'My first SL'

[219]

I don't think it is fading , I've had Signalred cars , and similar colours , which indeed fade to a sort of pink shade , but mine is bright and as it should be , as per the pictures .

The metalwork I uncovered was a much darker shade and entirely different , which struck me as odd since I thought the shells were all dip painted in the factory .

Strangely enough though , now I come to think of it , the boot floor / wheel well / insides of the doors never struck me as being a different colour when I was in there , and these areas wouldn't normally be painted in a colour change .

There is no question that the car has been painted at some point - overspray on the exhaust being the most glaring sign , little bits of bubbling on one rear wheel arch and lacquer lifting off the bonnet also suggesting it .

 

[219]

Sorry to hear about the rear-end bump. These are tough old cars - some years back mine got hit by a Ford Galaxy when I stopped at a pedestrian crossing and the person behind me didn't More than a gentle 'nudge', it shunted my car forward several feet.

There was no visible damage, even to the paintwork. I had the rear bumper removed for a thorough check and everything was perfect underneath. Some degree of luck I guess in that the bumper heights were obviously compatible, but a pleasant surprise nonetheless.

Hi Bill , your bump sounds very similar to what I experienced .

While I could no doubt get my bumper painted at no cost to myself , there is no obvious sign of damage unless I look very , very closely indeed .

Since the rest of the car will be getting painted again at some point , I don't feel it is worth the hassle of sending it away just now for all that's wrong .

 

[oldguy57]

Love a thread on a rolling restoration it must be very satisfying to be able to gradually resolve all those problems that previous owners have not dealt with. A couple of questions. Why do you think the red paint has not faded to the pinkish colour you often see on older cars- quality of respray or garage storage perhaps? I ask because I am looking at an sl500 in a similar colour. Secondly how do you anticipate the car will hold up to the winter weather up north if its being used and not garaged? Any particular recommendations for winter use?

 

[219]

I suspect the red paint isn't all that old - there are numerous signs of a not so great respray .

Also , having had red cars before ( including a Signal Red 190 ) , they can be kept fresh with periodic use of T-Cut or similar to remove oxidisation . The mileage isn't astronomical , so it may have spent a while being garaged - but with 12 previous owners , who knows ? I know my red 1957 Ponton faded when neglected on my mum's drive for a few years , but came back to a nice shine with a T-Cut and polish , alas before being neglected again

The car will have the hard top back on before winter , and hopefully I'll have my 190 back on the road for use over winter , so winter use of the SL should be minimal . I was thinking of putting a car cover over it whilst up my drive in winter , but removing for periodic airing .

 

[219]

The seat belts arrived from Quickfit SBS on Monday , and installation was a dawdle with only one hole needing to be drilled . The three point belts are very effective and the beige webbing a perfect match for my interior ( I might look later to see if they can rebuild my front seat belts with new beige webbing as the original webbing looks somewhat 'tired' after twenty odd years of use .

The rear belts are certainly long enough to go round a 'large' adult , but way too much excess webbing to wrap around Harris . I ended up getting two belts as I felt that , while I really only needed one , the car would look very odd with one sparkling new 3 point belt on one side and a grubby looking lap belt on the other .

I'll post photos of the belts later on .

Yesterday , I got a call from MB Glasgow to say my parts were in , so I got two standard master keys , the hyphen for the boot lid badge , the heater fan knob and the combi tool for the hard/soft tops .

I'm not entirely convinced that everything is right with the heater , despite the non working air con , as the three controls for the dash vents don't seem to do anything , and the selector for heated/unheated air via the centre vent doesn't seem to make much difference ( I can hear a flap working after a few seconds , but it doesn't change from heated air to completely unheated air as it seemed to a few weeks back ! ) I wonder if the vacuum system has some connection to the heating system and if my problem with the central locking is related .... When I had the back seat out the other night for seatbelt fitting I checked the various vacuum pipes in there and the connection block , to no avail .

Another thought is that , while I can hear the vacuum pump running any time I operate a lock , I haven't checked that it actually produces vacuum - could be the motor works but the pump is faulty - must check .

 

[Mike Walker]

Derek re your post above and car covers. Did the same on my W201 but damp did get in even wth regular "airing". I could not believe the amount of mould I found on the cloth seats , steering wheel and trim when the cover finally came off. A bugger to get rid of too! More airing less mould perhaps but you are slightly further North than me

 

[Doodle]

( I might look later to see if they can rebuild my front seat belts with new beige webbing as the original webbing looks somewhat 'tired' after twenty odd years of use

Will be interested to hear if they can

 

[BTB 500]

I had a cover on my SL for the first few years without any problems, it was a Covercraft Noah one ... not cheap, but worked well:

Covercraft Custom Fit Car Covers - Covercraft Europe

 

[oldguy57]

With regard to mould growth you can buy various products to put in the interior of the car which will absorb damp and totally eliminate mould growth.They work with 100% efficiency if changed once or twice over the winter even with cars parked outside and covered up. Might be worth using and they are very cheap.

 

[219]

I have a small dehumidifier which I have left in laid up cars over the winter - the tank needed emptied every few days : it was amazing the amount of water it sucked out of the air , and it kept the cars nice and dry inside .

SWMBO complained about the 'wasted' electricity , but I viewed it as money well spent .

 

[oldguy57]

2 or 3 plastic trays filled with a silica based cat litter works wonders . Cheap and doesnt use electricity!

 

[219]

It has been a while since I posted here .

On Monday I drove down to Nottingham and stayed over in the Premier Inn

The following morning , I was up with the lark and headed round to PD Gough , where I had an appointment to have my stainledd steel exhaust fitted . This was my second visit , after I had a system made for my 500SEL there a number of years ago , with which I was well pleased and it outlasted the car !

I was up a 6 , my hotel being 4-1/2 miles from their premises and I arrived at 6:30 since they stated they were open at 7 am . I had no sooner parked up outside than the roller shutter went up and I as invited inside . After a quick inspection of my car up on the ramp , the system wasn't quite what they had expected ( they had previously made a system for a 500SL ) so they had to make some of the system from scratch . This meant that the job took a little longer than expected , but it was ready by 4pm . I was invited down from the waiting room to inspect the job and , as before , the craftsmanship was superb and the fit perfect , with the car idling silently .

I settled up and headed off happily , straight onto the M1 which was only a short distance from their premises . Alas , I had travelled quite a distance , by which time they would have been closed , until I came to the section in Yorkshire where the motorway is restricted to 50 mph , when I realised that at that speed there was a pronounced resonance in the system producing a really loud drone which really did my head in ; at 70 mph the system was again silent , so the noise was only apparent during a certain rev range . There was nothing I could do about it last night , but I telephoned Richard today and , after explaining the problem , he immediately agreed that if I took one of the boxes off ( he suggested the middle one of the three box system ) he would modify it and send it back by return . Since the alternative was a 600 mile round trip , I was more than happy with this ; I explained that I would have my 190 back on the road within the next few weeks and would wait until then , which was not a problem as their exhausts come with a lifetime guarantee .

So . I will put up with the noise for a few weeks and then get it fixed .

 

[219]

I just went up to MB Glasgow and picked up the under sill rubber insert for the jacking point , and ordered the rear subframe mount kits , which should be in on Friday , so I'll get them done next week before putting the car in for its MOT .

Other than that , there aren't any other faults I'm aware of , apart from the non working offside fog lamp , which wasn't the bulb ( or at least I put a new one in which made no difference ) - next step will be out with the meter and follow the circuit back until I find the fault , since it shares its fuse with the other one , which is working , it can't be that . All fuses were replaced with new ones when I got the car . I also pulled the bulb monitoring module and resoldered since an intermittent side lamp went on and off when it was tapped . As long as it stays dry , this will be the task for tomorrow .

I also went into Machine Mart and got a new trolley jack : the seals were going on my old one , which I've had for about 30 years , and although I would never get under a car supported only by a jack , if left for a few minutes it was dropping noticeably , so now the old one is in the trailer along with the scrap engine and other metal items for disposal .

 

[219]

Well , a few weeks since the MOT expired and the car kept off road , in that time I have stripped down the offside headlamp and repaired the ball joint which governs the height adjustment , fixed the offside fog lamp , and replaced the rear subframe mounts ( deja-vu after doing the same job on one of my W124's ) , while having the rear wheels off to do that job I realised my rear tyres were none too clever , nor was the spare , so three new tyres later and the car went in for MOT today - result , passed with no advisories

Notwithstanding the above , there are still quite a few niggles to sort out : the non working central locking is an ongoing quest - given that the headlamp levelling works fine , as does the heater vents , both of which depend on the vacuum system , I can rule out the pump - I've been round quite a lot of the system , but the fault still eludes me .

I've also been aware that the passenger door window closes more slowly than the drivers side one , tonight it failed to close completely ; jiggling the glass , there is some free play in it , so the door card will need to come off for investigation ( the passenger door glass is aftermarket , so could have been poorly fitted - I'm minded to get a genuine glass from W140 spares and probably will in due course , just to get things 'right' ) - this is a job for a dry day .

I still need to sort out the illumination of the OTG - just a bulb .

Finally , I need to do something about the poor audio setup and get one of my decent systems installed .

However , winter looms , and I want to get my 190E back on the road before then so that I don't have to run the SL over the winter , so that will be the priority next month - brake rebuild should see it sorted .

 

[rusty55]

Good luck with juggling up keep of your SL over winter months

 

[219]

I haven't posted much here in a while , but the car went through its MOT a while back , needing only a pair of tyres after I had fixed everything else I was aware of ( I knew before putting it in it would need the tyres , so purchased these and got the MOT garage to fit them ) .

Anyway , the car has been going great and saw a lot of top down motoring over the summer months ; I put the hard top back on at the beginning of this month and , of course , have been out on so many nice days when I would've had the top down :wall bash:

The odometer just turned over 152,000 miles the other day - so I've now done 10,000 miles in it , with the only failure being the aftermarket ignition coil which left me stuck at the roadside a few days after getting the car , having put a proper Bosch one in there hasn't been any further trouble .

Before putting the hard top back on , I spent some time with a darning needle and a pair of pliers stitching the windows back into the soft top - the stitching had been disintegrating but all good now at the expense of half a day and sore fingers !

I will get a new hood at some point since the current one is functional but tatty . Same with the leather seats .

Since recent weekends have been tied up on other things , I had hoped to get somewhere with the audio upgrade this weekend ; although I was working in the morning , I managed to make a start this afternoon and removed the trim panel from the boot to fit some of the components , as well as getting the two CD changers into the boot . I still have to run cabling to the front as well as fitting the upgrade speakers I have bought for the car . Eventually deduced that the only place I can possibly put a subwoofer is above the passenger footwell , that bit will need further research but there seems to be some space there !

A couple of pictures :

 

[219]

It has been a while since I updated this thread ; the car clicked over 170K recently , so I've now racked up 30K on her

This has been substantially trouble free . I had replaced the two rear tyres and the spare for the previous MOT , then had an unrepairable puncture part way through the year , at which point I found the unused spare had a bulge in the sidewall ( these were tyres I bought privately from a seller on Gumtree and although unused with the paper labels still on had no kind of warranty ) so a new set of Contis duly fitted .

A while back I had fitted a better audio system , but still running through original door speakers which weren't great . I obtained some JBL speakers and fitted these into the original door pods which made a big improvement ; I also ran wiring to positions behind the trim either side of the rear seats as I was minded to fit rear speakers but haven't done so yet - these would need to go on spacer rings as there's little or no depth behind . I also still need to look at a sub - which will probably go above the passenger footwell - I saw an S203 with sub in the rear wing on a visit to a breaker the other week , so may go back for that and see how it goes - otherwise build my own to fit .

There has lately been an intermittent squeak from the osf when the suspension moves - I'm thinking ARB bushes but haven't changed them yet , was also thinking bottom ball joints and have bought two Lemforder ones to fit as a precaution , but also still to be done .

About three weeks ago I had the day off and took my son down to Largs for the afternoon , on getting back , Harris pointed out a crack in the windshield - the only thing I could think of was that we had gone over a couple of cattle grids which sent vibrations through the car .
Having checked with my insurance , I got onto Autoglass , who didn't have a screen for my car , and couldn't give a delivery date . With the MOT due at the end of the month this was a problem . After again contacting my insurer ( Privilege ) they said that if I could get it done elsewhere they would consider it . MB could supply the screen from Germany within 3 days at a cost of £504 but weren't keen to fit it ; Merparts could source the same screen and quoted £1050 to supply and fit , which I felt my insurers might baulk at , eventually I found a small independent place who fitted an aftermarket screen for £350 +VAT .

The car went in for the MOT last Saturday and failed on one track rod end plus 'fuel and brake lines not properly secured' , which was odd as they were just the same last year .

Anyway , ECP didn't have track rod ends in stock , but MB Glasgow had a complete tie rod , which I got that day and fitted . I also asked for fuel/brake line fixings and was given these four metal clips - which once I was under the car were not what I needed . Looked up EPC myself and determined the correct parts , now ordered from Germany and should be in by the end of the week - I've got 10 working days for the free retest so should be fine for that .

I've also been progressing things with the 190 - after the engine upgrade I also needed to upgrade the brakes - didn't get it done last summer and determined not to let the car lie another winter , so I had got callipers from a forum member who was breaking a 260E and fitted these recently , to find that the new discs I had ordered ( 190 2.6 ones ) were the wrong diameter , so have now ordered and fitted W124 ones , plus new pads , which fitted perfectly and all built up - now just need to change fluid/bleed system - just bought one of those vacuum bleed units which works off my air compressor , so will see how that goes . I insured the 190 last week , so will get in for MOT soon as well . I picked up a wood/leather steering wheel for the car but that's a job for later .

Meantime , I've got a Fire Brigade car to run about in which is fine since I'm on duty this week and next ...