Crush washers. Never reuse those. They crush down to seal. Copper ones can be reheated to expand out again but for brakes I wouldn't.

Available at any auto parts store. The guys will help you but there are different thickness' and sizes.

Done otherwise means I have still have to get the washers. =)

Thanks though!

BTW: The noob in the title is in reference to Mercedes, not cars in general =)

(Although I'm certainly no expert.)

Lol. I know the feeling. I'm embarrassed of my original thread here of "oh my god what do I do"

Cool. Sorry I had to pipe in as a safety concern.

No apologies necessary good sir! I appreciate erring on the side of caution any day and it could certainly help others who may stumble upon these ramblings!



I can't wait for work to be over, I want to get outside and get her on the ground again! So close to being drivable again.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...farnsworth.jpg

Brakes:
Brakes are all installed. Everything torqued and lock-tited up. New sensors in and rewired.

Brakes seem better than before and I can lock the wheels up if I try. However- and perhaps it's because I normally drive a much newer sports car... the brakes require A LOT of effort. They do seem to have the power to stop if you press hard enough though. I bled them a ton- but I could try bleeding them again now that it's been driven a few miles.

I took the car to get inspected- it passed! I thought the sagging rear suspension might get me failed, but nope! So I think I'm going to leave it sagging until spring... then replace the accumulators.

Water Leak:
So now that the brakes are 'done' and the alternator is in and charging properly- time to tackle the water leak. I found one small area where the hood hinge is where a rubber gasket, I believe where the hood release cable enters the cabin is out of place so water can get in. I'm not sure that is the main leak, just a small additional one. I can't see that little hole being the culprit for all the water I had- most of which was on the passenger side.

Really want to solve the water leak so I can get back to cleaning up the interior and making it look as good as possible.

Dash lights:
I want to fix the dash lights after I get the leak squared away. Real quick, I tried the rheostat by-pass to see if that got them back but it did not. However, it did get the console lights back. So the rheostat is dead (might try the rebuild vs the bypass first) but the cluster must either need bulbs or a wiring issue.

Air leak
Found a large air leak in the floor well, by the steering column. This is a big one! Reason I've been so cold driving it! So I'll investigate that during the water leak tests as well.

New issue(s) developed! After two little trips in the wagon, I was doing a walk around to make sure all lights were working on the vehicle. Nope. Passenger main headlight was out.

Went to investigate and hood won't open. Seems like half the hood is in the first stage of popping up and the other half is not. Pulling the interior cable does compress the spring and pulling the release tab accomplishes nothing. Tried combos of having someone pull the tab while lifting the hood, pulling the hood whiling pulling interior cable and extra tab, ect. No luck so far.

Saw some business about a screw driver method where you apply pressure to a specific area but no luck.

Should I bust out the pliers to grab the interior cable and just hope it doesn't snap?

After several attempts to free the hood, all unsuccessful, I decided to just take it to a shop. It's 20-30f outside and I had had enough. (Took the shop 1.5 hours to open it.)

Since the hood was freed, I felt motivated to work on some other things.

- Installed new RainX wipers all around
- Installed new idle dampner bolt and o-ring.

This helped the loping at temperature - which was extremely pronounced before - to where it is more of a constant albeit reduced shake. It's an improvement, but not a complete fix. However, I would have been shocked if it had.

Valves were last adjusted... who knows. That's probably going to have to wait until nice weather though.

- Fixed gasket on firewall (Drivers side where the vacuum lines come in).

The gasket has been messed with and was pushed completely into the engine bay allowing massive amounts of Maine winter to rush into the footwell at speed. It's still a tiny bit drafty down there. Much much better though. Now if only the floor heat was working...

Dash Lights Update:

I replaced the two 3W lighting bulbs on the dash cluster today and removed the rheostat for inspection and possible rebuild. In the meantime, I simply fitted some crimps to the two posts on the back of the dash - same as by passing the rheostat.

This did not yield the results I was hoping for.

With the lights turned on:

- No main illumination from either of the new bulbs (inserted to match bulbs that I took out)

- High Beam Indicator light ON when High Beams OFF. OFF when high beams ON. (Neat!)

- Blinker lights both illuminated always

- Center console lights illuminated fine

So, that's worse than before. So I disconnected the rheostat bypass and cluster returned to previous state which to recap is:

- Everything works as expected except the main illumination. And the dimming from the rheostat of course. And no console lights are on, too.

Anyone heard/seen behavior like this before? Seems very odd and not at all what I expected.


Also, of note: someone else has been back here messing with things. There is a wire attached to one of the terminal posts: https://i.imgur.com/KEsqHiU.png

The connected wire terminates behind the dash in a grouping of other wires. A ground of some sort? The crimps used on the wire are not factory so I assume this was an attempt to fix/do something.


Not sure what the next course of action is, if no ideas- I'll bust out the voltmeter and see what is/isn't getting power.

I'm guessing I should make separate threads for issues so that people will actually see them, link off to them from here and then update this thread with their results.

At any rate, I made a little video with a bunch of questions inside: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4MkFf2BAek

I'm still researching most of these myself, but if anyone wants to chime in that's always appreciated. The first four minutes are where the questions are and the last four is mostly just rambling.

Were you there watching them take 1.5 hours :eek: to open it or is this what they told you when you got the bill? And this is a Benz shop?

(Autoworks - Caring for your car and community)

I didn't watch them no and they are not a Benz only shop. Just a local shop that's been here forever and tends to wrench on older cars. While I was there there was a Studebaker and classic Saabs in line. I've seen tons of classic Porsches there, TVRs, Ford Falcons, first gen Celica liftbacks ect. They do work on Mercs quite a bit as well.

I specifically asked them to only spend an hour trying to get it open because after that, it would probably be cheaper to just purchase a new grill.

They spent 1.5 but billed me 1 because of my request- they were close so they wanted to finish the job.

Cheers,

Greg

Looks like a coolant heated alt fuel system where coolant and fuel hoses have been tee-ed into. You just need to remove the tee's one by on and return it to stock. This is best done if you can look at another engine with the same config. (85 California). If you do not have that luxury, look at the FSM and Startek EPC pictures, or post detail pics of each tee so people with the same engine can tell you how to undo it. I can see from the video that the coolant intake was taken from the hose coming out of the cyl head by the oil filter housing, and the return is at the aux coolant pump.

Leak Update:

After doing two-three leak tests via 5 gallon buckets, I'm fairly confident that the windshield gasket has had it. To support this, the gasket is visually cracked in several places and a bit dried up. In addition, there is terrific wind noise at highway speeds which also appears to be from the front windshield.

I'll be ordering up a gasket from peach parts and a local glass shop will be doing the repairs. I called up these guys (Brit Bits - Fine British Automobiles - Rye, NH) and am going to the shop they have theirs done at.

Do I need to purchase the adhesive pad as well?

Also, I've read several people say OEM Mercedes is best. Read others say the Mercedes ones have sometimes sat for too long and have dried up themselves leading to premature failure (2 years for someone). And... then I've also read that the OE gaskets are both fine and also of questionable quality. So seems like a bit of a crap shoot.

Peach parts stocks Uro Parts as the replacement gasket. Is it semi safe to assume if it's stocked here, it should work well?

I'll bet they had it open is less than 10 minutes. Did they also fix it so it can not happen again? It's a simple mechanism and once you know how it works and have a clear picture of the parts, you'll know how to jimmy it if something fails in the future.