My 70 280SE 4.5 has a little black box on the drivers side fender well, labeled made by TRW for MERCEDES BENZ. It seems to have gotten hot at some point and oozed a clear substance like hot glue down the fender well. The car seems to be fine but what is the box and is the melted glue a sign that I should replace it?

Good luck. MB hasn't provided that kit in probably 25 years.

MB had so much trouble with their point fired ignitions that MBNA got TRW to build them a replacement. I think it was an optical trigger but I could be wrong. Anyway, if I'm right you have no points in your distributor.

If it finally fails, you might be able to get a replacement from Crane Cams. They bought out the Allison Ignition group a few years ago. We have installed their optical system to replace points in numerous vehicles.

__________________
Steve Brotherton
Continental Imports
Gainesville FL
Bosch Master, ASE Master, L1
33 years MB technician

Hot melting parts under the hood can't be good! My 4.5 runs hot also. FYI as Steve mentioned, Crane Cams does make an ignition to fit our cars. I have one in my 72' 4.5 and love it. No more points.

Crane Fireball XR-700, it's the complete kit, part #700-0231. It's nothing exotic and any good auto parts store or local speed shop can order one for you. You can also order directly online.

The link below will take you to the Crane ignition applications guide, scroll up for the home page.

http://www.cranecams.com/ignition/appsm.htm#Mercedes

Unless your handy under the hood, have a pro install it. There's some ballast resistor vodoo internal / external that relates to your coil that needs to be addressed or you could toast the new unit.

STS

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One point about the Crane conversion. If you do it on a 116 or 107 body the tach won't work properly. The MB box conditions the primary ignition pattern to a square wave pulse. Without such the tach reads every oscillation of the primary as a firing and pegs the tach.

If anyone needs I could probably get my electrical nerd brother to draw up a diagram for the convertor he routinely builds us whenever we have installed one on such cars. The 108/109 doesn't need such since it doesn't have a tach.

__________________
Steve Brotherton
Continental Imports
Gainesville FL
Bosch Master, ASE Master, L1
33 years MB technician