Hi everyone,
The last few days I have been busy with the wiring loom from the 500E. It took me some time to free it from the car.
I had to follow the cables from the battery in the boot, to the engine bay, to all of the connector blocks and carefully pull it all out whilst labelling every connection.
The toughest part was the wiring loom inside the car. It is about 3x as thick as a regular W124 interior loom. It weaves in and out of various areas of the dash and all has to be picked out…
I had to remove most of the remaining dash, the steering column etc etc. I had to unscrew each and every wire from the fuse box, carefully labelling each connection.
One night I took the whole lot home and lay it out on the floor.
I then had the joyous task of carefully following each and every wire, removing the bits for the A/C, Stereo, Sunroof and so on. The wires I needed were the ones that affect running of the engine, gearbox and everything to and from the instrument cluster. It took me about five hours and one very sore back.
I don’t think I will know if I’ve made any errors until I try and run the car! I hope not!
I just need to tidy the wiring up and make it look like a loom again. Then eventually ill need to offer it up to the estate and splice it into the existing wiring where necessary.. Oh fun.
Over the weekend I took a break from wiring. Since the differential and reconditioned drive shafts were looking at me with their pretty new paint jobs, I decided to get the rear end complete.
The sub-frame was mounted last week. However there were some parts I wasn’t happy with.
I had already changed all of the suspension arms but the shock absorber bottom ball joints were totally shot. So I had ordered a pair of new shocks… £££ ouch.
Also the bottom ball joints on the rear hubs didn’t look great.
That was not a fun job to replace. Broke my special tool that I’ve had for years. Had to resort to making my own out of a head bolt and two large sockets..
So all of that was replaced and I mounted the differential last night with the drive shaft’s.
It was a bit tense when hanging the diff, as it looked like the brackets for the self-levelling valve and also the suspension spheres were going to catch the diff flanges… The suspension spheres are mounted differently in an estate to a saloon.
In the end, when the diff was mounted and left to hang, the parts all cleared each other by a mm or two! Almost like someone at Mercedes had designed it all to work together.. I may need to take my “adjustment stick” to one of the suspension pipes, but I’ll do that later once things have settled.
The rear end now has
- 500E sub-frame
- New sub-frame mounts
- Reconditioned differential with with genuine Mercedes fluid
- New self levelling shock absorbers
- 500E springs
- New suspension pipes both solid and flexible parts.
- 500E wiring harness for rear axle
- New anti-roll bar bushes & drop links
- All new suspension arms
- Reconditioned driveshafts
I did take some pictures of the rear axle all in place, but some wally left the memory card in the PC so none of them saved.
Ill get some later.
This conversion uses the the rare electronic dash unit. Might give some styling ideas also?
