Got a 1985 300D turbo - Page 5 - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

doofus · #61 09-18-2018, 03:29 PM

I’m wondering what kind of glue you used on the wood trim pieces. Also whether you cleaned off all the residue on the mating surfaces first (and what you used for that), or if you just glued them as-is?

I tried a few times to PM you about this but I can’t send PMs, apparently-not sure why. Anyway, thanks!

ROLLGUY · #62 09-18-2018, 09:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by doofus

I’m wondering what kind of glue you used on the wood trim pieces. Also whether you cleaned off all the residue on the mating surfaces first (and what you used for that), or if you just glued them as-is?

I tried a few times to PM you about this but I can’t send PMs, apparently-not sure why. Anyway, thanks!

I use weatherstrip adhesive, or in some cases 3M 90 High Strength Spray Adhesive.

kuene · #63 09-18-2018, 09:31 PM

I use this 3m or scotch doubled sided tape - it’s adhesive on a thin dark foam backing. I think this is similar to factory method and the foam helps the wood be flexible and stay mated to the dash. Don’t use glue - my previous owner did and I had a lot of cleanup to do.

doofus · #64 09-18-2018, 09:54 PM

thanks to all who answered part of my question-I’m just also wondering how important it is to clean off the old dried up glue, or sticky foam, or whatever’s on the back of the wood and also the metal areas on the dash. If it doesn’t matter, fine, but if it does, what’s the best way to do it? I’m thinking some type of solvent with a scotch-brite pad or something..but maybe that’s a bad idea (?). What solvent would be safe and not dissolve the finish on the face of the wood trim?

ykobayashi · #65 09-19-2018, 12:57 AM

Hey Doofus sorry I didn’t respond to your PM. I’ve been working on my car non stop for the last couple of days. I used shoo goo. I scraped off the POs hot glue gun job with a Swiss Army knife. Then I smeared the glue on thinly with a gloved finger. The trick is to keep spreading and rubbing it into the surface so it picks up the loose dust and mixes it into the glue. It kind of cleans the surface and gives a good bond. I’m careful not to use too much glue. I’ve had some serious runs on my other cars when using the stuff. It’ll ruin the interior.

My latest fixes:

I fixed my wiper that wouldn’t flap. I feel like kind of an idiot because I bought a wiper regulator from LKQ and I didn’t need it. I thought one of the internal joints had broken loose but it turned out to be a loose nut. Well, $14 and I have a spare. These things are getting hard to buy. Looks like the one in my SD. I wonder if they’re interchangeable.

Fixed the windshield washer. Hose was unhooked.

Fixed the wiper speed control on the combo switch. I think the P.O. got his food all in the switch. Gravy running down the shaft. I rotated the wiper speed back and forth a dozen times and it started working. Before I only had intermittent wipers. Still stuck on hi beams tho.

New front brake pads. The warning light was on. Silly P.O. just kept driving. The genius topped up the brake fluid too because it overflowed as I compressed the pistons.

Finally the biggie. I have always heard this horrible metal on metal chafing noise in front of the engine. It has gotten worse. I started to get worried thinking it was number 1’s bearing. But it sounded like accessory noise. Alternator or water pump. AC isn’t hooked up. Well, I tore it down and spun the water pump and it ground. I had noticed the water pump pulley wobbling a bit yesterday so I had immediately ordered a pump.

Then I got to thinking. Spin the unhooked AC. Yep grinding. P.O. must have cut the belt to get the noise to stop.

Sure enough the water pump bearing was really dead and it had tons of runout. I looked at one of the old receipts. The pump was changed at the stealership for $350 four years ago. $250 of which was the pump. I’d think an OE would have done better than four years and only ten thousand miles.

I put in a $30 GMB and it sounds great now. No more scary grinding and barking noises at random frequencies.

Ok that’s it. Time to get some rest. And some Advil.

ykobayashi · #66 09-20-2018, 11:29 PM

Fixed the dome light tonight. It is a common problem already discussed in the forum.

The little circuit board inside came loose from the contacts glued into the enclosure. Some plastic tab broke. A clever design but it relied on little plastic tabs to hold the board to the contacts. The tabs failed.

The board was a pretty interesting design. It handled the switch for the map light, courtesy light and off. The board also has a timer circuit to give 30 seconds of light before shutting down. All with discrete circuitry. I was worried I’d have to find 1980s transistors or match up equivalents.

Apparently the front unit is related to the back unit. My passenger dome light started working as well as the trunk light.

I also pulled my fuel sender and cleaned the wires. Hosed it down with brake clean and used steel wool. I got half a tank of fuel back and the gauge no longer jumps.
A good night. So many little things. I’ll have to look at my instrument dimmer tomorrow. I think it needs a jump.

I got a nice drive in today and the car seems to run better the more I drive it. It had sat half a year before I bought it.

vwnate1 · #67 09-21-2018, 12:07 AM

# 1 : go buy some $5 LED 'festoon light bulbs ~ you'll love them in the map light, glove box light and trunk / license tag lights too .

I've begun fixing little plastic things with 'Gorilla Glue' and will soon try to fix the driver's side map pocket, I broke off the forward tab and found it, why not give it a try ? .

ykobayashi · #68 09-21-2018, 11:58 PM

Yeah, I have been using a lot of gorilla glue on this car. It works well. You need to be a bit careful because that stuff really can foam up and get all over though. I also did my map pockets. I used old business cards and junk bare circuit boards and gorilla glue to patch up the cracks on the pocket from the inside. Worked well.

Okay, some updates. Here are some photos of the turbo bypass install. Nothing much everyone hasn't seen before. Pipe looks clean. My exhaust side of turbo is a bit carboned up. Oddly the exhaust side of my trap cat was really clean while the intake was dirty. Go figure, it was a clogged filter.

Output side of trap cat. I couldn't photo intake side because it was carboned up and just looked like a black hole.

Exhaust side of turbo. Not pretty but it still spins freely.

Dome light repair. The board slips out of the white housing. There were some broken plastic tabs in the housing that hold the board to the enclosure's copper contacts for the lightbulb. I tried gluing but it didn't hold under stress so I just folded up a zip tie and used it kind of like a spring to hold the PCB to the lamp housing contacts with pressure. Worked.

Cleaned and resoldered board.

Busted tab. Supposed to look like this.

Jammed board back in here with a folded zip tie to take up the slack. Sorry no photo of the finished product.

Removed my gauge cluster. Made some tools to extract. Wow was this the tightest one I've dealt with or what. I tried pushing it out with my hand from the back. I wasn't strong enough. I made these hooks out of the springs in those folding laundry baskets from the dime store. Wife keeps tossing them when they rip and I take the springsteel wire to make tools. I had to loop the hook wire around a cheater bar and brace it against the steering wheel to pry the cluster out.

All this to get to my dimmer pot. I love this forum. I shorted it just like it says to here. I think I've done this on all my mb diesels. Thanks for being a great community. Makes me feel like I'm a good mechanic.

vwnate1 · #69 09-22-2018, 12:09 PM

Keep these picture heavy informative posts coming .

I see a lot of binnacles with the glass ripped off by folks foolishly yanking on it .

I wish you'd posted what the laundry baskets look like, I buy staples from the .99 Cents store, they have all manner of good cheap consumables .

? What are you going to do about the clogged particle trap ? .

Once the restriction is gone all that carbon wil soon be gone from brisk driving, no need to thrash it mercilessly .

Clever fixing on the dome light .

ykobayashi · #70 09-22-2018, 04:35 PM

Clogged trap went to the auto parts recycle bin at my local shop. I have roll guys pipe now. I can smell more exhaust fumes but now the trap cat is out of the equation. EGR and a whole mess of vacuum lines are gone. I replumbed and tuned my VCV and I’m good to go.

The laundry baskets look like this.

Foldable Laundry Hamper Discount Foldable Storage Laundry Hamper Clothes Basket Travel - Blogespace Home Designing

They have springy steel wire inside. Not exactly high quality music wire but pretty stiff stuff. My wife wears the netting out in a few months and I dig the old ones out of our trash bin to salvage the wires. She pays $1.50 each.

Aww man...this morning I decided to reinstall my cluster. I dumbheadedly thought I’d move the car across the garage to a more convenient spot. I forgot about the oil pressure line. I should have known because my 240d had a leaky gauge. Oil all over the dash and floor.

Then I tried to get clever and install some LED bulbs in the instrument illumination sockets. Somehow the light pipe wants a bulb that emits in all directions not a beam type thing like the LED. No useful light.

Then I got it all back together and realized a bulb dropped out of the socket and was rolling around behind the speedo case.

So I did the job 3x. The story of my life.

vwnate1 · #71 09-23-2018, 10:55 AM

Thanx for the laundry basket photos, I assume you just chop off a bit of the wire and fashion a "J" hook at the far end ? .

I'm going to keep an eye out for something like this, they look use full to pull radios out of DIN mounts too .

Don't sweat the oil mess, I did almost the same thing, buttoned it all back up and forgot to snug up the oil gauge pipe so I managed to get the car baked out of the driveway and into the street before oil began pouring out from under the lower dash panel.....

Everyone makes mistakes once in a while .

I took the binnacle fully apart and washed it then hand polished the inside and out side of the clear plastic lens with plastic polish and the correct media, (the media used makes all the difference) then I cleaned those darn light guides, they get dusty and a tiny bit of dust diffuses the little bit of light available.....

Keep up the good works and handy DIY tips .

ykobayashi · #72 09-23-2018, 03:33 PM

Good to know the cluster can come apart for cleaning. My SD cluster has those funny mold/corrosion? dots on the black frames under the clear plastic that older MBs get. One day I'll clean it. Yeah, I just pull the wires out of the old baskets and just bend little hooks in them. They are bendy enough to form 90deg bends without cracking like music wire...but they are still pretty springy steel. Use good cutters to cut or you'll toast your blades.

So today was wild. Last night I tried to figure out why my low beams wouldn't toggle. The car was stuck on high beams. Since I could kind of blink the lights and toggle a little bit using the combo switch I figured there was a problem there. I took the switch out and cleaned it from the outside but I just couldn't get it to work. No luck. Stuck on high beams. I figured some piece of metal was deformed inside and I just needed to get inside. But it was riveted shut.

So this morning, after seeing all the replacement parts for combination switches out there I figured, hey what do I have to lose. Lets try it again. I'm going to drill the rivets and take it to bits. I like seeing all the German linkages and mechanical wizardry inside anyhow. I like how the engineers of the 80s just did anything to avoid a few electronic gates even though they existed. It's great to see the little mechanisms inside things like the combination switch. At worst, I'd order a URO part. Wait, that's pretty bad right?

In the vise. Getting started.

Drill rivets. No turning back.

Look what is inside. Nothing obviously bad here. The little black circle in the middle is the toggle mechanism for the hi lo beam.

More tearing. Photos to keep track of all the bits.

Black disk looks funny. Crooked. Looks worn. This activates high low reeds.

Slightly deformed at the business end.

Looks a bit short. I need to grow some material on it to give it more push tolerance. I think it isn't pushing far enough to open the high beam reeds.

Made it a little longer.

Just kidding. I heated it with my hot air gun and pinched it with flat jawed pliers to make it longer.

Put it all back together using my photos. Lots of springs, linkages and cams. Replaced the rivets with some tiny screws I had lying around.

Decided to pull the cap of the end of the lever and clean up the wiper setting switch. Be careful. This is about 1 min before it went sprong and launched parts to the four corners of my garage. I searched them down on my hands and knees with a flashlight.

And it all works now. Dimmer, signals, wipers and washer.

This was absolutely crazy. I could have just bought a new one. They are all over the place $50 and up. But hey, I wouldn't learn anything if I did that.

ROLLGUY · #73 09-23-2018, 04:07 PM

If it eventually goes bad again, I have plenty of spares......Rich

ykobayashi · #74 09-23-2018, 04:37 PM

Thanks. Things always go bad on these cars over time. It seems like a never ending fight. A fun fight but a fight nonetheless.

Hey, I just went out to the garage and I noticed my fog lights work now. Apparently they lock out when the high beams are on. Now that I have lo beams again I have fog lights.

Another very interesting thing. My wipers don’t sweep a couple of times every time I turn the key like they did before I did this fix. That was a good suggestion to check out the combination switch from another thread. I’ll see how long things hold up.

vwnate1 · #75 09-23-2018, 05:58 PM

Once again just taking things apart, cleaning and adjusting sets things right as rain .

This is what I was trained to do, FIX things, not just throw parts until it works again .

I've been repairing unobtanium electrical switches out of necessity since the late 1960's, when I coined that word too .

Keep working and sharing your methods .