FYI to all - recently my 129 (300SL 1990) had the windshield wiper go bad. When I took it apart I found a stripped black plastic planitary gear that is around 5.5" OD (half round) in the drive mechanism. When I checked with Caliber Motors in Ca. for the part, they said that the gear was not a separate item and that I would have to buy the entire drive unit for around $480.00 (that's less than half what a dealer would charge) just to get the gear. I found a used drive unit in ebay for $75.00 for a 124 and bought it taking the chance that the gear would be the same gear even though the mechanism is visibly different. I lucked out - the gears are identical. The point to make here is that MB does not have scheduled maintenance for the wiper and it should be taken apart and lubed at 100K miles or 7 to 10 years. If not, you will be almost assured that it will fail because the grease that they used dries to a wax like consistency and puts all of the load on the plastic gear.
They is quite a number of posts on this subject here under wiper problems. Most of the time the entire wiper unit has to come out to do this but some have a removable cover below the wiper. My guess is that this gear is the same on all of the monowipers from 1984 through 1996. If any one has other info in this gear, please post it. Its pretty LAME that MD does no sell this gear as a separate part because a lot of them are sure to go bad from now on. Good luck with this one. Craig
06-23-2004, 02:47 PM
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