Preparations for Detailing Obsession

The car is now back from the machine buffing.

The guy (with decades of experience) was not very nice about the paint. He said he saw evidence of numerous resprays all around the body, and the chrome was apparently coated with paint dust. He did say the end result is exceptionally good for such an old car.

My take is, the paint looks very nice and even, and the swirls and other scratches were considerably reduced. The guy did say it would risk the paint to buff it any further. My current gripes are pretty much limited to the chrome, which is pretty scratchy and rusted in places, and some dings here and there. But like I have said, since it's a DD, it doesn't have to be 100 % perfect.

In other news, I had this shipped over from England. James May would be proud. Now I just need to find the time to do the work.

What it is, is of course a leather restoration kit, with:

• Leather renovator
• Leather conditioner
• Degreaser
• Dye
• Gloss additive for Dye
• Accessories (towels, brush, "wunderbaum")

Playing Games with Environmentalists

One thing I found out very recently is that this car is not officially-low-emissions-tagged. That means I can legally remove the catalytic converter.

This would probably happen by cutting the cat off the downpipes, and fabricating two parallel running pipes with an H pipe. The lambda sensor would go in the crosspipe. I need to work out whether this has been tried and tested by other M117 owners and then decide if I'm gonna go through with it.

I got the go-ahead to find any shop I like and have the exhaust tips refabricated. The shop where the current rusting ones were done are going to take care of the bill. When I start doing that, I'm going to have to decide whether I'm going to keep the rear muffler, or go with Magnapacks only. To be honest, the driving I'm currently doing on the Mercedes is largely just cruising for fun, so I might like some extra noise.

I went to a shop today to have a look at the A/C. Unfortunately my car has the large old-style valves in the A/C pipes, which is a surefire way of knowing whether a W126 supports R134a. So mine doesn't. Either I need to find a man with some R12 refridgerant, and the skills to put it in, or convert the car to the new stuff. The conversion is pretty expensive. Since I would hardly ever use the A/C I'm first going to try and revive the current system.

The trouble with R12 is that it's been illegal in Finland for something like a decade. I paid a visit to a shop who do maintenance on industrial refridgerators, air conditioners etc, and asked if they had any R12 laying around. Maybe they could've had some left over from emptying an R12 A/C unit in an old barn or something, since it's illegal to let that stuff into the atmosphere. But no, they hadn't seen any R12 in a while. I know a guy who might be able to smuggle some in from Russia, and that's pretty much the only option I've got left.

Fine Tuning

Been a while since last update. Nothing much to report, just little things.

Went to a shop with an exhaust gas analyzer to have a base fuel mixture setup done. Turns out the car was running way lean, which was causing a low-rpm misfire on a cold engine, and high-rpm misfire on a warm engine.

On a KE-Jetronic engine such as this M117, you're supposed to have the mixture on a good base setting, and the engine's electronic brain sets the mixture just so on all further rpm's. So, basically, it's very easy to set up, you just need the analyzer to do it. You're probably not going to get it right by feel. We hooked it up to the machine and enriched till it was producing between 0,5 and 2,0 % CO. Neutral idle RPMs went up 200 rpm, and in-gear idle stayed at 600-ish which is in the ballpark where it should be.

Went to the strip last Saturday. Did 15,53 sec on quarter mile. However, the car was still not running right. It should do a bit better on the quarter mile and I got a really bad misfire above 5000 rpm on WOT. This prevented me from going faster than 170 kph. I'm hoping new spark plugs and enriching the mixture further will fix this.

A few weeks ago I busted the accelerator pedal. Turns out a plastic hinge behind the pedal, which connects to the throttle assembly, has a habit of breaking even as often as every few years. It's not an expensive fix (15 EUR for an original part you can install yourself in 5 mins) but it was annoying till I got the new part. The pedal would slide off the throttle assembly, causing it to jam in a slightly open or completely closed position. Interestingly, the gas pedal is a W123 part, probably the same one used in all Mercs of the 70s through early 90s period.

Finally received my new license plate. The old plate had been bent into a V shape in two directions and was screwed directly into the front bumper. To be honest, it looked terrible. One of the screws was completely rusted and one looked new. My aim here was to bend the new plate as little as possible while mounting it slightly lower than the old plate. Above the spot in the bumper where the plate is supposed to go, there's a step where the plate "valley" ends and the top part of the bumper begins, IIRC the old plate was mounted over that step. I wanted the new plate to go a bit lower.

So, bought a plate holder, sawed off a bit where the EU flag is supposed to go, screwed the holder onto the bumper, and mounted the plate. There's about 15mm worth of padding between the plate holder and bumper, at each end. By taking off some of that padding I could adjust the V angle of the plate holder. I'm just not sure how much of that I can do without the plate and plate holder screwholes no longer lining up.

Also, I had the old issue with the sunroof switch, where the up and down (sunroof tilting) directions would not work. The way to get the sunroof in that position was to keep pressing the switch in the "closed" direction till the tilt-position was up. And repeat to close the tilt position. Problem with this, in addition to it not working like it should obviously, was that it was impossible to know for sure when the sunroof was completely sealed, since there was no noticeable stop between the two "open" positions.

I'd prepared myself for a wiring issue, but this turned out to be as simple a fix as resetting the sunroof motor in the trunk. You put it in neutral, spin a wheel and put it in gear until it works right from the switch. The wheel was a couple revolutions wrong. Like I said, easy fix thanks to the internet.

As for other things in the near future:

• Spark plugs soonish
• Monday I'm going to have the A/C inspected. It's not blowing cold, so first need to make sure it's not completely broken and then fill it up.
• Also on that date, will arrange for the tailpipes (last 30 or so cm of the exhaust) redone
• Car is going in for a machine buffing on July 6th.

Photoshoot #2: Lappeenrannan Linnoitus

I've been daily-driving the car to uni lately. It seems to get pretty good gas mileage with the new improved valve job / compression. Got less than 14,5 l/100km on the last tank of urban driving, even pretty heavyfooted driving at times.

For your viewing pleasure, here are some pictures I shot at the Fortress of Lappeenranta.

Enjoying Spring

Finally, I can use the car as it was intended: as a comfortable, stylish and reliable vehicle for getting around.

Here's a soundcheck from yesterday, courtesy of a friend:

Today, the groundhog has spoken and supposedly we're to have a dry week. So, I went and gave the car a bath.

It's the first home car wash of 2011, yay! It was a rush job - it's still pretty cold when you're handling lots of water.

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.