500 SEC Euro vacuum hoses
 

A bit of help maybe?,

I am trying to put my 83 500 SEC engine back together and have not been able to find a vacuum diagram to go off of. The throttle plate has a vacuum switch on one side of it which looks like it has also melted at some point and it had a couple of hoses hooked up to it. (I also need this new vacuum switch)

I have the 1984 Federal vacuum diagrams which are what people have told me is probably the closest thing to what I need but it is not really helping, the US versions even show a throttle position switch which is something the Euro car doesn't even have so I am stumped. I did talk to a tech who was around back in the mid 80's when these grey market cars were hitting the shops and he said they were always somewhat in the dark as to what hoses went where as Mercedes did not release info on them and usually by the time they saw them they were hacked up with EGR's and other mods so any sort of factory advice probably wouldn't have done any good anyhow.

Thanks for any ideas.

126nut,

I don't have what you want either but maybe can help you sort out some of the lines.
My 500SEL is a US car but has a Euro engine that actually came out of Mexico (or so I was told). I have never seen a gray car that had all the required emission equipment that actually worked. The cat was always there as it would be inspected. The frequency valves never worked, only had wires going to them.
Let me suggest you take the vacuum diagram you have. Mark out anything you don't have, for instance you probably don't have an air pump. Mark out the vacuum lines for that system. You don't have a place to connect the switch (idle/WOT) so mark it out. I don't have a vacuum switch on the TB so I'm not sure what that is about, but mine does have a ported vacuum port on the TB. Maybe that is what you are seeing. When you get everything marked off that you don't have, hook everything else up using what you have left on the diagram.
In reallity, if you hook manifold vacuum to the dist vacuum advance and plug every thing else so you won't have any vacuum leaks the car will run great.

If you have any questions, let us know.

Paul

Yes the throttle body has a whitish plastic valve on the right side that screws down to the tb and had a couple of vacuum lines attached to it. I might ry to get a pic on here but I will probably just save it in a ziploc bag for future pondering as it is toast and I will most likely never find another one. I was wondering what all was added to the Euro modles to make them legal here, the air pump looks obvious as I think the part number is from a Ford, funny! There is also some 1/2" copper tubing running down to the cats which looks like a Bronx plumber might have fabbed it up in his basement. I guess the EGR system is stock or am I mistaken?

Thanks