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.