Big breakthru today but not picture-worthy:

My buddy Dick (5.0 Ford-powered Volvo station wagon) came over and we set to bleeding the brakes and my kluged S-10/Mercedes clutch set-up.

The brakes were pretty straightforward as expected. Even after breaking the lines to switch from the power master cylinder to the manual cylinder I still had a decent pedal even before bleeding. So they came out great.

The clutch hydraulics were, of course, a different story. I had tried back bleeding (pushing fluid from the slave to the master under pressure), vacuum bleeding (sucking fluid from the master to the slave) and even gravity bleeding (leaving the bleed screw open for long periods so that the fluid could find it's way out the bleeder) all to no avail. Being all alone I couldn't try the old "pump - hold - release" method until I Shanghai'd Dick. While he had never done this type of stuff before he was a quick study and after about 10 refills of the master (the S-10 master has a very small capacity) WE GOT IT!!!!! Great feel, nice pedal travel, and about 1 to 1 1/2" of freeplay at the top. So the S-10 master seems to be compatible with the M-B slave - something to keep in mind for all you guys considering a manual trans swap. That Benz master set-up doesn't look like a good system to me.

I'm not too far from firing this devil up and hearing it run. Mostly I need to add all the fluids and see what stays in. Also need to fill and purge the air out of the fuel which I hope will be pretty easy as the tank is right up front and the lines are really short. I also need to have the battery load tested and see if there's anything left of it or if I'll need a new one.

Getting Closer. I'm a happy guy!

Dan