Thank you Peter, Hauser and Doug
Doug, of course you have helped me more than once too regarding details of the leather interior of a Pagoda you once owned, which I put to good use in the restoration of this project.
I don't want to forget the continuous help of David Gallon, my friend and parts supplier from San Diego, who is as much of a detail and originality nut as I am and always has been willing to answer or debate the most obscure detail with me.
I should also remember Tom LeClerc, who died only early this year of Lou Gehrig's disease, after spending many years restoring his own 230SL. We had only just met when he contacted me to finish out some things on his 230SL late last year, so that he could enter his final work at the Newport Beach car show (at Strawberry Fields golf course in Irvine). He received a second place finish against some tough competition, in a class judged by Tom Hanson, Scott Melnik and Bob Geco, mostly because he had to convert his car to an automatic transmission in order to be able to drive it. Unfortunately, he never was able to drive it anyway. Tom LeClerc had the good sense to track down several of the last remaining, brand new, original honeycomb-style firewall paddings in the 1980s and I was able to get two sets, which he had offered to our forum members at $2500 a set (a fair price).
Anyway, now I am back to continuing development of my M130E 3.0L engine. I have been developing a special camshaft together with the famed performance cam people at Isky cams. It is based on the European spec cam and adapted to the greater air requirements of the 3.0L engine. Early horsepower tests of the engine using the standard US spec cam have been very encouraging and the engine pulls considerably stronger than stock, from low to high RPM. I will report more as soon as I have done tests with the new cam.
