Front Flex Disc; Wording Towards the Front or Rear?
 

OK, I'm replacing the front flex disc on my '91 190e 2.3 and the Haynes manual says to install it with the wording facing towards the damper, which is facing the rear. However, I've noticed that the wording on the original flex disc (never before changed or removed to my knowledge) has the wording facing towards the transmission (front).

My question is, since I'm replacing it with an identical OEM part, (febi with the mercedes star and part number ground off) which way should the wording on the disc face? Does it even matter?

Please help, as I can't read German. :o

wording always toward the rear. that is what i was taught at local dealer during training.

If you go to one of the nifty web sites that translate German to English and type in what it says on the disc you will see it says "driveshaft side" or something such as that.

Is the MB star and part number really ground off. My experiance with aftermarket OEM parts is that the aftermarket line is different than the parts they sell to the manufacturer. The stuff they sell to the manufacturer has to meet the manufactures specification. The stuff they sell to you has to meet a price point. Alot of these parts are built on two different assembly lines.

A good example is engine mounts. I will not buy an engine mount for any car from any place but the dealer no matter who makes it.

John Roncallo

Thanks for the replies. :)

After examining the old part, I noticed that it had a year stamp of '98 on it and it too had the star and merc part number ground off. It was cracked up pretty badly. So, it had obviously been replaced before.

I went ahead and put the new one in with the wording facing the rear of the car. So far, no problems.

Roncallo: Yes it's quite obvious that the star and merc part number were ground off on the new part. I see this all the time on parts that I buy online. I think they have to do it for legal reasons, since they are not being sold through the Mercedes dealership.

One more thing, I did do the online translation thing first. Since the second word was abbreviated, the best I could come up with was "this side joint", which didn't really help, since it wasn't clear to me which joint they were talking about... On the drive shaft or transmission?

joint in this case refers to the universal joint

Many thanks
 

Good information to know. All these years I have placed them with the lettering toward my ash tray :cool:

Heh!
:D

Attached is a pic of the old flex disc showing the cracks. Not so apparent in the photo, the bolt barrels are loose as well and are the culprit for the rotational play that I had in the driveshaft assembly.

Hi, I also need to replace the flexdisk on my 190e. Checking the instructions, speaking/reading german, the wording facing rear is absolutely correct.

If you can spare a few moments, could you please give a quick run-down of how you changed the disk? that would be much appreciated by myself and many others I'm sure. Since I don't have access to a hoist, I was about to give up and go to a dealer being quite nervous completely underneath the car up on jacks......

cheers

The procedure might be a little different for other years, but here's how I did it on my '91:

Since I don't have a posi rear end (you'll need to be able to rotate the drive shaft with the trans in neutral to get to all the bolts) I just jacked one side of the car up and put it on stands. I had to remove the transmission mount support bracket to gain access to the nuts on the flex disc. After all the nuts and bolts were removed, I needed to slightly lower the transmission and also remove the center bearing bracket for the drive shaft, (you need to remove the heat shield to get to it) in order to get enough clearance to get the old disc out and put the new one in.

All in all, it was kind of a pain in the ass, but one of those deals where if I had to do it again, I could probably do it within an hour.

Never new there was a direction with the flex disks. i must confess that I've always ignored which way the wording faced. Does anyone know why as i don't see a construction difference. As for which side to put the washers, I put them on the rubber side and not the flange side.

The writing doesn't face the rear....BUT faces the driveshaft...

DIESE SEITE ZU (ZUR) GKW means this side toward driveshaft.

ON the rear joint that means facing the front.

Thats good to know...I have no idea what direction I did mine on the W116 when I replaced them 3 years ago. Another reason why its good to read the FSM even on jobs that appear as simple as this.

This might help:

http://mb.braingears.com/201_DISK1/PDF/10008.pdf