New Arrival, '66 230SL (BLOG)

[JMURiz]

Cool, how would you rate your experience with Allied...I've been looking for a rebuild shop, they are close to me place too.

Do you think if I had them evaluate my motor they could fix it enough for me to try and rebuild it all myself?

[ctaylor738]

I have been very happy with Allied but they're not the cheapest guys in town.

If what you mean is would they clean your parts up, measure your cylinders and crank and tell you what you need, then do the work and give the engine back for you to assemble, the answer is yes. They are OK if you supply your own parts.

[cth350]

If you need a spare hood, i have one. Of course they are custom cut to fit the engine compartment opening, so you might get lucky and you might not.

Thx -CTH

[ctaylor738]

When you go to a Pagoda gathering, everyone checks out the firewall, and as I worked on my engine compartment repaint and clean-up, I became more and more dissatisfied with the firewall pad. Wrong material, badly-applied, covered everthing, adhesive showing. Just plain ugly.





The final straw was when Gernold Nisius of SL-Tech sent me some pictures of an extremely nice 230 that he was working on for a client to "bring it up to standards."



So I got out the scraper, and removed the old padding and adhesive.



I ordered an new pad and a full set of grommets from SL-Tech, and painted the firewall where it would show with the new pad installed. And the result, not perfect, but a giant improvement.

[t walgamuth]

It looks damn good to me.

Beautiful car. I have always loved the pagodas but at my age probably will never own one now.

Yours looks lovely.

Sounds like you have an excellent senior manager!

[Roncallo]

Really nice project. Great find.

[ctaylor738]

I didn't exactly bust my butt over the holidays, but since my last post I've managed to get the engine together and installed. About all that's left is the radiator and some minor wiring hookups. You can see from the pictures below that I still have some of the black spray paint to get rid of.





Last Saturday brought a minor disappointment. I had just finished the valves, installed the valve cover, added oil, and went to turn the engine over on the starter to get the oil circulating. Nothing. Not even a click. I verified that the starter had power from the battery and ignition switch. I pulled the starter and cleaned the solenoid, and got the Bendix to work, but nothing from the motor. So I have a rebuilt on the way. This had silver lining, however. Today I hooked up the exhaust, which was majorly easier with the starter out.

Another thing that I did was to rebuild the shift linkage. After I dropped the engine and trans in, I discovered that you had to move the shifter a good foot to change gears. This was remedied by approximately $70 in parts from Mercedes, available overight. Picture below showing the lower boot, rod bushings, washer, and snap rings. This really takes care of all the wear points in the pre-1972 linkage.



So, some more paint clean-up while I wait for the rebuilt starter ...

[ctaylor738]

So the starter arrived, got installed, and cranked the engine. I was very happy to see oil pressure come up after about 10 seconds. Following that, the radiator and some final odds and ends got installed, and a thorough check to be sure everything was tightened was conducted. Last Friday I put the fuel pump fuse back in and cranked for about 30 seconds with the injectors cracked, seeing fuel from 4 of them. I then hooked up the cold start valve, tightened the injector connections, plugged the coil wire in, and the engine started without incident, settled down, sounded fine.

Over the weekend I got the clutch working well enough to take the car down off the stands, back it out of the garage, and let it run for a while. Engine sounds great, very quiet, very responsive, no leaks. I took it down and up the driveway, managing one shift into second and everything seems to be in working order.

For a real test drive, I need to bleed the power steering, add some
ATF to the transmission, and finish bleeding the clutch. And tags and insurance.

[Loz]

Everyone Loves a happy ending!

Great work there, Chuck. I see you are a man of exacting standards. Please do not look too closely at my 250s

[ctaylor738]

I went through several attempts to get the clutch to work right. The problem was that it would go down halfway before even beginning to disengage, and then it would stick to the floor. The linkage has an "overcentering" spring that reduces the amount of effort needed to hold it down, and if there is are in the system, or it isn't adjusted correctly, the spring will cause the pedal to stick to the floor.

So I bled it from the top, from the slave cylinder, and with Senior Management working the pedal. Just when I thought I had it right, the slave cylinder started leaking. So I ordered the repair kits for both cylinders, along with a new hose and strainer for the reservoir. Everything came from Germany, so that took a week. Then I spent two weeks in CA in training for my new job.

Back home, it took about four hours to install the new seals etc. in the cylinders, and the bleeding was easy. With the car up, and the pressure bleeder out, I did a flush on the brake system for good measure.

Last Sunday was in the low 60's, perfect for a top-down maiden voyage. So Senior Management and I went off on a five-mile drive. To my amazement, the car drove very well. Clutch and trans fine, shifting was excellent with the new linkage parts, suspension reasonably tight, no rear-end noise, steering a bit loose but OK, brakes OK. The engine was a delight once warmed up and wanted to go past my 4000 rpm break-in limit. Exhaust sounded good.

The only issues noted were backfiring under load when not warmed up, and a hot idle at 1000 rpm.

About all that's left is to put the hood on, and work on the cosmetics. Then I need to start looking for another project.

[tonkovich]

a work of art

my neighbor has one just like it

keeper or...

[Arthur Dalton]

<>

Now that you have the new style starter, you may want to add the ballast by-pass. [ unless you already did ]

[sjefke]

Originally Posted by ctaylor738

ISo I bled it from the top, from the slave cylinder, and with Senior Management working the pedal.

My wife got a real chuckle out of this! The title for one and the activity too. My "Senior Management" (CEO) also had to work the clutch pedal last summer.

Car looks great! But please paint those rusty pipes under the hood - it's the finishing touch on a car that nicely painted.

Bert