HELLO ALL!!
A few years back I was lucky enough to inherit a 1969 280SL from my mother. At the time I was in college and did not really have the funds or the time to properly take care of the car. Now that I have graduated and started a decent career, one of those two things has changed--I will let you guess which! So now my adventure has begun...
I am a pretty active member of the Nissan Xterra forum, thenewx.org, since that is my daily driver, but now I am looking forward to really digging into the Merc and starting to fix it up. It has always been a daily driver in my family since 1973. I grew up in the passenger seat of the car as my mom drove it everywhere, so even at my young age (26 years), it has a very special significance to me. This is a feeling I imagine most all the members of this forum can appreciate! It has been garaged and driven exclusively in southern California as long as we have owned the car, and I believe the few years before my mother purchased it. The car runs pretty well for the life it has lived and I drive it every weekend and lots of weekdays when I get home from work. The sun setting on the left coast @ 6:30 in the evening makes for an excellent back drop for my grocery getting! My goal has never been to have a pristine vehicle that I can park at car shows and stand next to--I want to DRIVE it like my mother did for all those years and my philosophy with any work I do on it will be motivated by that paradigm. I figure I will dig mostly into the mechanical stuff and get it running like a top again. There are lots of small things and a few major things I am hoping to start addressing as funds become available to me. A little leak here, a creak there...etc...most annoyingly it occasionally pops out of fourth gear under throttle, which as I have read on here is going to be one of the major issues!
Maybe to get started you experts could point me in the right direction for finding some of the little parts I will need during the various maintenance procedures I am going to tackle? Up to this point I have had a mechanic do the routine stuff, but I want to start everything myself, so first on my list is start with the easy stuff, oil change, spark plugs, air filter, etc... Finding the filter itself is easy enough, but what about the little o-rings that accompany it? Where do most of you guys in the US source those type of parts? I tried rockauto.com then the suppliers list on here but unfortunately that list is not the most helpful for things like that. OR I came across this posting:
http://www.sl113.org/forums/index.php?topic=3896.0For the spin on filter adapters...but there is no contact information and the post is eight years out of date! Anyone have a source to get one of those adapters today?? I am also looking to flush and bleed the clutch. I have the Haynes service manual, but after reading through that several times and attempting it myself, I cant seem to find the mysterious second bleed valve they suggest exists? I read on here that to flush the clutch I need to apply fluid pressure from the bottom and force the air upwards, NOT pumping the clutch to force the air out...is there a post on here that covers the procedure in more detail?
I am going to have tons of questions like that as I start taking the ole' girl apart, so if this forum is anything like the xterra forum I frequent, I am sure we will get along just fine. One of the best features of that forum is members post how-to's for just about everything, from the mundane to the most advanced. I haven't seen something like that on here yet, so perhaps as I go about my work I will document things with photographs in an effort to replicate that idea for the SL and help any less knowledgeable future members. So far my impression of sl113.org is most of the people on here know a HECK OF A LOT about what they are doing...so I look forward to interacting with/learning from you knowledgeable bunch and maybe even getting to meet any of the Southern California members if you are around!
For now,
Sal
