Restoration Difficulty Level

[66andBlue]

...  using the attached photo.  Note: one of the grommets is missing from the photo. ...

Andy
here is more useful stuff about these grommets and why they should be painted black after plating:
http://www.sl113.org/forums/index.php?topic=13803.msg93746#msg93746

[andyburns]

Thanks Alfred.   The rubber on mine is actually not to bad.  I may just doctor tem up and reuse.  One of the members pointed out that I only have four in total.  Three attaching to the engine and one to the battery tray.  I ended up bead blasting all mine and coated with 2k epoxy primer and then 2k satin.  Ie didnt go down the electroplating route.  Guess as long as they dont rust I have done the right thing.

[andyburns]

Back home and back onto the refit.  Plenty of time on drive back to think up a plan of attack for this week.  First job completed tonight reassembling the steering shaft.  Everything went well.  Only time consuming activity was repacking the two bearings with fresh grease.  I am happy I took the time as 50 year old grease tends to go a bit crusty.  Took quite a bit of coaxing to 'thumb' fresh grease through the bearing until the majority of the old crust was pushed out.  The bearing at the steering wheel was quite fiddly with a couple of springs needing to be removed to gain access. 

After it was all put back together I did my first trial fit up to see if the length was going to be ok.  Quite a nervous moment.  I had visions of the shaft having to be pulled out and lengthened again due to mistakes in my shaft shortening calcs.   But all looks pretty much well mm perfect and I am certain that it will work out well.   Just need to wait for the electroplating of the bolts and shroud clamp to come back and I will have a complete steering system again.

I am interested if I am doing the right thing installing the steering shaft at this point.  I am wondering if there is anything that should be installed under the dash before I put this in.  If anyone has been down this route before I would appreciate your insight.

[66andBlue]

Andy,
have you looked closely at the rubber donut in the switch under the brake pedal?
It can be replaced with the steering shaft in place but it is less pain when you have more room.
See: http://www.sl113.org/forums/index.php?topic=12083.0

[andyburns]

Thanks Alfred.  Good arrows!  I checked mine and its non existent.  Would have never know it was even there.  I will order up the part.  Does it make a huge difference?  Seems to me it looks almost like a dust cap over the switch rather than a solid stopper.

[66andBlue]

Andy,
if your car is a rattler, then no, it would not make much difference, but if it is a quiet car as you would expect it to be after all the work you are doing, then YES! Without it you will hear a loud clunk when you release the brake pedal as George describes in the first post in the link.
It is not a dust cap but quite solid and quite stubborn to get on. Heat up the rubber in hot water and use some lubrication.

[andyburns]

Thanks Alfred.   The only downside is I now will have to wait another two or three weeks while I arrives.  Even the smallest of details can hold up the works :'(

[andyburns]

I am a Buds Benz convert.  I have decided to spend my hard earned money on a complete Buds interior set after David, the owner of Buds, spent a considerable amount of time and helped me out with some really good advice on exactly what I should and shouldn't replace.  He has saved me a couple of thousand NZ over the other suppliers I was looking at.

Dealing with the other suppliers was like pulling your own teeth with a rusty pair of pliers.  None of them seemed that interested in taking my money off me.  When I asked seemingly sensible question it was met with very blunt non informative answers or no answers at all.  I would have thought that they would have been experts all the in's and out's of 113 interior and easily and quickly been able to sort me out.  Nup!

David tried to talk me into getting new squabs.  I really didn't want to spend the extra 1000USD and pushed back on him asking to justify the expense given my existing seats looked pretty damn good.  He put up with my antics and worked through the problem with me, happily reviewed all the photos I sent him and made an excellent suggestion that I actually cut my seats apart to get a definitive diagnosis. 

It took quite a bit of resolve to take the Stanley knife to the seats but I am really glad he talked me into it.  Showed up the full extent of the degradation of the original horse hair pads and shonky repairs previous owners had had commissioned.  Davids instincts/experience was right from the beginning and he put up with my naive ranting in a very patient and professional manner.  Hats off.

I ordered and paid for a complete carpet kit, early horse hair squabs, leather seat covers, new door panels, leather door panel covers, 110 feet of leather to cover the dash, additional side panels, soft top hatch cover and kinder seat, and also a new German soft top.  All my money from my 2002 sale went into paying for this so fingers crossed it all comes up a bunch of roses.

[andyburns]

Todays mission

1) Back in the bead blaster to redo some of the gold plated bits and pieces I wasn't happy with.  I have discovered that if you don't disassemble components and then get them gold plated then the chemicals used in the first pickling part of the process dont get washed off properly and 'wash off' the gold coating in the latter stages of the process.  The accelerator transfer bar that goes over the top of the engine is an example of me getting lazy.  Its a pain to take apart with little cotter pins and circlips holding ball joints together.  Its quite prominent in the engine bay so its not one of those things you can afford to screw up.   Also for some reason the cast arms need special attention and if you take them right off the arm and do them separate you get a much better finish.

2) Every W108 I have stripped as well as the pagoda has had badly deteriorated heater pipes. These run under the exhaust manifold out of sight and are very hard to get to.  Most of them have been so bad that holes either have already started or are just about to.  If they let go then the consequences might not be to great.  All the cars I have refurbished I redo these in stainless to totally eliminate the issue ever coming back again.  I hand bend some stainless pipes last night and now need to fabricate and weld the short tee you see in the photo today.  The stainless I have used is 2mm wall thickness so quite hard to crux.   Will probably weld a stainless bead in its place to hold the rubber pipes on.  Will post some better pictures when I have finished.

[jameshoward]

Yep, you're absolutely right about that top pipe in the second pic. Had mine out to rub down and respray last weekend when replacing my exhaust manifolds. The pipe was pretty bad, but cleaned up well. I also found the much-vaunted vin no stamped on the inside of the fender on the primer, neat as can be.

It's easy to see how these pipes get in a bad state and are missed. 

JH

[andyburns]

Hi James,  I would love to see a pic of your vin.  Mine is not on the fender but on the inside right chassis rail.  I really tried hard when doing the paint job to somehow expose these the best I could.  Because the chassis rail metal is so thick it looks as if they had problems stamping the numbers clearly on the rail.  I am wondering if this is why they choose to move it to the inner guard on yours.  Even with a lick of paint on mine they are not legible.

[andyburns]

For quite some time I have been dreading even contemplating refitting the window winding gear.  They are the only parts that when I took them out I remember thinking to myself 'should I be taking more photos.... I don't think I will remember how this goes back.  Today I faced my fears and dragged all the bits and pieces out of the shed and gave them a really good degrease.  Don't know quite what to do with them in terms of a cosmetic restoration.  

I think only a few of the bits were electroplated and the majority were just zinc coated panel steel.  I may be wrong and am interested to know what all the rest of you think.  Most of my bits have a light layer of red oxide all over them.  I am thinking I may just use steel wool and then apply a product like POR15 metal ready to put a thin layer of protection back on them.  

I am also interested to here from any of you who have refitted the regulators and how easy or difficult you found the job.

I decided to also finish off all the smaller bits and pieces that require bead blasting and painting or electroplating.  I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew as I have a fairly substantial bucket of dozens of items.  Probably more hours than I can tolerate standing on one leg operating the bead blaster foot pedal.  

To cheer myself up I decided to do a trial fit of all the instruments.  This absolutely made my day.  The pictures don't really do them justice.  I don't know why but silver is a really hard color to photograph and always looks quite dull and gray.  The gear looks beautiful against the fresh paint and has given me a good sense of what the interior will look like when complete.  I can't wait!

I threw the strange blurry pic in just for fun  

[andyburns]

TOTAL DISTRACTION.  For the past couple of days my focus has been pulled totally off the 113.  Mercedes B New Zealand have a press release for the new S class and asked me to supply my two cars to be displayed at the function along side several other period cars.  I didn't anticipate the effort required to get them into presentable condition.  The black 250s in particular was stored under a cover in the same garage as I do all my painting in.  When I pulled off the cover I discovered that several holes had allowed over spray to drift in and attach to the black paint work.  Not good when your dealing with epoxy based paint.  Spent quite a few hours 'teasing' it all off again.

Back onto the 113 tomorrow morning.  In my radar 1) Window winding mech 2) brake lines.

I did drop another mother load of parts into the electroplater today. 

[andyburns]

Finished off my painting of the latest lot of satin black parts today.  Was really pleasant with the additional room.  No ducking and diving around hanging parts in close proximity.  I spread right out.  Its really emphasized how important it is to have the right working environment.  I wish I had a larger shed!!!  I think if I ever do this again I wont start until I have a lot more storage and work space.

I also picked up my stainless heater pipes from the welder.  I was contemplating welding them myself and have the right rods for the tig welder but don't have any argon and definitely wouldn't have made as nice a job as the guys down the road did.  Cost 80 dollars for the welding bringing the total replacement cost to 110nzd (30 for the stainless pipe).  Well worth the extra bother.  I am not sure but am picking that the original pipes from MB would have far exceeded this with shipping added on.  Will add these to the next shipment of parts getting the satin black treatment to give them the factory look.  I replaced a few pipes on the 280se with stainless and didn't paint them.  They stand out if left unpainted.


 

[andyburns]

Just had all the certification finalized on the shortening of my steering shaft.  Quite an involved process but I am happy that I have taken the extra effort and have a totally legal and safe conversion.   

For any of you that are interested see the attached report SAFE produced for the foundation of the certification request/report. 

[andyburns]

Had a big day in the bead blaster again.  Finished off all my brake lines and also half of the window winder assembly.  Dropped the latest load at the electroplaters this time for zinc coating.  Unpacked all the bits I did last week to discover that they have lost the saw toothed ratchet arm for the handbrake.  Even though its small the only replacement I can find on the internet is 180 Euro.  Ouch.  I have the the guys at the electroplaters looking for it and will turn the garage upside down tomorrow.

Spent the rest of the afternoon fitting up the hubs and brake calipers.   Even though its slow going at least stuff is going back on the car.  Even though I have done all this before on the 108 you forget all the torque setting so I have ended up spending quite a bit of time in the books and looking at photos to figure out the correct assembly order.

Another really exciting bit of news this week is that it is looking as if my car was the very first 230sl imported new into New Zealand.  The dealer records indicate that only 3 230's were ever imported and only an handful more 250's and 280's.  At the recent 40th about 15 cars turned up so I guess over the years quite a few more have been imported second hand from other countries and also a few tourist delivery cars were probably thrown into the mix. 

[andyburns]

After a couple of weeks staring at the pedal set on the bench and wondering if I should refurb it, or take the easy road and slam it back in as is,  I made my mind up.  It only took 15 minutes to pull apart and in hindsight I talked myself into thinking it was more complicated that it actually was.  

Took all the factory paint off with paint stripper ready for the bead blaster tomorrow.  I will probably also do the window winder lifters while I am at it.

Will get all the bushes redone while its apart and also sort out the rubber brake stop thats completely missing.  Have also ordered from buds a brand new master clutch cylinder to prevent the new carpets from getting soiled.  

[andyburns]

The dreaded air box/blower.  Unlike the pedal set this was a hard as I thought it would be.  Pretty much every nut and bolt were seized and both of the fans were rusted onto the motor shaft.  I used most of a can of penetrating oil on the thing over a two day period.  Had to use a bit of heat on the fan shafts to move them.  I guess its more rusted than all the other components under the dash due to all the moist air its sucked in over its 50 years of use.

The only reason to pull this apart is cosmetic and removing all the surface rust.  It was probably good enough to put back in.  I tested the motor before I started the dis assembly and it all sounded ok on both speeds. 

After pulling it all to pieces and stripping all the factory paint I am much more happy about the decision as under the paint was quite a bit of rust.

Due to its awkward shape it was a pain to paint strip.  Lots of nooks and crannies.  I will bead blast tomorrow and give it two or three coats of epoxy.  Am picking it will be a bit of a handful to paint. 

[andyburns]

The blower motor seems ok but is a little noisy.  If anyone in here is an expert with electric motors I would appreciate if you could download the attached vid and take a quick listen and tell me if you think it sounds ok.  If it is tired now seems like a really good time to fix the problem.

[andyburns]

Air blower and pedal set have now been blasted and painted ready for the final coat.  The blower case was really tricky to paint without getting too many runs.  Good practice for the final coat.    Blasted all the nuts, bolts and fixtures for these and delivered them to the electroplater. 

[andyburns]

I took the electric motor down to a specialist who gave it the thumbs up.  Looks as if someone has replaced it prior to my ownership as it seems quite fresh.  Mounted it back into the case and gave the fans a really good clean and reinstalled.  Just waiting for all the clips to turn up from the electroplater for final assembly.

Turned my attention to the defrost ducts both which have damage where previous owners have not understood the mounting system and used excessive force trying to remove them without first undoing all the fasteners.  Result ripped and torn cardboard.
 
Have to figure out if its more economical to repair or replace.  I am thinking of using epoxy resin on the inside and outside.  It should get fairly good adhesion to the cardboard so probably would work quite well.   Will price up repro unit over the next couple of days.

Ouuuuch.  Buds have the vents for 176 each.  352US + shipping.   Anyone know if there are cheaper alternatives available.

[JamesL]

I'm in awe here!

[stickandrudderman]

Have to figure out if its more economical to repair or replace.  I am thinking of using epoxy resin on the inside and outside.  It should get fairly good adhesion to the cardboard so probably would work quite well.   Will price up repro unit over the next couple of days.

Use fibreglass bridging paste, it works a treat! Apply it to the damaged area and the apply masking tape to the still wet paste to smooth out the surface. Leave to set, remove the masking tape and voila, you have a neat repair that can simply be painted over and is almost un-noticeable!

[andyburns]

Thanks Stick.  I have never heard of bridging paste.  Where do you get it.  I have been looking at fiberglass repair kits which are only about 40 dollars over here.  Put some mesh down to reinforce the area.  You know the drill.  I thought that where its actually broken through, being and anchor point, will require a reasonable amount of strength.  I dont really care too much about what it look like given it can be seen once installed.  I was thinking of doing the majority of the repair from inside and using something like your technique on the outer surface to tidy it up cosmetically.   Did you notice on my left hand one the window wiper motor arms have been sawing into it as well due to its position being dropped down because of the lack of fixing.   Will sleep on it and do a bit more research.  If you have done this before stick have you got any pictures of your repairs you can post to give me an idea of which way to go.

[rgr69SL]

Andy, Miller's do reproduction vents at $95 US per side if you can't repair your set.