Wrapping Up The Greasy Bits

The valve job / engine rebuild has now been completed, and took five weeks in total. Two of them was the wait for parts to arrive from Germany, and the rest largely queuing for the mechanic's time, a bit at a time.

I'm going to skip a little ahead since you've seen pictures of the air filter box being off and exposed cams.

Everything above the block removed

Much to my delight cylinder walls looked pretty much pristine

There was a very slight completely symmetrical circular edge on top of every cylinder wall, but apart from that they were mint. Piston rings for cyls 1 and 5 were inspected and appeared very healthy.

Three things were wrong with the valves. First, The rods were very worn and thus the valves jiggled about almost humorously. Second, the valve plates themselves were worn in the same way. Third, the corner in each valve, and the corresponding corner in the head were worn in a way that made it impossible to get a perfect seal.

Put those together and no wonder there was no compression.

Old stuff

So, got new valves, rods and seals/gaskets from Germany, and the heads went out to be machined back into health.

Refurbished heads

Refurbished head with new valves

After all this was said and done, it was time to start reassembling the engine bay again.

Gaskets

2007 NGK BP6ES's. They're the best fit for the M117 engine. They've been driven 3 summers and still look almost new. Nice.

It took about two days to put the engine back together, debug etc. It went pretty smoothly. The engine bay is damn crowded when you begin to do stuff like this, so I'm glad I had a mechanic do it. After some timing adjustments, tightening fuel lines and bleeding air out of the coolant system, she fired right up. For a little while she ran fine but started coughing and shaking again. After some debugging, it was obvious that one of the spark leads was bad. I had a set of new Bosch leads I'd ordered over the winter, so after having it thrown on today, she started running perfectly. And man, what a difference!

You can tell just by ear that it's running well. A V7 does sound very different to a V8. Now it sounds like it should, and it's a very different sound to the one I recorded back when the Magnaflows were installed. Apart from the sound, the shaking and coughing is of course totally gone. She pulls strong and smooth. There's oodles more power than before, and I haven't even been on true full throttle yet, too much ice and snow and running on winters.

Did I mention it sounds absolutely awesome now? It's slowly warming up outside, enough so that I can cruise with the window down, and let me tell you, it's everything I hoped for when I started planning the exhaust. It's somewhat quiet but somehow not. Inside there's this calm feeling, but even if you're just slightly on the throttle, or when you give it the beans, you get this distant thunder and a fantastic soundtrack bouncing off surrounding buildings.

This concludes engine maintenance. To recap, over the winter I went through a lot: new timing chain, timing chain guiderails, valves, head refurb, new seals&gaskets everywhere and new spark leads. Spark plugs, distributor cap & rotor (Bosch), pistons, piston rings, block, cams, etc. all look and feel almost mint.


After the valve job the gearbox was a bit asthmatic. It wouldn't change up if I was even slightly on the throttle, and it let the engine rev a bit too much. This turned out to be an easy one, the wire that goes from the throttle linkage to the gearbox is adjustable from the assembly between the engine and firewall, so after loosening that, the gearchanges are back to normal. I'm thinking of loosening it some more, for extra wafting.


At the very end of the final engine reassembly, we stumbled upon the cause for the high idle problem. It was a vacuum valve in the intake manifold, that had a broken plastic air line. Replace that and 30 euros later, I'm idling at about 700-800 rpms in neutral and 500 rpms in drive. Fantastic! Finally!

Drove the car home yesterday for the first time since the shit hit the fan last month.

It's been snowing almost daily for a week now, with 5cm and sometimes (like last night) almost 20cm of new snow. But like I said, it's warming up, and with efficient ploughing the streets are mostly snow-free in daytime. According to forecasts, the snowy period should now be ending, with average temps rising above 0 and snowfalls being replaced by rain, which should take care of the rest of the snow.


Right after Christmas, the passenger side orthopaedic seat controller broke, the same way the driver side one had done last fall. I was able to source a replacement from a donor W124 diesel. Worked perfect, no hisses inside again.


Current todo list:

• Clean up interior since the dirty stuff is now complete. (imminent)
• Detail engine bay also. (imminent)
• Have paint buffed. (In the spring, when snow's completely gone)
• Derusting a spot in the driver side rear wing, between a horizontal surface and the bumper. After that, rustproofing. I will probably do these next fall.
• Rework exhaust tips. They were supposed to be stainless, but aren't. Also, I'm thinking of changing the design very slightly. This will probably happen soon(tm).
• Replace or repair driver seat and armrest upholstery. Will look into this next summer.
• Fix some interior wood trim. Epoxy up one strip near the front passenger side air vent (soon). Try to locate some donor parts for cracked-lacquer ones in the doors. (ongoing)
• Replace antenna mast seal (soon).
• Adjust driver window position to fix wind noise (soonTM).
• Rip out accessory alarm and maybe bring back original Merc one. (I wish)
• Fix gear selector lights. Probably a loose wire. Requires taking apart the center console again, so not a top priority.
• Debug sunroof controls. Doesn't work exactly like it should, although both the functions are there and workable. Probably miswired or the switch is broken. Need to look further into this.
• Source a donor Webasto and bring back to factory specs using the stuff that's left from before the malfunctioning burner was ripped out. (again, "I wish")
• Keep trying to find an OEM leather gearknob. Changing it requires disassembling the center console also, so will probably happen when I can be arsed to do that.
• Find a silent diff with the LSD still working. (During the next 3 years probably)

As the Finnish saying goes: kovaa ajoa!

The BBS Solution

After I found out about the need to reseal the BBSes, I basically had two choices:

• have them resealed by someone who knows what they're doing.
• sell them as is, and buy something else.

I took my sweet time pondering what to do. Soon after the problem initially surfaced, I created a thread at a Finnish Mercedes-Benz forum asking for help: I needed to find someone who would, for a fair fee, disassemble, sand, clean, reseal properly and assemble the rims. Unless I found that helpful soul, I was sure I was going to let the wheels go and cut my losses.

However, a man did offer to help. He was 3 hours away but would do the job for a reasonable price. In a rare strike of luck, a friend (the same one who lended me the Kanaldeckels for a while) was headed in that exact city soon-ish, and offered to take the wheels there. I gladly accepted unless there was an offer of help nearer until the day he was going, and there wasn't, so off the BBSes went.

The guy was a hobbyist who posts at the aforementioned forums every once in a while, and dangles with rims & cars etc. Of course, he had a workshop for stuff like that. He seemed pretty knowlegdeable of multiparter rims and BBSes in particular, and had done stuff like this before.

It took some time (about 2 weeks) for him to get my nonfunctional Sika seal off the rims, do the prepwork and the job itself. I know it must've been pretty awful to remove the Sikaflex from the rims, as I did a bulk of that removal job myself the day before the rims were gonna go out. Frankly, the stuff was fuckin' solid. Incredibly adhesive and would not peel off. It would crumble into small pieces before letting go of the rim surface, despite me having not sanded the surface before applying the stuff like Sika recommend when dealing with aluminium.

Anyway, while the dude was working his magic, he thought to ask if I'd like some stainless steel valves for the wheels. Well, I'd heard that most hobbyists use them, they do look pretty nice and really are the "correct" kind of accessory for high-end rims like these, aren't very easily obtainable for BBSes in this country, and he wasn't asking much for them, so I said why not. They do look great on the rims.

Once done, he did an awesome job packaging the wheels up for a bus ride back home. That freight service did cost an extra 35 eur, but what's most important is that they got here undamaged.

There is now a seal between the parts, and in the valley on the outside:

It's also Sika so good luck disassembling the rims ever again, but once some tires were mounted they did finally hold air.

Speaking of tires, when the BBS project was nearing completion, enough time had passed that summer tires became a topic of much pondering. I had workable friction tires on the Pentas and the brand new GoodYear frictions in storage, but no summers yet. Again, I had two choices.

• Get some ContiPremiumContact2's off the interwebs and have them mounted at a local tire shop.
• Get something cheap for a nice round number at the aforementioned tire shop. This became a viable option when the tire shop I'd bought the GoodYears from had started treating me really well as a customer, letting me debug the BBSes using their equipment and personnel for free. They made me a really good offer on some cheapo tires: Point-S Summerstar2 205x55 R16 (designed by Continental) for 350 EUR including mounting, balancing etc. ContiPremiumContact2's would've been around 400e from the interwebs, not including mounting which usually comes to about 20-40e, so this time I decided to make my first foray into cheapo tires, grabbing the wannabe-continentals off the shelf and saving some cash.

Quality aside (which shall become known a bit later into spring), there were a few points about these point-s (). First, tire size. This car should actually run 215s at a minimum and preferably 225s. Trouble is, those are expensive. I mean they're an absolute fucking ripoff. They were charging about 30% or 50% more for a set of 215/225 wide tires depending on profile. I thought, since the difference is cosmetic at best, and worse comfort at worst, I'd just keep going the 205/55 route like I had with the winters.

Second, obviously the tires aren't gonna be as good as real Continentals. But I thought about it this way. My driving over the summer is not going to be hardcore enough to warrant the difference. In the summer months there's always going to be plenty of grip. I don't ever really accelerate hard, I like wofting. And this car's not for fast cornering anyway - it's an S-Class! My #1 concern is tire noise. I asked about this, and they're supposed to be somewhat quiet, though not as so as real Contis. All in all, I think I'm gonna be good with these.

Back To AMG

OK, so I was able to locate a set of reasonably good Gen2 AMG Pentas in Finland. I got very lucky in that it was a known fellow at a certain Mercedes forum, and he was willing to drop the wheels off at my end for free. Thus the total cost was reasonable. Here's what they look like. They are 8x16" ET11's, running some pretty tired Continental friction tires.

I believe they were manufactured in 1985. These were painted blue by AMG, and when the current owner got them he rattlecanned them silver. As they are now, there are some stone chips and scratches but other than that, they are pretty well preserved. One of them is ever so slightly warped but all of them balanced out nicely with normal weights.

The paint will probably not last very long, so I'll probably have them refinished in a few years. These wheels will be my winter wheels.

They are noticeably more "correct" offset-wise than the BBSes, since they bulge outwards 12mm more, but the oldtimer look of the inward-offset BBSes is nice too.

Tool, and his Tools (An Originality Story)

Lately I have been analyzing the datacard of my car and spending some time getting to know how it was accessorized from the factory.

Here's the list of options for this car.

228 AUXILIARY HEATER
245 ON-BOARD COMPUTER
291 AIRBAG FOR DRIVER AND FRONT PASSENGER
300 STORAGE BOX IN FRONT TRAY
404 ORTHOPAEDIC FRONT SEAT BACKREST, LEFT
405 ORTHOPAEDIC FRONT SEAT BACKREST, RIGHT
406 DESIGNATION NOT RECORDED [ortho seats also]
430 HEADRESTS IN THE REAR
540 ROLLER BLIND, ELECTRIC, FOR REAR WINDOW
551 ANTI-THEFT/ANTI-BREAK-IN WARNING SYSTEM
620 EMISSION CONTROL SYSTEM
682 FIRE EXTINGUISHER
873 SEAT HEATER FOR LEFT AND RIGHT FRONT SEATS

The "auxiliary heater" is a Webasto unit that pre-heats both the engine and cabin. It has a control panel forward of the gearlevel. Sadly, the heater unit has been removed from my car, as it would not run, according to the previous owner.

The on-board computer refers to the reiserechner trip computer.

The 291 and 300 options were always added in pairs, as you can't have a glovebox if you elect for a passenger side airbag.

The emission control system designates this car as a catalyzed one.

Rumor has it, the fire extinguisher was mandatory in Germany for cars with engine capacity of more than 2.5 litres.

Manual aircon, electric seats with memory, all electric windows, electric passenger side mirror, limited slip diff, Becker stereo system, rear window heater and power antenna were all standard in a 560 SEC. Thus the option lists are usually rather short on these cars.

So, over the winter I've been digging into the accessories that originally came with the car and making sure I have everything. On the microfilm page, you can see a breakdown of all the different accessories.

When I bought the car, it had the original spare tire and jack, which was nice.

The spare is a 7x15" ET24 old-style Kanaldeckel wheel, which I assume is the rim type that this particular car originally came with in all four corners. The spare is in pristine condition, save for the missing center cap, which spare alloys cannot have.

It also came with an original toolbag, but that one wasn't in great condition. Most of the tools were missing and the trim at the edges of the toolbag was cracking.

After some digging, I'm guessing that these old Mercs came from the dealerships with slightly varying toolkits. As you can see from the microfilm the following special tools were available from the factory.

(41) Screwdriver with 2 detachable bits
(44) 2-part (collapsible) spark plug tool
(30) Tire iron

Also added to toolkits:
- 3 wrenches in the most common sizes with Mercedes-Benz logos
- Small pliers
- A little tool with threads for matching the wheel to the bolt holes

I was able to locate a wrench, pliers, wheel fitment tool and a screwdriver from my old Merc. I asked the buyer and he didn't want them so I got lucky there. I took the toolbag from that car also, and used it for the SEC. The worse condition bag is now in my mom's 190E which was missing a toolbag completely. I also sourced a pristine tire iron for the SEC from Germany.

Here's the almost complete toolbag.

Note that this is a version of the toolbag with the black Mercedes-Benz logo stamped on it

I've also been looking at gear knobs. I'm guessing, but not sure, if this car came from the factory with a black leather knob, similar in shape to the plastic one in the W201. That would make sense and correspond with most respectable looking images on Google.

Sources:
http://mercedesbenzblogphotodb.wordpress.com/
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mercedes_W126_500SEL_Armaturenbrett_1.jpg
http://theknifeandme.wordpress.com/

One in good condition might be cool. Don't really like the accessory-style wooden ones.

Killing Time

While the car has been in the garage, waiting for the engine rebuild, it's been possible to continue the center console project. I first started working on it soon after the corner light switch.

Interior - Starting Point

Tasks there were:

• Remove embarassing AMG sticker installed by a PO
• Replace aircon switch
• Replace air recirculation switch
• Replace bulb in roller switch for passenger side temperature
• Replace bulb in air direction switch
• Get rid of crappy JVC head unit and buy something good instead
• Install a switch for disabling the electric antenna for winter use

Ash tray and head unit removed

 The radio was a real bitch to remove. Turns out the previous installer had extended the little protruding things in the case and needless to say I didn't have the remove tool for that particular head unit. However, with patience I got the POS off.

There were some wires running behind the radio, to nowhere, which I figure were originally the front speakers (the car is now running Infinitys or something like that, OK sounding) and a phone / hands free system of some sort which has been removed.

The last one to touch the wires was a Swedish shop. The car's a Swedish import.

New switches and bulbs in

While I had the ashtray out I cleaned and polished it, and changed the bulb in it.

Antenna control switch I soldered together; its purpose is to prevent the automatic antenna from operating when it has frozen solid in the winter, when I am listening to MP3s and an antenna is not necessary. Operating the antenna in those conditions would be harmful to the electric motor.

To replace the crappy JVC I bought a... new JVC. Oh well. In my defense, I looked at the competing Sonys, Pioneers, Kenwoods etc. and they were all rubbish. Ugly and really barebones compared to a similarly priced JVC. The only real contender was Alpine which was also pretty low on features, and felt like a really rubbish plastic toy, which is saying a lot when the JVC is already pretty plasticky.

Anyway, this JVC solved all the problems I had with the previous one:

• No stupid "screensaver" animations
• No stupid animations anywhere else, or at least they're toggleable
• No beep every time you push a button on it
• Has front USB and can interface with my iPhone from there
• Can control the iPhone
• Works instantaneously on shuffle instead of reading a CD for 10 seconds while switching songs
• Can be set to any color, like nearly the Mercedes amber, instead of being "light up my car" white and "rip the hair off your head" red all the time
• Lowest volume setting is actually pretty quiet, unlike before where it was still pretty high

In addition, the new JVC has a multi-row display which can actually display some useful information about the song being played, and for a modern head unit, it's surprisingly understated in design.

Also, it's got a software EQ which is nice.

New head unit installed and center console assembled

The antenna control is visible in this picture, tucked inside the driver's footwell

Back Off The Road

Couple of weeks ago, when I was getting the car to the shop, a tire was pretty low on pressure. Filled it up there, drove the car home, and had a nice weekend home.

Woke up on Monday and was going to drive to uni. This time the tyre was truly flat. Two others were also starting to look pretty low. Off to the tire shop to learn how to diagnose stuff like this and how to use soap water. Turns out air was gushing out from between the lip and center parts of the threeparter rim, and also from underneath the bolts that hold the rim together. No choice but to take the wheels off, tires off the rims, and inspect.

Long story short and after some studying how BBS 3parters actually work, turns out the German restorers who worked on the rims had done a rubbish job of sealing the parts.

That is their silicone seal. In some ways it's correctly done but with a few buts:

• Really, you're supposed to seal the parts between each other... Not outside the meeting surface like that. Though I will admit, this method is used a lot, because of how easy it is to do, I guess.
• You're in no event supposed to use silicone, it doesn't grip enough.
• The whole process had been botched, the seal was very uneven and flaking off.

When I ripped it off, it provided almost no resistance, it was like peeling a banana. No wonder it held no air.

Also of note is the fact the bolts were part hex and part double hex. Apparently the restoration included changing some of the bolts but not doing all of them while they were at it. And no, I didn't think to check this when I received the rims and put rubber on them.

The bolts were really loose, nowhere near the 26Nm of torque which is somewhere in the ballpark of BBS rim bolts.

So, my solution was, in chronological order:

1. Take off the silicone seal.
2. Remove silicone remnants, oil, etc
3. Let dry overnight
4. Apply new seal in the same fashion using Sikaflex. It was ugly but I was sure not to leave any gaps where air could escape.
5. Let dry overnight
6. Loosen and retorque bolts to 26Nm in crisscross pattern
7. Let dry for a week

End result:

Did it work?

No.

Tried to put tires on the rims, they were still leaking like crazy. Better than with the silicone but no choice but to admit defeat and either get someone to disassemble the rims and do the seal properly, or if it looks too expensive (like hell I'm paying more than a 100 for it) just sell the rims. Either way I won't be using the BBSes now. Remains to be seen whether they become my summer wheels. I'm now looking for winter rims.

Anyway, after all that, the car had been sitting outside for a couple of weeks. While I was running around hammering my head against the wall with the BBSes, the car had the Aeros on it which of course were summers.

All the while, it was snowing like hell, and occasionally in the +'s, which made the snow heavy, and I was rarely home to clean the car up. I was really worried the hood, roof or trunk lid were gonna cave. Luckily they held.

Luckily, a friend was in possession of a set of 16" "Kanaldeckels" with some correct sized friction tires so I was able to borrow those to get the SEC into warm storage, and to and from the shop. So off I went to put them on.

Only... One of the Aeros is stuck. More specifically, one of the bolts just went round and round.

I was able to limp the car in warm storage on 3 Kanaldeckels and 1 Aero.

My knee-jerk reaction was that the bolt was rounded, but that wasn't actually the case... Drove the car to the shop for them to have a go at removing the offending the bolt. It came off real easy with the lug gun. Turned out the bolts for the Aeros were falling apart. The offending one had already lost most of its thread and the remains were in the opposite thread.

Some cold sweat and a thread cleanup tool later we had 4 Kanaldeckels on the car. Time to trash those bolts...


Such are the joys of owning multiparter wheels.

At this point, since the car was in the shop for a change, it was time to continue to project for a little bit (on borrowed time):
* Put in the correct air recirculation switch which I was able to source used.
* Diagnosed the one "dark" cylinder. Only this time it was somehow a different cylinder than the last time. Well, spark was good. Did a compression test. No good compression. AFAIK, and according to what the mechanics said, this can only be caused by a bad head / valves. So the car will be going in for another pretty thorough engine rebuild next Tuesday...

Orange Goodness Up Front

Orange front indicators are now installed and functioning. Interestingly, clear and orange indicators from TYC, while being pretty much identical otherwise, have different kind of base for the bulb so had to buy new bulbs. Of course, being just bulbs, they're dirt cheap so no problem there.

Just a quick shot from the garage as it's already dark outside so didn't go out for a better photo.