Need cooling system and oil capacity on a '66, 230sl

[motorhead]

I searched the forums and couldn't find the cooling system and oil fill capacity for a '66, 230sl. This is a non A/C car if that matters. I don't have the owners manual as my disposal. Thanks for any information.

[Jonny B]

Oil - 5.5 liters max
(Oil filter 0.5 liter)

When I change the oil and filter, I will put in 6 US quarts and then check,

Cooling system, with heater - 10.8 liters

Well worth looking for an owners manual, or the technical data book (which is a wealth of information about the car - actually all the MB cars for the period covered) dated. The one I have is dated on the cover as Issue 1969 and covers cars back to November 1966. If before that, look for the November 1966 book.  These are not terribly difficult to come by on ebay. They are about 4.5 X 6 inches.

A/C doesn't matter, that was fitted after the fact.

The info is in the Technical Manual - available to full members

[jameshoward]

The car takes about 10 litres of coolant, but you will struggle to get in more than about 8 or 9 unless you seriously make an effort to drain it from the engine block, or hold the car upsidedown and shake it. From memory, the total capacity is 10.8 litres. If you're about to change the coolant and haven't done it before on the car, do a bit of a search. There are lots of tips on avoiding air lock and not using the rad drain plug if it hasn't been undone in a while.

Oil capacity is realistically about 5 litres on a car without an oil cooler. I think officially its about 5.5 litres. Lots of great info on the site about doing this also, and getting the right parts changed, like the hose pipe type washer in the oil filter housing (= death star critical...)

[jameshoward]

Quick draw Jonny!

Musttypefaster...

Motorhead, PM me your email address and I'll email you a pdf of the owners manual (most of it).

[motorhead]

Thank you James and JonnyB, I am doing a bunch of repair on the car and rebuilding the shift linkage. I am going to do a citric acid flush on the cooling system (MB recommended procedure) Nee to know total cooling system capacity so I can get the proper ratio of coolant in it.

ANY suggestions on freeing up stuck heater valves?

[66andBlue]

Pour some PB Blaster or WD 40 around the valve and hope they do the trick.
But most often the rubber seal is deteriorated and prevents turning the valve.  Follow this instructions to fix the problem but make sure to get the correctly sized O-ring otherwise you'll repeat the procedure again sooner than you care:
http://www.sl113.org/wiki/Electrical/HeaterControlValve

[ja17]

Also, before you refill the cooling system, remove the heater hose in the engine compartment going to the heater valve and spray the WD-40 directly into the valve.

[Ron]

When I took out my heater core for rebuilding, I wanted to unstick the valve and keep it that way.  I found "stopcock grease", it is for glass stopcocks in chemistry labs.  It is silicon, and won't flow when hot.  I put the valve all back together with that, and have my fingers crossed.  It's only got 3 years on it, maybe I'll live to say, hey, that worked well.