I wish you were posting pictures ~ I'm skittish about taking the dash apart to do just what you're describing, I'm sure there's something fairly simple amiss in there.....

Just nervous about making things worse .

__________________
-Nate
1982 240D 408,XXX miles
Ignorance is the mother of suspicion and fear is the father

I did then what I knew how to do ~ now that I know better I do better

I haven't been all that successful over the last few days. I got behind the climate controller and got the panels off the switch panel for the antenna switch, heated window switch, sunroof etc. and vacuum tested the solenoids. That's where I found the bad 1 and 3 solenoid valves. I replaced them but I've been still unsuccessful in getting my center flap to open.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it needs some help with a screwdriver throught the vent hole. I figured out (of course from a tip on the forum) that you can disassemble the center vent pod while it is in place up under the dash. You pop the top off by releasing the tabs on one side with a screwdriver gently. I take out the glove box liner and go up to the left.



You can see the pod up there. If you pull the rubber ducting back from the center vent the linkage for the vent door can be exposed. I pop the pin out and I just pull the diaphragm.



I most certainly had a leak. I thought I was good but the diaphragm leaked worse in some positions than others. Some how the folding up of the rubber helped seal the vacuum leak so the vent would sometimes open giving it a mind of its own. It also fooled my mity vac in that if I pumped really fast at first and got past the point of the leak, the pod would hold vacuum. But the car couldn't do this.

A little tugging at my pod and...,



I had some old pods lying around in my junk box. Some had non leaking diaphragms so I pulled them out and installed them in the car. Only to find out they leaked. It took a long time to figure out that there are two different sizes. One has a longer throw. The shorties would leak. Sadly, the story of my life, it took multiple failed attempts for me to notice this.

Sadly I've installed this half a dozen times and I've failed as it just didn't hold vacuum.

I broke down last night and got an order into Pelican for a new center vent pod. I feel like kind of an idiot. The reason I had so many non leaking diaphragms around is I went through my SD the last time I was working under the dash and replaced everything I could while I was in there. I didn't learn my lesson this time. I should have just bought everything new and installed everything and then I'd be done with it for the next twenty years.

Don't be afraid to get down in there. I have never pulled a dash. I used the dmorrison posts to finesse the pod out since I have small hands and pretty good dexterity. It seemed easier than pulling the dash, but again, I've never done that before. A lot of people don't seem to have qualms about doing that around here. I suspect it isn't as big a deal as I fear...but for now I can wiggle the center pod parts out through the glove box and work from the instrument panel side.

Speaking of feeling dumb, I was surfing cars of craigslist and found this for $6500 obo.



This is a low mile 82 selling up in Anaheim. It has a great interior, looks very clean. What I'm getting at is I bought my car for $1400, it had $100 of back reg, needed $1400 of parts from various vendors and it still doesn't look anything as nice as this 82 forsale. I mean, $6500 sounds like a lot but just the paint costs a few grand. Then the interior is nice.

I've got 100 hours of labor (or worse) in my car now. Part of me feels a little silly.

But then there's the other part of me that is made happy by fixing stuff. I get a boost everytime I fix something and the car gets better. It makes me feel good and that is worth something to me even though this represents thousands of dollars of labor at shop rates.

I guess we are all kind of nuts at the end of the day.

I'm using this car as kind of a therapy. My mom entered hospice a few months ago and I was just sitting on my hands not knowing what to do. I started over repairing my SD but I realized I needed a more busted up car to distract me. I was going nuts at mom's bedside. So the car is helping me defocus my attention from that debacle. It had to be a car with a lot of work needed.

My owner neglected 85 is just the car. It has lots of little jobs that I can complete in a day so I feel that rush of satisfaction (we all are junkies for it) that we get when we fix our old cars. It has kept me going this fall. One shot of success a day after another. Beats substance abuse.

So the $6500 300D turbo on craigslist won't cut it. It looks great. I bet it belongs to a member who is probably bored with it and ready to move on to another project. I need to stay off Craigslist.

__________________
79 300TD “Old Smokey” AKA “The Mistake” (SOLD)
82 240D stick shift 335k miles (SOLD)
82 300SD 300k miles
85 300D Turbodiesel 170k miles

I purposely bought a rough car with the intent to fix it up. The joy and satisfaction I get is from repairing it and then using it, not from just owning it. Consider that the $6500 car will still need the suspension work, probably the HVAC pods, and other various bits repaired and serviced, and it makes it even less of a sane buy, especially if most of the enjoyment you get is from actually wrenching on it.

__________________
Current stable:
1995 E320 149K (Nancy)
1983 500SL 120K (SLoL)

Black Sheep:
1985 524TD 167K (TotalDumpster™)

Gone but not forgotten:
1986 300SDL (RIP)
1991 350SD
1991 560SEL
1990 560SEL
1986 500SEL Euro (Rusted to nothing at 47K!)

This reminds me of a funny story about one of my mom's college roommates. She had a 79 450SEL that she had to get rid of a couple of years back. It was passed on to her by her dad and it had sentimental value. For years she saw me repairing my old diesel benzs and begged me to fix her car for her. Her mechanic was breaking her wallet.

A few years ago she hit a wall. The car wouldn't pass smog. She said she'd give it to me to fix. This woman has a bad habit of giving things away to friends then demanding them back after they've been restored. Things like refinished furniture. It looks so good after the new owner gets it she demands to have it returned.

So I was really leery of taking this car. It was the same blue as my 300D. "All it needs is an AC charge, a restuffed seat, a seat cover, paint, brakes, a tune up, tires, belts, a battery (it didn't run), a leak in the vacuum locks fixed...," you know the routine. I rolled my eyes. I didn't exactly want to go down that road since I knew what it would take.

She first offered it to me for "a good deal". Then $1800. Then free. When I refused she started badmouthing me to her son's family. "That bastard, I offered him the car for free and he won't take it!" "Why won't he fix it like his cars?" "I want him to fix it nice like his cars."

I sat her down and explained a year ago when she went into her "why, why, why didn't you take my car and fix it, I had to sell it blah blah blah..." speech.

I have tens of thousands of dollars of labor invested in my Mercedes diesels. I just couldn't give that to somebody so they could keep their dream alive. I was really sorry, but it wasn't a W116 300SD in blue. I didn't want it and nothing would have made me kill myself the way I do for my own cars to get that gasser roadworthy again.

She is still mad at me. She says she would have paid me. Really? With what? She didn't even have the money to pay her Indy to do the required work.

She literally cried to me this Christmas saying the car is gone and she cannot visit it. I had mistakenly told her I'd seen it parked in a driveway across town and she had been prowling the home up until recently when it disappeared. She asked me to run a car fax and find it...as if I know how to do that. "If you had just taken it I could have visited it! Damn you!" she cried.

Wow. So this little blue W123 I'm fixing is kind of a tribute to her. Wow, I am nuts.

She had something like this. Not a 6.9

__________________
79 300TD “Old Smokey” AKA “The Mistake” (SOLD)
82 240D stick shift 335k miles (SOLD)
82 300SD 300k miles
85 300D Turbodiesel 170k miles

The entitlement of that lady is insane. Same reason why I won't fix cars for my neighbors or family anymore.

__________________
Milan Brown 1979 240D, rebuilt OM617.952 turbo diesel, rebuilt 722.315 transmission (my only daily driver)

Instagram: @maximed93

ykobayashi ;

I too have the _need_ to fix things and will do it for free when I occasionally run out of my own things or get bored with them .

Your center pod description makes me think I'll give this a go on one of my W123's, I have medium size hands.....

Too bad about that Woman (she's no lady), most of us have had similar situations, nothing you can do will ever make her happy, you were right to pass on the car .

__________________
-Nate
1982 240D 408,XXX miles
Ignorance is the mother of suspicion and fear is the father

I did then what I knew how to do ~ now that I know better I do better

The lady was not alone in this world. Funny you should mention furniture. Reminded me of the time I purchased an antique dresser some one had painted battleship grey. From a furniture refinisher.

I just took a chance that after being striped there would be something decent present. Paid for it and the price to strip it first. Plus would pay to have him refinish it if it turned out suitable..

Really there was no way to determine otherwise the condition underneath the thick coat of grey paint. I went in and examined it after he had stripped it and told him to refinish it. Plus paid for the refinishing.

When I went to pick it up his wife said it is no longer for sale. I thought about that quickly. Besides the risk I had engaged and the fact I had paid for everything.

I had to tell her that yes it was no longer for sale. As I owned it and had paid for it. Plus the work. I also sensed she was going to be stubborn. So mentioned we can call the authorities in if she wishes.

That would qualify as not a particular good ideal today. The police would say it is a civil matter. No sense arguing that it is a form of attempted theft. Calling in the authorities today ends up this way far too often. Possesion being a large component of a situation. Is another aspect if I had to have left it.

I also had no interest in selling it mind giving it away. I had about five hundred into it at that point and obviously it was worth that or more. That long ago five hundred dollars was worth far more than it is today. You could actually buy substantial things. More important than anything was I really liked it.

There just are some people out there. It is better not to meet.

That’s a great story. At least you didn’t get into a civil dispute over the dresser.

So the story of the furniture and my Mercedes “lady” was she once gave a chair to a couple who had just returned to the US from Europe with literally two suitcases. They needed everything to start over. It was an interesting wood chair found at a yard sale and bought for peanuts. Unfortunately it had some flaking and scratched coating. Looked beat.

Same thing as your dresser. The couple that received it stripped it down and lo and behold it was amazing wood underneath. They put some kind of clear coating on it and stapled on some fashionable upholstery cloth. Then one day they blew it...they had the Mercedes lady over for dinner. Her eyes popped out of her head and then turned green with envy.

A week later she began asking for the return of the chair. It became a huge fight between the they young wife and the Mercedes lady. The husband tried to sit on the fence. I was asked to step in and mediate but every time I tried to take a side and say “be cool it’s only a chair” both gals would snarl, that’s right it’s only a chair, give it to me.

The MB lady won in the end. We still have parties at her home and I sit in the chair. Sometimes I tease my friend’s wife about it at dinner. She does that thing where she runs her middle finger through her hair while looking at me. 😆

Soooo...no way would I take that 450sel. I’m dumb but not that dumb.

The sad thing is she actually obsessed about the car after she sold it off. I saw it while driving through town one day and mentioned it to her. She started cruising the home periodically. About two years later the car disappeared. Probably sold off. She turned into Sherlock Holmes trying to locate the car. She knocked on the door. She tried to car fax it but when she found out it costs money she asked me to do a free car fax. When I told her I couldn’t tell her the registered owner she got mad. Again.

And it comes up every time I see her. I roll my eyes and say “oh no not this again”. Then she says “oh yes, this again.” And I get to relive the whole thing.

I never understood why she didn’t non op the car and just park it. She could have just turned it into a shrine for her dad or gotten one of those historical vehicle registrations.

Basically like a lot of these cars that we eventually acquire they are let go by people who can no longer afford to keep them. It is really sad.

It’s like I said in one of the early posts in this thread. When I drove this 1985 300D away the wife of the PO dirty looked me but couldn’t meet my eyes. She was really upset. After I fixed something like thirty broken things on that car I couldn’t fathom why she still wanted the heap. It was broken up until the point it was immobilized on their driveway.

I still wonder if I came out on the better end of the deal at $1400. As I said, it had back fees, and needed over a grand of parts. And hours and hours of labor to get it to where it is today. I’m happy and I’ve had a great time tinkering, but I’ll be the first to say the car was totaled by labor when I got it.

__________________
79 300TD “Old Smokey” AKA “The Mistake” (SOLD)
82 240D stick shift 335k miles (SOLD)
82 300SD 300k miles
85 300D Turbodiesel 170k miles

ok, finally some success on the center vent. I bit the bullet and ordered a center vent vacuum actuator on Pelican. It took awhile to get here but I understand it had to be directly ordered from Mercedes. I'm just glad that thing was available.

I had tried a number of things before, like using old diaphragms and gluing up the hole in my diaphragm with a bicycle patch kit. Nothing worked. The bike patch fell off. I guess I didn't scuff it up enough.

So here are some photos of the install of the center vent pod. No dash removal. I did it all like dmorrison showed via the instrument cluster opening and the glove box opening. Took 2 hours including cleanup. I'll say right off that I have very small hands and I had trouble getting my fingers up in there. This may not be the best way for everyone but it worked for me. I also had to work blind (by feel) but I'm ok at this too.

OK, the images.

The original pod viewed from the instrument cluster opening.



Remove it by breaking off the little tabs. I did it by prying on the star washers with a screwdriver. The teets snapped off and I lost a couple of star washers and rubber washers.



You need to snake in the new pod. I put my mity vac on it to retract the link so I could move it around. I put it in nose first and up into the far corner towards the drivers side. Then I could pull it back and get the link through the retaining ring riveted to the airbox.



There it is slipped through the little retaining ring.



Now the hard part. I have it in position. Now I need to get the new star washers on.



So I bought a bag of star washers on ebay when I redid the ac pods in my SD. I really hate these things but what can you do. I bent the tabs to make a looser fit. I know they could slip off but I needed to make them loose enough so I could slip them on by hand. The original ones were way too tight for me to slip on with my finger tips. The rubber washers were out of the question too. I tried to put one on but I just dropped it. So I just went forward trying to slip the star washers only over the black plastic teets.



A 9mm wrench works really well to press the star washers over the teets. You need to support the pod from the back. I probably could have jammed a tennis ball back there but I decided to just hold it with my hand and push with the wrench using a screwdriver duct taped to the wrench.

Like this.





And there is the new one with the new washers installed. Center vents work properly now. I don't really know how the floor vents and fresh air vents work, but I could actuate all other 4 pods with my mity vac and they didn't leak. So I'm pretty happy now and I'm ready to move on to putting in my new compressor, expansion valve, receiver drier and seals. I loan a tooled a vacuum pump, flush gun and ac manifold from Autozone. I'm ready to do this.



I'm close.

__________________
79 300TD “Old Smokey” AKA “The Mistake” (SOLD)
82 240D stick shift 335k miles (SOLD)
82 300SD 300k miles
85 300D Turbodiesel 170k miles

1st., who / where is 'dmorrison' ? is there a link to his work ? .

Next, I'm assuming these photos were taken through the hole left by removing the glove box liner ? .

I'm going to have do try this soon, I'm not looking forward to it but your comments and pictures are *very* encouraging ! .

I have medium size hands.....

TIA,

__________________
-Nate
1982 240D 408,XXX miles
Ignorance is the mother of suspicion and fear is the father

I did then what I knew how to do ~ now that I know better I do better

PeachPartsWiki: Replacing the HVAC Vacuum Actuators

There are a bunch of other threads on full dash HVAC box teardowns that are epic.

Yes, I pull the liner out of the box.

Yeah, as I’ve said before I have small hands with bony fingers. The above thread was done with longnose pliers.

And of course the ultimate thread...,

Photo step by step post showing a W123 evaporator removal (1983 240D and 1982 300TD)

__________________
79 300TD “Old Smokey” AKA “The Mistake” (SOLD)
82 240D stick shift 335k miles (SOLD)
82 300SD 300k miles
85 300D Turbodiesel 170k miles

Yes, there are myriad threads, why I asked because after spending hours searching I didn't find these two great ones .

THANK YOU EVER SO MUCH ! .

SWMBO keeps asking m why my hands have so many cuts & scrapes but she loves me fixing all those little fiddly things....

__________________
-Nate
1982 240D 408,XXX miles
Ignorance is the mother of suspicion and fear is the father

I did then what I knew how to do ~ now that I know better I do better

That was an epic job. I hope my evaporator is good.

__________________
79 300TD “Old Smokey” AKA “The Mistake” (SOLD)
82 240D stick shift 335k miles (SOLD)
82 300SD 300k miles
85 300D Turbodiesel 170k miles

Still working on the AC. Today I stripped out the old receiver drier, expansion valve and compressor. Then I flushed the evaporator, condenser, and hoses. Found a lot of hardened o rings that had welded themselves to the metal.

I got a lot of free rent a tools from Autozone. Got a charging manifold, vacuum pump, and flush gun. I intend to return all this stuff when I'm done. I could have bought this stuff but why when I can borrow it. Saved a few bucks.

Exposing the receiver drier and condenser fittings. Photos to keep track of wiring.



Expansion valve under glove box ready for removal. I just followed the how to over at dieselgiant to do this.



Flushing the hoses and condenser. Wow this was a messy job. I should have put cardboard on the floor. Lots of splatter out of the pans and buckets I set up to catch the fluid. I hope I did enough. I flushed out a lot of orange/pink oily mess from the system. I tried to do it till it cleared up. I went through a gallon of flush for the whole thing. I undoubtedly left some oil in there but I think I'll just have to call it a day. It was a mess and probably a fire hazard. Lots of solvent vapor wafting around in the car and in my garage. I had to open all the bay doors. Luckily we had a breeze tonight.



Cracking the line at the condenser for flushing. Diverting the effluent with a 3/4" hose to a pan.



Not done yet. I still have to put all the new parts in. Wow what a mess. But I wanted to do it right. I converted my 240D over to 134a using one of those little kits from walmart. I replaced the compressor and just filled the system up with PAG oil and 134a. That lasted about nine years of daily driving. Then it sprung a leak. Where? The worst place. The evaporator. Learned the hard way that you need to vacuum out the water or you'll induce corrosion in the system. Sent the car to an early grave.

so this time I'm flushing. Replacing expansion valve, drier and compressor. And all kinds of green orings of course. Then vacuuming before filling. I still don't know if my system leaks or not yet. That'll be the pits if I put it all together and find out my evaporator leaks.

Oh well, only one way to see now. I'll hopefully post about freezing cold air tomorrow. Even though its fall out here in SoCal we are still at 82 deg.

__________________
79 300TD “Old Smokey” AKA “The Mistake” (SOLD)
82 240D stick shift 335k miles (SOLD)
82 300SD 300k miles
85 300D Turbodiesel 170k miles

I got my AC going today. It has been several days. First removing the expansion valve, compressor and receiver drier. Then flushing the lines, then replacing all the above with new parts. Wow, it was actually a lot of work. I recall seeing a bill on my SD for this job. I think it was pretty expensive to get done. Easy, but very tedious meticulous work.

At the end I got a big shock as my compressor clutch didn't start. No worries I thought, just a simple relay circuit through the pressure switch. Nope. I have a new 1985 300D with a Klima!

I start tracing the thing out and I'm totally lost. Nothing like my 82 SD. Oh man, time to use the search function at peach!

I had no idea what that all meant and I dug through the forum. Thank you guys again! Makes me feel like I'm actually a good mechanic when you post all the answers. So My Klima was bad and I had to retouch the solder bumps on the back of the circuit board. Miraculously it came back to life. Wow. Just like everyone said it would. My compressor popped on and I'm doing 30 deg F under ambient. I checked my site glass on the drier and I saw bubbles. I'm thinking two cans of R134a wasn't enough (about 24 oz).

And the photos:


Free loaner tools from Autozone!








Ambient temp.







Time for surgery on my Klima. Resolder all bumps. Amazing how many things this trick fixes on this car.



Compressor is on!!!



Cold enough for now.



Running Klima in place to make sure it works before buttoning it up.




It is fixable. I have cold air!!!! Just in time for...the winter.

__________________
79 300TD “Old Smokey” AKA “The Mistake” (SOLD)
82 240D stick shift 335k miles (SOLD)
82 300SD 300k miles
85 300D Turbodiesel 170k miles