the way when I got it cleaned. I boiled it in water on my stove, saw it worked, knew it was a Mercedes thermostat from all the stampings and numbers, so I just re-used it. It was three months from the time I bought the car that I even attempted to turn it over, and this was by hand.
My patience was rewarded. The car continued to have issues even after I got it running, but Dan worked them out for me. Mostly it was crud in the original fuel tank. Distributor problems too, but nothing really to speak of considering how long my car had been parked.
And today? Well, today, I simply drive my car. I don’t even carry tools or spares. I haven’t checked, but my guess is I’m close to 6,000 kilometres of effortless, top down fun this summer.
These are great cars. But you wake them up gently, as you would any car. The only difference is, once you wake them up, they’re all ready to rock!
Best of luck with yours. May the story be as happy as mine has been.