Merc thread

[Andyrew]

Looking at the starter, I assume the copper bushing is the hardstop for the gear to throwout to. Can this made a few mm thinner to alow the gear to go further out so it engages with the the less wornout part of the teeth on the flywheel. 

Or grind back the worn end of gear to allow further travel , off needed put a spacer between it and the solenoid lever? 

 

[wuvvum]

That might well be possible (at least as a temporary fix) for someone who has the facilities to carry out such modifications.  I don't even have a proper workbench (or anywhere really to put one).

[lanciamatt]

Those mercs can be a twat to start if glow plugs not right, continual cranking won't help the teeth. Hope you get it sorted 

[wuvvum]

I suppose another possiblity (again for somebody with the facilities, so again not me) would be to remove the existing ring gear from the flywheel and refit it the other way round, so the good bits of the teeth are nearest the starter.  Free* repair then.

[jonathan_dyane]

It might be easier to drop the gearbox and leave the engine in situ which might just be achievable with the car on ramps.

Still a major ballache however.

[wuvvum]

It would be a major ballache, and definitely not a one-man job given the weight of the running gear on these things.  Even more of a ballache would be getting the car up onto ramps when it doesn't run...

[DaveDorson]

Oh god.

 

I massively want one of these cars.

 

I owned one for a bit that was terminally rotten, and I've not managed to get my mits on one since.

 

These are probably my favourite three box saloons of all time.

[Peter C]

I don’t know how the weight of your gearbox compares with a manual W124 ‘box but I can tell you that the latter is surprisingly light and if need be, could be manhandled with the car up on ramps by two gents with assistance from a trolley jack and a little luck.

[lanciamatt]

I've got an engine hoist if you wanted to borrow it, it folds down so would easily fit in a large estate car or any van. I bet you could have engine out in a few hours 

[wuvvum]

Thanks for the offer.  Agree that it's not a particularly difficult engine to get out - compared with some moderns anyway.  Problem is that I live in a private rented house in a residential estate and therefore I can't really start hoiking engines out on the driveway or the residents' car park - I already test my neighbours' patience with the number of cars I have lying around.  If I had a unit or even a large garage I'd be up for having a crack at it.

[Arthur Foxhake]

Wait, where's the Volvo?

Are it mended?

[wuvvum]

Volvo is in the garage.  I turfed the Innocenti out - that's now on the car park.  Volvo isn't mended yet, sadly.

[lanciamatt]

Good thing about rear wheel drive, if you did pull engine out on drive, you can support gearbox and the car can be pushed about relatively easily. Easiest thing to do is swap flywheel, but if changing ring gear there easy to do, just need a hammer and a blow torch, heat ring gear up and it will pretty much fall off. Changed loads when I worked on trucks and vans years back, 308d merc vans loved em. 

[wuvvum]

I did a few bits to this old heap today - it's not top of the priority list but it's the only one I can legally work on at the moment, what with it being in my front garden and all.

First job was to fit the replacement window regulator that came with the car to the offside rear door.  That was a surprisingly easy job.  It would have been easier still if the glass had come all the way down, but it gets stuck about half way - that was still far enough though for me to be able to reach up inside the door and ping off the circlip that holds the regulator onto the glass cradle doobery.  Then it was a case of shoving the mechanism up inside the door to roughly the right place, then winding it until the bolt holes lined up.

It's pretty much all back together and looks a lot better - I took the opportunity to give the door card a good wipe down as well.

The only annoying thing is that the regulator isn't quite the right one for the car - it fits in the door and works, but the original one has a circlip to hold the winder onto the splines, whereas this uses a bolt, so I'm going to have to bodge something together to stop the handle falling off.  That's a minor consideration though - at least the window is no longer wedged up with the applicator from a long-dead tin of Isopon.

Scrabbling round in the rear footwell for the bits of door trim, I also found the accelerator pedal, which was handy.

It's only on there loosely for now, but still better than just having the bar to push on.

Poking around in the boot I found a set of glow plugs in a padded envelope.

They're obviously used, but what I don't know is if they are a good used set that a previous owner bought, or if they are knackered and were replaced by the set that's currently in the car.  They are the correct type for this year of engine with the loop of wire at the end rather than a plain electrode.  The ones that are on the car at the moment look quite different, and they are also connected with bits of wire rather than the cool wiggly metal connectors of these ones.  If I do ever get as far as buying it a new set of plugs the wiggly bits of metal will definitely be going back on the car.

Then I stuck the car up on the ramps to have a look underneath and investigate whether there's any possibility of getting the gearbox off on the drive.  Obviously the car is immobile so I had to jack it up high enough so that I could slide the ramps under the wheels and then let it back down - the only jack I have which would go up that far is a scissor jack from a Renault Master I used to own.  The trolley jack might have done it but it couldn't roll on the gravel and near the top of its travel there was far too much horizontal movement in the arm to be safe.

It's up now anyway.  I also trial fitted the wheel trims to see what it looks like - they do tidy it up a bit.

The gearbox actually doesn't look that difficult to remove as these things go, but would still be a royal pain in the arse trying to do it on a gravel driveway on crappy little ramps, so I'm going to have to give that serious thought.  It's certainly not something I would attempt on my own so nothing will be happening until after lockdown ends anyway.

[lanciamatt]

It looks well. I found a pics of ours from back in the day . That's me on the bike. The reg was Q82 WWJ. 

[DavidB]

I remember trying to get my Starion gearbox onto the engine, basically using my chest as an impromptu gearbox lifter with fluid spilling out, while trying to manipulate the clutch fork and prop shaft so it would go into the flywheel. Horrible, but once it’s done it’ll be worth it for such a nice looking car.

[Uncle Jimmy]

You have to wonder why that starter pinion and ring gear got into that state- that makes me wonder about the state of the fuel pump...

[wuvvum]

The last-but-one owner apparently had a top end rebuild as it was low on compression on a couple of cylinders, so I assume that's when the worst of it happened.

[Tepper]

What a fine vehicle! I could be interested in either helping you fix this or buying it if you decide to go that way. If you can get it to Reading-ish you're welcome to use the lift/transmission jack/engine crane.

[jon.k]

Are these really well built? Being from the time when things were made to last, and from when Mercedes must have been building their reputation for expensive German engineering. Or are they similar to what was produced here at the time?

[lanciamatt]

They are well put together but do suffer from rust, as most cars of this era did.look at pics above of the beige one, it was probably only 8 or 9 years old in that pic, door bottom already bad.

[wuvvum]

Not done a massive amount to this this weekend.  I spent some more time under the car contemplating gearbox removal.  I bought a half decent set of 10mm drive allen bits to undo the propshaft bolts.  I hadn't looked closely at the bolts before - I'd assumed they screwed into a threaded hole in the flange, but in fact they go straight through the flange and are held with a nut on the other side.  Unfortunately the nut is pretty much completely inaccessible without removing the crossmember which supports the back of the gearbox.

An additional issue is that to get the prop off you obviously have to rotate it so that all the bolts are accessible, which means jacking up the back of the car until the wheels are off the ground.  Which is fine, except that the car then has nothing to stop it from moving, apart from whatever grip the jacks have on the gravel - the front is up on ramps so I can't chock the front wheels.  I'd be more than dubious about getting under the car in that state.

I'm also not sure about my ability to remove the gearbox itself - or more to the point to refit it (gravity would obviously assist with removal).  I have a Rover P6 gearbox sat outside which I can lift with relative ease, but that's all alloy - on the Merc only the bellhousing is alloy, the gearbox casing itself is iron so is going to be somewhat heavier.  Also when I'm lifting the Rover gearbox I'm not scrabbling around on my back in gravel with the gearbox a couple of inches above my nose.

I did however remove the fugly aftermarket rear foglight, and I bodged the offside rear window winder back on using a cut-down M4 bolt and a selection of washers of increasing size.  It's not particularly elegant but it works.

[paulplom]

I remember helping two friends changing the clutch on a sierra on in a back garden a few years ago (probably 20!)

We got the clutch in and a mate was underneath trying to lift the box back into place while another mate was helping inside the car by lifting the box up by the gear stick.

The gear stick slipped out of his hand and the box dropped on the other mates head. The noise was sickening.

He slid out from under the car and the blood was sheeting down his face, I've never seen so much. He'd opened up a 4" gash above his eyebrow and the brow was kind of hanging down.

Obviously it was full of muck and grease. The mad fucker still didn't go to hospital and just taped it up the best he could and cracked on.

 

Be careful.

[lanciamatt]

When I did clutch on my maserati biturbo, it looked relatively easy to remove, but once started it was a twat of a job. If taking engine out you can pretty much disconnect everything and just bring hoist in when ready to remove, also removing a gearbox on a proper ramp is very different to removing one laid on your back with limited room above. Like I said, hoist is available to you. 

[Tickman]

I've used ratchet straps to secure wheels to ramps before and that worked well.

Also you should only have to lift one rear wheel to turn the prop.

[N Dentressangle]

On 3/15/2020 at 8:57 AM, Andyrew said:

Looking at the starter, I assume the copper bushing is the hardstop for the gear to throwout to. Can this made a few mm thinner to alow the gear to go further out so it engages with the the less wornout part of the teeth on the flywheel. 

Or grind back the worn end of gear to allow further travel , off needed put a spacer between it and the solenoid lever? 

 

I'd go with this. There must be a local starter / alternator fettler near you which you could swing by on one of your 'daily exercises'? Shouldn't cost much, and a damn sight easier than pulling the lump or the box.

I've found you a workshop manual (attached), but it's in German. Google translate is your friend, or post up what you want to know and I'll translate it.

The brochure's rather pretty, too

w115-200d-220d-reparatur-anleitung.pdf

w115-catalogue.pdf

[wuvvum]

3 hours ago, Tickman said:

I've used ratchet straps to secure wheels to ramps before and that worked well.

Also you should only have to lift one rear wheel to turn the prop.

Ratchet straps is a good shout.  I realise I'd only have to jack up one wheel but with the handbrake parking brake inoperative it'd still be able to roll with one wheel off the ground - at the moment being in gear is all that's holding it.

 

3 hours ago, lanciamatt said:

When I did clutch on my maserati biturbo, it looked relatively easy to remove, but once started it was a twat of a job. If taking engine out you can pretty much disconnect everything and just bring hoist in when ready to remove, also removing a gearbox on a proper ramp is very different to removing one laid on your back with limited room above. Like I said, hoist is available to you. 

Agree it'd be a lot easier with a hoist - there's three issues with that though - firstly the neighbours might not be too impressed, secondly it'd be very difficult to get a hoist into position with the car where it is now, and thirdly I have no idea when I'll be allowed out to fetch a hoist.  I was kind of hoping that if I was going to do the job I'd do it during lockdown, as the Merc is the only car I can legally work on currently.  I think I would try using a couple of jacks to take the weight of the gearbox while I try to manoeuvre it into place - as you and others have said, sod trying to lift it in by hand without a proper ramp.

3 hours ago, N Dentressangle said:

I'd go with this. There must be a local starter / alternator fettler near you which you could swing by on one of your 'daily exercises'? Shouldn't cost much, and a damn sight easier than pulling the lump or the box.

That would be an easier option, agreed, but my worry is that given you'd only get a couple of mm extra travel on the pinion by reducing the thickness of the bush, there would only be a few mm of teeth actually meshing, which might not be enough - I'd be worried that it would almost immediately strip again and I'd be no further forward.

 

Another question: if I did manage to get the flywheel off, would laying it on top of my cooker and turning all four hobs up to max get it hot enough for the ring gear to come off?

[wuvvum]

Oh, forgot to mention, I took one of the glow plugs out of the engine to have a look.  They're the newer type, with a "normal" electrode rather than the loop of wire that the original type had.  These are supposedly more efficient.  It also doesn't look like it's seen a lot of use, so I'm going to assume that glow plugs aren't an issue, and the fact it was a twat to start was down solely to the ring gear.

[wuvvum]

16 minutes ago, The Mighty Quinn said:

The flywheel will heat up at the same rate as the ring gear so that won't work

Surely any attempt to heat the ring gear will result in the flywheel heating up as well though?  I thought the way it worked was the ring gear expands more quickly than the flywheel and therefore drops off with sufficient application of heat.

18 minutes ago, The Mighty Quinn said:

If the front pulley bolt is easily acccessible, just turn the engine over 90 degress with a spanner before starting. The starter will engage with the good teeth and away ye go.

It's not really accessible unless you remove the radiator fan, which has the potential to bring its own set of issues...

[spike60]

I quite often change ring gear on various diesels at work, usually they just knock off with a hammer and drift then go on by laying the ring gear on top of the horizontal flywheel and evenly heating the ring until it drops on , giving it a few taps to be sure it's seated.