The valves are in the pump, you can see the inside parts in the deep recess there .

There's a 13MM ATF bolt you have to turn to adjust the power steering belt after the three pinch bolts are lose ~ very important ! .

__________________
-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

OK so the pump has been swapped and is generating steady 22 on the mighty vac. I drove it around the block, literally once, and shifting is great as well as brakes and engine shutoff.
The fan is not yet put back on, but that's all that's left.
I am unsure about the tension of power steering belt.

And a new problem has been introduced, and it is worrysome... the engine now has some sort of knocking sound and also it is smoking. And on startup, it takes a stutter first, where as it didn't before. And on shutoff there is a little bit of a mild squeel to halt.

Could that all be caused by the power steering belt being too tight?

OR could the smoking symptom be caused by the good vacuum being reintroduced after a long time without it?

Here is a video. Very concerned now. There was never any smoke before and startup was always smooth.

http://media.spacecasetapeecho.com/engineknock.mov

well another update..
i loosened the power steering belt using adjustment bolt but upon tightening back up the three other nuts... one of them seems to have an issue. I hadn't noticed it before, so i'm assuming something just happened.
Basically the stud itself is loose. When standing in front of vehicle looking into engine bay, it is the upper left stud of pump. It can be turned freely by hand. It can be pushed in a bit too, although i didn't dare try pushing in all the way. But it can only be pulled out to the appropriate length by design.
Obviously tightening the nuts around it does nothing as the stud simply rotates.
I have tried pulling the stud as far as out possible while spinning the nut over it by hand but the stud still rotates, so it's not catching inside, or it's just cracked off inside.

However the pump seems to be aligned flush still. It would be worse if it were the stud furthest from belt because that stud/nut resists most of the tension from belt to keep pump flush against engine.

I will try starting the engine as is. I did compare my belt tension to car #1 and i did have #2's belt on too tight so that's better now.

I have the nut far enough onto loose stud that it should pop off too fast and i can at least test the belt tension performance.

oh boy, now i see what i did wrong. And i know what's causing the knocking clammer. Not sure about the smoke however.
I should never have started the engine without the fan bolted on. I did that just to save time in the event that the pump didn't work and i needed to then take it off, and the fan isn't all that easy to deal with.
But in the end it seems i have disconnected the large rotating piece that the fan bolts to. A gear, which connects to drive belt as well. I hadn't realized that it itself was held in place with those fan bolts.

The problem now is that i still can't put the fan/bolts back on without adjusting the rotated position of said gear now. The holes are not lined up at all, in fact i can't put in a narrow piece of something into the holes. It's just a wall. So the gear needs to be manually rotated somehow.

I am imagining this involves removing the drive belt as if i were to replace it, and then manually line up the gear in front of the holes..

oooof

The loose stud is almost certainly as bolt, you need to hold it from one end as you tighten the other end........

Get that sucker tight before you run the engine ! .

__________________
-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

SUCCESS!
All around.

Thank you for the suggestion regarding the rear of bolt on pump because somehow after looking previously i hadn't looked closely enough. There was in fact a rear section of stud(bolt) way back behind a good chunk of material. So that's resolved and the pump is on very well.

As for the tough hand of cards i dealt myself by running the engine without the fan and/or fan bolts in place and thus the fan pulley being rotated out of alignment with it's interior bolts holes.. Well i/we (a buddy was around to provide moral support and labor) ended up loosening the alternator to be able to loosen the two belts to give a ton of slack and fortunately that was enough looseness to allow a us to rotate the fan pulley without rotating the interior bearing/plate/shaft. It actually required quite a lot of slack and i am lucky that the alternator adjustment allowed for such amount of travel... with only being able to undo one of the two alternator bolts. The lower bolt wouldn't budge. The upper bolt i loosened and then the adjustment bolt did it's job. Lucky.

So a good while later, i had everything back together very nicely. And low and behold, not only was the knocking sound gone but also the smoke was gone as well. I have no idea what was causing the smoke but it obviously was my fault and had something to do with the lack of the bolts on the fan pulley.

I topped off the power steering fluid since that was super duper low and causing the expected sounds, and then went for a test drive for around and hour. No highways, mostly just around 40 mph in rush hour traffic on small roads.

Brakes feel terrific.
Power steering terrific.
Engine shutoff perfect.
Shifting is all in pretty good timing, and performs consistently. Shifts are a little hard though, so as i clean out the vacuum system overall i will want to soften the shifting a good bit. It's particularly noticeable when de-accelerating down to slow speed and hearing the final down-shift take place with clear knock. I just don't want to be causing harm to gears/tranny. Obviously it's softer than when i had no vacuum pump functioning, but it's still hard and a little concerning.

This is the first time since buying the first vehicle that i've had all four gears and good breaks and overall solid reliable performance. WOW what a long time coming this has been.

Car #1 is officially the parts car.

Here's a silly question.. the pump is now completely removed from the parts car but in my excitement i forgot to pull it into the driveway before doing this. Would it be an obviously horrible idea to drive the car a few hundred feet so i get it around the corner into driveway? I could always just put the bad pump on so that at least the engine is sealed up. But it isn't the easiest task and so.. could i get away with not doing that? The cam in engine at vacuum mount hole is exposed.

Whilst you're properly buttoning up the vacuum pump, take some time to look at the fool with the alternator's various bolts one of the one on front is clearly a 17MM ATF nut, what's not obvious is : the damned nut is welded to the bracket and will never turn ~ once again you have to look behind and loosen it from there, not easy with the AC hoses and stuff blocking access but once you figure it out you'll be set for life .

Good, tranny life extending firm shifts often feel too hard or abrupt to the average American ~ maybe have another Dieselhead ride in your car to see what they think .

I vastly prefer quick firm shifts in all my slushboxes .

Does the PS fluid still look red and smell sweet ? if not, get a turkey baster from the Dollar Store and suck it all out, re fill with ATF not PS fluid and expect to need to change the filter and repeat this a few times before it remains red and sweet smelling .

Failure to keep clean and fresh ATF (Dexron) in the PS system will cause at best the seal to go, at wor$t the pump to fail .

__________________
-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

Thank you!
Yes i did actually loosen the Alt bolt "behind" it. I had done a little homework first. But there are two bolts "behind" on the alt, one higher and one lower that is reached by getting under vehicle. That one just wouldn't budge. The upper one loosened well, and to my surprise the tension bolt then performed very smoothly. I had thought it would need both of the proper bolts to be loosened first, like the three bolts on the power steering pump needs.

As for the power steering pump.. yes i use ATF and on car #1 i went through the turkey baster method and fully cleared the fluid. With #2 i just wanted to get fluid in there so i could at least just drive it for an hour without worrying much. I have plenty of ATF and will order the new filter tomorrow and do the cycle.

Is it possible for me to drive my parts car with it's exposed vac pump hole, for just a minute?

Done a lot in the past week and haven't updated here!

Let's see..

- Put bad vac pump on donor vehicle. Drove it into driveway and parked it... for a long time. Bought a car cover.

- Did a switcharoo of front bumper, since main car's bumper was all messed up. My friend helped, and he was so kind as to completely take apart the rubber and reestablish the base rubber strip underneath of it which had slid loose over time and was the reason the large rubber strip was sagging, and did thorough cleaning and chrome polishing and re-blacking of rubber to get my front bumper to look just about new. So nice! Tight and fresh.

- Swapped the two front doors of both vehicles. Doing this gained me two rust free front doors, two fully working window mechanisms, and the completed cutting and installing of my 6.5" speakers. These now have non-tinted glass, however. I may down the road choose to pull over the tinted front windows from former doors. Plus the glass on them is a little less scratched. But this was easily the quickest multi-solution step so that other things could be addressed as well.

- Pulled the two front door latches/catches or whatever they're called, from the donor car. The rubber of the main car's catches was worn away. I still have some subtle alignment issues but the doors are closing nicely after a bit of finicking.

- Pulled the radiator fan (newbie terms) from donor onto main car.

- Oil change! (Was nice that i figured out what pan to use that allows me to not have to raise vehicle.) After much hemming and hawing, i decided to go with "Mobile 1 10W-40 High Mileage". I know it's not winter yet, but it's starting to get cold here at night sometimes. I did notice an immediate improvement in engine startup. Who knows when the last change was. Former owner told me he had always been using synthetic. So i went with that and chose a middle of the road option. Partially because 5W-40 was out of stock everywhere around here. Maybe switch to that next time.

- Changed oil filter as well, and the oil drain plug.

- Cleaned some VAC lines... from the AlDA to intake and from whatever device it is over on drivers side of engine bay that feeds the ALDA and connects to that line above with the banjo bolt. I think it is the Vacuum Transducer. The line between transducer and the ALDA/Banjo connection was completely clogged. I had a lot of hope that this would give me a bunch of extra boost, but as with every step i take i seem to get a subtle improvement culminating in a slow steady march towards solid performance.

- Hooked up gauge to turbo meaurement point and monitored a bit while driving. Getting around 9 to 9.5 PSI gunning it up a long hill. Used to get around 12+ on my other car with the refurbed turbo. I had done zero calibration of ALDA/TURBO on other car, and haven't tried anything on this one either.

- Temporarily sealed off the floor panel of rear right passenger which is mostly gone. I need to go to someone who can weld and have them install a simple panel after i cut away the edges of rust. It makes a big difference for now though, both sonically and with air quality, to have that truly sealed off and covered. Will even work in the rain temporarily.

- Uninstalled former after market stereo and installed my new stereo.

- Pumped the tires to 35. Tire max is 44. Mercedes recommends 28 in front and 32 in rear. Of that's for "leisure comfort." I'm interested in boost and tightness of control. Not sure if going above 35 is a good idea though.

- I've been blessed with a full week of dry days, so have been leaving the windows down a lot. The car is starting to smell just like my old car and i'm very relieved.

- Installed my custom/yakima chrome roof rack. Woo!

THOUGHTS / CONCERNS :

Could there be some sort of bleed/hole between cabin and engine bay? Related to the HVAC behind dash? I seem to get a good amount of engine noise through my dash when accelerating. I don't remember it being quite like that on former car. Also, i do feel that when i have my HVAC running that some sort of not good air quality is coming into cabin. After some time i will start to feel the same kind of irritation in throat and lungs that you feel when you're standing next to exhaust. It's a very small and subtle amount, but i think it might be happening. Also, when i don't have the HVAC running in some capacity, something in the dash rattles to no end. Maybe its a fan that's idle and shaking? It's loud, so i always leave something turned on low.

I'm not very thrilled with the torque i'm getting in general. I know this is a blanket concern and that all of the factors of a vehicle's health contribute to power, but i do think on the other car i had a more powerful reaction to the acceleration up hill than what i'm getting on this one. Granted this is after putting in a fresh turbo, but this turbo does appear to be healthy.

I suppose the next two logical steps for me are valve adjustment and continuing with overall VAC cleaning.

The shifting is all there and in reasonable timing. I'm a little concerned how hard the clunk is when downshifting to first when coming to a stop. But it's not problematic sounding/feeling really, just a tad jolting to hear. Friends in passenger seat ask.. "what's that?"

Rear window does not have horizontal lines going across... But on donor car it does.. Is this the rear window defroster? Is my switch on dash useless? Should i consider swapping rear windows? (yikes)


ISSUES TO BE ADDRESSED :

- Steering wheel squeaks
- Accelerator pedal squeaks
- Headliner front panel (visors, light, headliner) all needs to be swapped from other car. This one is falling down.
- Lots of small sections of carpet and hard plastic panels need to be swapped. Many ugly discolorations on this one.
- Rear section of headliner needs to be tightened up. It's falling down above the rear window.
- Rear window tint has some sort of mold growing up from bottom edge
- Remove all tint? Undecided.
- Oil line to radiators has a leak. There is tape around it, and a small leak drips onto street. Gotta pull that line from donor vehicle. This involves fully draining radiator system, correct? Might as well put in a new radiator. This one has a bunch of flattened imperfections in interior face. Would pull from donor but isn't that too much effort when i could buy a new one for 140$ and be set with brand new?
- Turn signals do not auto switch off after turning
- Dash needs to be swapped. This one is all cracked up. This will of course allow me to address stuff inside.
- Rear doors are loudly grinding when in motion. Lubrication of door catches? Hinges?

FAR REACHING PROJECTS :

Plant Drive is the name of the biodiesel system. It is not connected, but apparently all there in tact. Looking forward to that some day. There is a tempting switch sitting in front of shifter.

If all goes well from now through winter and spring, and the vehicle seems to have enough life left ahead of it, i'm going to get some quotes for having it sprayed. It would stay the same color, and i would prep the heck out of it, reducing costs as much as possible.

Well, it's a very rainy day, and i figured out the source of the water leak that is drenching my front passenger floor base layer pad during the rain. All the other rain that's occurred while i've had this car has been at night, until today.

It is definitely related to the sunroof. Weather it is a drain issue, or a seal issue, i don't know yet. I'll have to open the sunroof on a dry day and see.
The sunroof is stuck shut though. The motor tries but nothing budges. I'll need to manually crank it from trunk with some kind of tool, and hope it breaks itself free. Rusted shut maybe?

Here is a video.. There is a constant stream of water running down from visor section all the way down plastic column and behind the kick panel and then finally drips down onto floor by passenger feet. http://media.spacecasetapeecho.com/IMG_6535.mov

Any thoughts on addressing this?
--

DON'T force the sun roof open ! . you'll create misery you cannot believe .

If the manual opening doesn't work fairly easily, STOP and go find the FSM section that deals with dropping the inside trim panel so you can slide it back and disconnect the cables ~ then you can open the roof and blow the drains clean of leaf mulch .

__________________
-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

Thank you for the warning.
I will already be wanting to remove the entire front headliner (visor/mirror segment of roof interior) to swap it over from other car anyways. Some of it is falling down.
Maybe i'm in luck and this can be part of the same project logistically..

Sadly ;

I'm old now and never open the sun roof on my cars.....

FWIW, take the time to source and buy a CD - ROM of the factory W123 Shop Manual ~ there's no need to touch the headliner to get the sun roof open .

Of course, since one car has a bad headliner now, that's the one to fool with first ~

Remember after you've taken the cables out and cleaned them and the tracks and re lubricated everything (the special M-B sunroof grease is available, many use short fiber moly grease to very good effect), you'll need to _TIME_ the two cables so they pull/push the sunroof hinges *exactly* at the same time .

__________________
-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

REALITY CHECK ENSUES!

Can i do this work myself or do i need a welder person on board? I don't quite understand what the floor board material is. I thought it was some kind of aluminum but what is it? And what kind of material can i replace it with? I'll be cutting away all edges of rust and then needing to securely adhere patches of new material together or hopefully one giant custom patch that i design.

The right rear mount for seat to be bolted to was completely rusted and the bolt was almost non existent. So i had to break off that mount and will need to bring it over from other vehicle and creatively mount it to non-rusted floor/chassis or whatever it is right there.

That section of seat base was rusted too and i had to spend about an hour getting it released and capable of "raising" forward with right side pull lever. I'll be bringing the seat over from other vehicle as well.

That floor pan is made of steel sheet metal. Looks like a new one needs to be welded in.