W108 Mercedes 280SE diesel conversion project

[alabbasi]

I have a whole roof for one of those taken from a sunroof car. It's cut off at the A B and C pillars. The original intention was to add a sunroof to my 6.3 which someone had welded up, but I'm not thinking one of those long fabric tops that were popular in the 70's.

I hate to throw it away so it's yours if you can figure out the shipping from Texas

Thanks, but my roof is probably the best part of the car in terms of corrosion! It has a sunroof already too, it tilts, but doesn't slide, I haven't investigated yet, have you come across this problem before?

I'm guess that it tilts down. If so, it's probably just full of junk and needs lubricating. You can manually open the roof from inside the boot of the car. Once you get it open, blow out the tracks and the drains and lube with lithium grease.

[pryantcc]

I experienced the mother of all seized bolts the other day trying to get the front subframe off. It's held on by two bolts, the threaded end of which sits in a permanent pool of water from the looks of it!
One side came out, but the other broke off. Well, I tried everything. I soaked it for a week in plus-gas. I drilled it and tried extractors. I welded 3 nuts on in succession. The first two broke off due to my ineptitude at welding, the third held, but broke off the nub of bolt which I had attached it to! I ended up drilling it out as wide as I dared, then filing away the rest with a chainsaw file. I then had to pick the remaining bolt bits out from between the thread it was seized onto. I could only do this two-thirds of the way down the 3/4 inch deep thread due to the restircted angle on the pick. The thread wasn't a standard M12 thread, it was finer than that. So, for the final third, I ended up taking the one bolt which came out OK and making it into a tap by slicing along its threaded end 4 times with the hacksaw and tapering the threaded end just slightly. I hardened it with heat (no idea if this made any difference), and gradually worked it through the remaining 1/4 inch of threaded hole. It took me 4 nights in all to get the whole lot out!

[JPB]

Wow! 10 out of 10 for dogged determination, I'd have started throwing things long before getting that far in.

[pryantcc]

So, front suspension is finally going back together! The whole lot was removed, blasted and primed where required and new bushes/bearings, etc fitted.

This was the rustiest bit, some corrosion worth stopping.


Springs and brake backing plates were scruffy looking too. Turned out both backing plates had stress fractures, so I'll weld them up before re-fitting.



I only blasted the spring turrets on the subframe as I may have to chop up the middle of it to make the new engine fit. It was in good nick in the middle anyway.

[pryantcc]

Subframe being built up:

[Luxobarge]

Some superb blasting there mate - isn't it just the BEST way to deal with rust?? I'm a great fan of this approach.

Keep up the good work!

[pryantcc]

Some superb blasting there mate - isn't it just the BEST way to deal with rust?? I'm a great fan of this approach.

Keep up the good work!

Thanks Luxobarge. It's the business. Unfortunately, the setup I'm borrowing from a friend is a little industrial, it's a 200KG capacity blast pot with a road compressor and 2.5 inch hose! Very heavy and messy to operate, but the results are fantastic. it's difficult to do the fiddly bits, but I'm getting better with practise.

[pryantcc]

I got the subframe back onto the car, but when finally got the spring fitted and was ready to connect the kingpin, I discovered this major alignment problem on the passenger side:



So, I took it all apart and out of the car again to try and discover what exactly was bent, or if I'd put a right-side component onto the left side, or osme other similarly stupid thing. I started by swapping bits from one side to the other. When I finally swapped the upper wishbone thingy from the drivers side to the passenger side, the alignment was perfect. When I put the passenger one on the driver's side, it was misaligned. Conclusion: The passenger side one was bent. Some gratuitous levering with a fence post and I managed to make it all line up nicely before re-attaching to the car, adding the stub axle and connecting everything up. Just the other side to do now!

[pryantcc]

I had awful trouble trying to get the springs back into the front of the car. the problem is that with spring clamps attached, the spring won't fit as the clamps get in the way. If I just put the spring in without any clamps and jack up the lower control arm, there is too much of an angle between the bottom of the spring and the control arm for it to get any purchase and it just slides out.

I finally came up with a solution. The lower control arm has a hole in it inside the spring seating area, so it occurred to me that I might be able to fit the spring clamp from the inside.

All the usual "Be careful with springs" warnings apply here. Springs can store enormous amounts of energy which, when released, can cause a lot of damage to you and/or your car. They should be treated with a great deal of respect. Position yourself in the least likely path of an escaping spring. Use long bars/sticks to poke at stuff rather than your soft and valuable fingers!

So, here's what I did.

The spring has a right way up. One end finishes in a short straight section, the other end finishes in the normal curve of the spring as you can see in the photos below.



So, if you fit just 1 spring clamp from the inside of the spring so that it is acting on the side of the spring which faces towards the centre of the car, the spring will bow outwards opposite the site of the clamp:



with the spring bent like this, there's a much more favourable angle between the bottom of the spring and its seat on the lower control arm.


It is then possible to lift the control arm with a jack, compressing the spring. I used a trolley jack positioned so that it could roll out from under the car as the control arm end moved outwards. There's a critical point where the spring clamp has to be removed because if you compress the spring too much, it will "hold on" to the spring clamp. Once the clamp is out, you can compress as much as is required to prop the control arm allowing access to connect the kingpin and fix the whole assembly.





It took me hours to come up with this cunning plan, but I got the second side done in about 30 mins!

[Luxobarge]

Great stuff - well worth knowing, I wonder if they had that in mind when desigining the hole in the bottom of the wishbone? My Midget presented a similar problem when I came to re-assemble it, although it's all a lot smaller and lighter of course.

What's the brown shiny stuff all over the spring and lower arm? I almost hesitate to ask.....