Aha! That makes sense.

Think i can get it out with just a floor jack or is a transmission jack a must?

A tranny jack would be really helpful, or you could build a cage out of wood that sits on the end of a regular floor jack. The auto is pretty heavy and can be awkward, plus spills a lot of fluid in the struggle to remove it, so its a pain using you knees to balance it on the end of a regular floor jack.

Harbor freight sells a cheap scissor style tranny jack which is just great though.

Disconnected the shifter, control rod, dipstick all fluid lines last night. I also drained the transmission since on this old style the dipstick attaches to the bottom of the pan with a banjo bolt.

So this happened today. Thanks Hanno for letting me borrow the transmission jack!

I had a minor issue getting the transmission mount off. The captive nuts on two of the bolts broke off and I had to grind the bolt heads off but otherwise no issues at all.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...ps58f0863b.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...ps92f998f5.jpg

Hard parts over!

Now all I need to do is order all new clutch parts. I'm hoping for a black friday/cyber monday sale at one of the fine MB parts suppliers ;)

The old clutch looked like it had some life left but I really only want to do this once so I'm getting everything new.

Ran into a massive problem today. Two of the flex plate bolts are rounded off. No idea how to proceed. I have already tried to use a bolt out with no success. I'm nearly ready to pull the motor and use the parts car engine.

Well I dodged two bullets tonight. I found a thread from R Leo when he did his 4 speed swap and he ran into the exact same problem and he had to grind off the bolt heads to get the flex disk off.

http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/diesel-discussion/88699-auto-manual-transmission-conversion-has-begun.html

See post 36.

For others later on... sometimes you can not get a grinder to a rounded off bolt head... but sometimes you can place a drilled out nut over it....and use ' alloy rod' to weld it to the bolt head... to then give you something to use a socket on....it also helps that welding heats the bolt... let it cool before addressing it.

Nice that they are stretch torque, once you cut the head off the bolt loses the torque surface and comes right out by hand as you obviously discovered.

Ive had to grind off quite a few of the SOBs as well. The manual flywheel bolts with twice the tool depth will be a pleasure to install

Aren't all bolts that way ?

not in the way the flywheel bolts are if they were installed to their torque value. Ive broken off plenty of heads on regular bolts ive then had to drill and try and remove with an easy out cause the sucker was still plenty tight on the threads alone.

The auto flywheel bolts have that narrow distinctive stretch neck and are i think a one or two time use compared to a regular bolt. If you cut the head off, they are finger tight and the rest of the bolt can be unscrewed easily.

Can you be a little more specific.... like the physics you claiming...?
I think the difference you are attributing the difference in removing effort of other bolts after their heads are taken off is due to intervening variables such as percent of thread contact and corrosion .....
Not a difference in the basic concept of the threads pulling against the bottom of the bolt head to produce what we think of as torque and hope that it translates to pull down on the item needing to be held.

The benz auto flywheel bolt is a 1 or 2 use bolt designed to stretch more than a standard bolt. Not sure on the manual flywheel bolt, which doesnt have the same narrow neck. The result of grinding off the head of the automatic bolt is that its barely hand tight. You never have to drill out the threaded portion.

Indeed chapter 3-410 shows the waisted portion and describes when they are still in limit or not. In my experience the stretch limit is not the thing that kills these bolts rather the that heads of these bolts are easy to round off.

Although I've never had to cut off / drill away one of these flywheel bolts I can see how once the tension in the waisted portion of the bolt is released the remaining threaded portion is likely to be easy to remove. Most of the elastic movement is designed to occur in the waisted shank of these bolts.