My GF's son just bought a delightful 75 450 SL and I get to be the mechanic. It seems the previous owner tried to solve a vacuum leak by removing ALL of the vacuum hoses and plugging every other connector (we found the whole bundle in the trunk!). Does anyone have good pictures or diagrams of the vacuum hose routing? I have both the Chiltons and the Haynes for this car, but the diagrams are either convoluted, missing or unintellegible at best.

Please please help...we need him to drive this car soon so he will leave us alone and not need to be shuttled around anymore.

WOW! If you can hook up the basic hoses for the distributor and make sure the others at the throttle body are plugged, the car should run. (vacuum hose wise). The others are for central locking and climate control. there are some others that go to vacuum switch-over valves on the intake but dont worry about those yet. Get it running and then work out the rest. The diagrams in the manuals are in different places depending on what system they are for. There is not only one vacuum diagram for the entire car. Congrats on the new car!

go here:
http://www.peterschmid.com/vacuum/1968_1979/8%20cyl/1975_450.jpg

thanks. The car does run, but not too swell. Every day I tinker with it, it does get better and better. I have some lovely drawings of the air intake routing, I'm just not too sure WHERE these valves and such are on the car or what they look like in proportion to the others.

Hence my begging for pictures of the beautiful engines that I know are owned by the members here.