I don't know what to do with this car, the most likely choice is to fix it and drive it for a bit, then sell it. But it could be good for parts, the newer 2.5 diesel would make a better generator than the old 200D would, and some parts could be useful. Like the air bag that ought to fit on my convertible (which has a small tear along one side so you can see bag material), and maybe its AC compressor. And I'm sure it could be parted out to recover my money.
So, what's likely wrong with a transmission that intermittently has no engagement at all, and makes no abnormal noises? My wife is not happy that we have yet another car.
The car started with little more than a normal amount of cranking, not bad for a very long sleep. I left it running in Neutral and used the Mog to drag it backwards so that I could get a run down the little hill into the garage. One of the rear wheels was frozen, and left a furrow in the dirt. I jacked it up with a floor jack, and with enough racking back and forth I eventually broke it loose, I imagine it was a parking brake shoe.
I was hoping that the transmission had a front pump problem and that by coasting down the little bump the rear pump would kick in enough to cause it to move on its own. No such luck, I ran out of momentum just as I got onto the pad. There was zero sign of self-propulsion. The car is light enough, however, that I was able to push it the rest of the way into place by hand. Once in place I opened it all up to air out and put the battery charger onto it.
I spent some time refamiliarizing myself with the car. If I can make it work I think we're going to enjoy this little car a lot, especially if we can get 40+ MPG out of it. Not a lot of room in the back seat, but I imagine Daniel won't mind. The trunk is larger than an SL trunk, so it should be big enough.
With the car up I found more rust than I'd thought was there. The jack points are all messy, but only just the outside bits, the structural parts seem to be fine on the ones I examined. Odd. One was Bondo-d to death, I fear what may be found underneath there. The passenger door bottom is very rusty too, but it hasn't progressed too far. It may be possible to de-rust it and paint. The forward (of the resonator) part of the exhaust pipe is very rusty, I may need to have a new piece fabricated.
At that point I got cold enough that I gave it up and came back in. A little later I went out and hitched up the car trailer, but I was unable to get the Mog started before I ran out of time. Getting the parts car out of the woods will have to wait 'til tomorrow.
I've got to figure out a good way to lift the parts car up high for working on, the 190D is consuming all the big jack stands and I only have two little ones left. Right now it's still sitting on the firewood rounds that supported it in the woods, just keeping it off the dirt.
Of note is that the parts car seems to have unrusted and intact rocker panels, I'm wondering if these are transplantable too?
It looks like this car indeed had two belly pans at one time, both are missing. It's got the two side shark-gill panels, all in all it looks just like the SDL underneath, but smaller. I may be able to fabricate something like I did for the SDL. There is little to no rust underneath, excepting a piece of what looks like pipe underneath the radiator that's rotted through and the stuff that's attacking the jack points.
The car has a block heater, but no cord. Just a nice screw cap over the connections. The donor car has a cord, so I'll be taking that. The steering damper is totally shot, there's no resistance in it at all.
...Later today I went back out and finished removing the transmission. Harder than it looked, there were four bolts left, not two, and I managed to break off the throttle cable attachment. The 2-foot socket extensions and the swivel joint were, as before, instrumental in getting all the bolts out. Also as before, my CCPOS transmission jack is too tall, and the tranny was trapped beneath the car. But with enough fooling around, and partial disassembly of the jack's cradle, I was able to get it wrestled to the ground. Of interest is that this is a used transmission: both it and the torque converter have grease paint numbers scrawled on them. 990126. (A zip code with an extra digit? 99012 is Fairfield WA, a pretty small place to have anything to do with MB repair. Date code? January 26, 1999 is plausible.) Obviously it didn't hold up too well.
It's 20 °F outside right now, I'm not sure that I really want to go out and start liberating the transmission from the parts car.
Reading what little I could find on transmission removal shows that the only 'trick' is to rotate the transmission to the side 45° before pulling it off. And to be careful doing so!
So I went back out and did it. The rotation trick doesn't seem to be necessary for the 201 chassis. Oh well, so much for inference. With the tranny out I took the power wire brush to it to remove a lot of the caked-on crud and aluminum oxidation. It's interesting that the transmission has a 124 part number on it.
I next removed the clutch and flywheel. This came off easily, and there was a lot of caked gunk inside the flywheel. Friction material? I was having so much fun that I went inside and removed the flex disc and flywheel from the good car. No problem except that I stripped the head on one of the 12-point stretch bolts. As every other such bolt came out with fingers only once it was broken loose, and thus wouldn't need a head to get the shank out, I took the grinder to it and removed the head. Then I could pry off the flywheel and remove the bolt stub. With fingers, of course. I have all the stretch bolts from the other car to play with (they'll never be needed again), so I won't be short any.
The friction material on the clutch disk measures about 3.2 mm in thickness (per side). It also has about 1mm clearance to the rivets. Someone has told me that the friction material starts out at 3.6–3.8 or 3.8–4.0 mm and the wear limit is 2 mm, so it appears that there's plenty of life left. I will assume so, anyway.
I put the clutch flywheel on the car using the best-headed bolts from both sets. I tapped the flywheel on using a copper hammer, alternately tapping and snugging bolts to work it down into place. I probably didn't get the full 90° stretch turn on the bolts, but I was chinning myself from the wrench underneath at something over 45° so I'll call it good. (If it goes wrong I'll know who to blame!)
I was a bit worried about moving the pilot bearing from the old crankshaft to the new one, but I found the thing was a slip fit in the old car, and just hooking a bolt head through the bearing and tugging pulled it out. It looked, felt, and sounded good. The bearing tapped into the new crankshaft easily using the copper hammer.
I had a bit of luck and found in my tool pile a clutch centering tool that fits! (I don't think it's the one I bought for the Camaro, I seem to remember it was black and this one is blue.) That certainly eased things. Given this tool I put the clutch in too. I think my bad habit of buying odd tools that show up at the thrift shop paid off this time.
After lunch I drained the oil out of the transmission. It was blackish and smelled of gear oil, yet had a red tint to it in the sunlight. It appears to me that somebody topped it off with gear oil or something like that at some time. Bad news as gear oil attacks the synchros. Anyway, I drained it and got quite a bit of brass shavings in the pan. I poured in diesel oil, capped it, and worked the gears and shafts and rolled it around bodily to sluice it out. More shavings came out. I repeated this rinse, and got a more reasonably clean drain. Then I put two quarts of ATF in it. I'll drain this and replace it fairly soon once the car is running, that ought to just about eliminate all the contamination. Somehow during all this I managed to cross-thread the drain plug, but I was able to get it to seal just the same. What a dummy! I was even trying to be particularly careful not to do that.
The plastic vent cap was cracked, so I cleaned it off with brake cleaner and compressed air and then Shoe-Gooed over the crack. One of the rubber shifter bushings was split and had fallen out, so I cleaned that all off too and glued it back in place. Sure I should have new parts, but then I'd have to wait. This sort of repair ought to hold plenty long enough.
Then I cleaned off the splined shaft and sluiced out the throwout bearing, which felt a bit dirty. With that clean I worked grease back into it and lubed up the sliding and other bearing surfaces. It then worked very smoothly.
After all this I decided to go for it, and bench-pressed the transmission back into place. Getting it to go all the way into place was just as much joy as I'd remembered from the Camaro job but eventually it slipped into place and I secured it with a bolt. The secret seemed to be getting my knees under the tail of the transmission while I fiddled with my hands at the front, jiggling and wiggling until it slipped forward. I also had lifted the front of the engine with the floor jack to get more clearance from the tunnel. For some reason three of the bolts were short and didn't look like they'd bite enough of the threads to hold well, so I replaced them with longer ones from the parts car. I also moved the bell housing access plug from the parts car to the good one, which was missing its plug.
The next step will be the pedal and shifter assemblies, because the driveline can't go in until these are done.
Like always, however, the data there is only vaguely helpful, in that it was for a model that had a completely different HVAC system. Still, using it was helpful enough that with a lot of fooling around I was able to get the console off, both top and bottom pieces, and the underdash areas exposed. It's a good thing I've got experience with later 107 and 126 bodies, because the knee bolster business is completely unmentioned in the manual. The thing that was most irritating was the requirement to go under the car to loosen the parking brake.
Exposed was a lot of installation butchery done by PO (or his contractors) around the stereo area. Included were several broken off plastic snaps which I shall try to repair. (Shoe Goo!) I also myself managed to peel loose the wood pieces around the HVAC panels, though they had been experiencing glue failure and were half off anyway. More gluing! The fart saver switch also chose to fall apart rather than unplug when its connector was pulled on, but I think I've got all the pieces so it should be no big deal to repair.
Carpeting was glued down in places with what looked like aftermarket Liquid Nails or something. (It was much too sloppily applied to be stock.) I pulled it all up, because it has to come out in order to free the console.
There were lots of cigarette ashes and butts down in the console area. Nasty! I finally dug deep enough that I was able to remove the automatic shifter, whereupon I decided to call it a day. The shifter in the parts car is completely exposed already and should be nearly trivial to swap into the car. The worst part will probably be the wiring for the reverse lamps. I don't have the shift boot for the manual shifter, and I'm not exactly sure how it's supposed to attach to the console itself. I suspect I'm missing something. (The trim bits of the donor car were long gone, as advertised.)
In general the engineering of the 201 body seems to be pretty good, though it definitely has a 'cheaper' appearance and feel when compared to the older cars I'm more familiar with. With equal experience the 201 would be quicker to work on, except for the stupid parking brake business. (It was easy for me because the car was already jacked up and the driveline was out.)
I had a look at the reverse switch wire, and it seems to be buried in the harness more intimately than I'd like. I'll probably have to do a cut-and-splice there. There's a switch on the clutch pedal, but I don't know if it's a starter lockout or hooked into the cruise control.
I then mounted the pedal assembly into the car. The hardest part is getting the clutch hose through the firewall to the brake reservoir. (It is not yet hooked up because the nipple has to be cut off the reservoir, and that is potentially quite messy. I don't think I want to just swap reservoirs because the level sensor caps on the older one are far gone, and different than the newer reservoir's.)
Then I hooked up the hydraulic line to the clutch, put on the speedometer cable, and got all the ties for those things settled. The current plan for dealing with the transmission wiring that used to go through the hole where the clutch line now goes is to tuck it against the hump. The reverse lamp switch line should be able to be plugged into it with some fiddling. The starter lockout needs to be bypassed there too.
While I was under the car I noticed that both tie rods have a bad ball joint. The parts car has tie rods, though, so I may be able to do some swapping around.
Next I went to straighten out the crossbrace, and found that I needed to go to the parts car to get two more captive nuts for it. That was more painful than it seemed like it ought to be. Installing them and getting all the nuts positioned into the correct set of holes was much easier.
I trial-fit the driveline, and all seems well. Before installing it I want to try to clean and lube the center bearing. It's unclear to me if I can get it out without damaging anything. The dirt shield for these is press-fit, versus the circlip that I remember from older cars. The rear halves of the drivelines are identical and both have notchy U-joint bearings, though I don't think either are yet to the point where they can be considered bad. Both center bearings are getting a bit dirty sounding. One spins freer than the other, but sounds a bit dry. Both rubber bearing mounts are intact and look good. Both drivelines, being newer models, are factory match-marked for balancing.
...
With all five plugs measuring reasonably I turned on the key, to find no glow plug light and a harsh buzzing from under the hood. Tracking it down resulted in finding that the GP relay (005 545 18 32) was buzzing. I double-checked the wiring to it and its fuse, everything looked good. No buzzing if the GP's were unplugged, and directly jumping the ignition terminal at the relay resulted in the same symptoms. I grabbed a spare 5-cylinder GP relay (Bosch, 002 545 06 32) from the parts pile, no doubt from some 123, and plugged it in its place. It worked fine, though still didn't light the dash light (which does work, I've gotten it to come on sometimes). So I'm going to open up the relay and have a look. The 123 relay is non-optimal because the mounting ears are on the wrong side.
Inside the relay nothing looked obviously bad. I'll probably try a resolder job on it, but first I have to strip the protective coating off of the board. The current 'measuring' is somewhat elegantly done by a reed switch. GP's #2–4 are fed through a single fat winding of strap copper around the reed switch. GP #1 is fed through a narrower counter-wound coil located inside the strap, it probably has three turns (it's hard to see). If the GP's all draw equal current, the two flux paths roughly cancel and the reed switch sees insignificant magnetic flux and doesn't close. #5 is an obvious bag on the side, and has its own reed switch with a 6-turn coil (in series with #5) around it. One presumes that its switch is logically combined with the other one to run the light.
The stripping and resoldering went fine and the relay no longer buzzes. But the dash light still doesn't go on. Probing shows that both reed switches activate, and I think the main one is not supposed to if everything is OK. I opened the Bosch relay and found that it's built somewhat differently. There's only a single reed switch, with two countered assymetrical windings. #1, again, is pitted against the other four. (If you ask me, it's a better design.)
The backwards housing can be corrected just by putting it back together the other way around, so if I ever need to I can substitute the 123 relay into the 201.
On the bench, the repaired relay seems to work properly. With the reed switch from #5 jumpered 'on', the lamp output goes high for awhile when power is applied, then goes out. If the starter terminal is momentarily powered the relay shuts off when the starter terminal is released. The relay seems to be fine, so I reinstalled it in the car.
...Which only leaves the glow plugs themselves. Measuring resistance is only a poor substitute on high-current items like these. I grabbed a big Cherry microswitch and two alligator leads, and the clamp-on ammeter. I measured the current draw of each of the glow plugs in turn, and found that all but #1 started off at about 25 A and dropped down to around 12 A as it heated up. #1, however, started off at 40 A and dropped down to 25 A. As it's drawing nearly 2× the current it should, the magnetic circuit is imbalanced and the light should be off. I'll have to order another glow plug for #1. But the car should start anyway even if #1 is getting too hot!
Anyway, before I tried to shut it down I shifted through all the gears and looked underneath, and the tailshaft seemed to spin right in all the gears. Looking good!
I found a picture in the service manual that showed where the STOP lever should be. On my sample it's really buried down under the manifold, bent at a funny angle, and missing the red STOP label. Not something to find in an actual emergency! (Not even the minor one of 'the key doesn't work'.)
I liberated the reverse light switch plug and two more male pins from the donor car's taillight and made a cable to plug into the other two sockets in the cable that used to go to the automatic tranny.
It also works, though to get the linkages to work right again I had to prop up the tail of the transmission into approximate position. I really need to get the driveline in so I can put on the crossbrace to bolt the rear of the transmission to.
I slipped the bearing assembly back on the shaft, using the other driveline as a reference to make sure I got it on right. No force was needed. The press-in collar was tapped into place with the BFH and a big screwdriver. I then cleaned and greased the splines and put the two halves of the driveline together. (Obeying the factory match-marks.) I slipped them into place under the car, and the length looks good, I think this is going to work! I then stopped for breakfast.
The driveline bolted in easily (and yes, I did grease the centering sleeves), of note is that I had to use the longer bolts for the transmission end that were in the donor car, the mounting assembly for the automatic (with vibration damper) used shorter bolts that wouldn't fit. I snugged the locking collar using two pipe wrenches and then pulled the rubber spline boot over the nut. I then plugged the vacuum line that used to go to the transmission (Duh!) with a framing nail and started up the car. (I'd remove the line at the source, but it's all buried under the intake manifold. Someday.) It shifted into each gear easily, the speedometer reacted appropriately, and looking back the wheels were moving as one would expect. The engine could be stalled by applying the brakes while it was in gear (so the clutch grips nicely), and it even shuts down normally with the key because the vacuum leak was plugged. Back underneath I put on the tunnel heat shield and policed the area a bit. I suppose I should work on the exhaust system next, because it's the only thing under the rear of the car that needs addressing. Everything else it needs can be done with ramps at the front, so after the exhaust is back on I could perhaps take it off the jack stands and take it for a little spin. I'll need to move the parts car out of the way first, which is another cranefest. I poured in a half gallon of diesel that I had lying around so I won't run out of fuel. (The gauge is on empty, and was when I got it. Who knows how little is left?) But first, lunch.
After lunch (and a nap) I laid the two exhaust systems next to each other to verify that they had the same profile. Then I cut off the holed front pipe of the target (3-muffler) system and cut off an identical chunk of the donor system. I tack-welded it in place and trial-fit it to the car. Yep, it was good. I pulled it back off and welded the seam shut, then installed it in the car. I used anti-seize on the four bolts (two at the header, and a U-bolt at the transmission). The rear muffler hanger was missing one rubber donut, which I supplied from my parts pile. Then I put away some more crap and started the car. Much quieter! This thing is ready to take a short drive, except that it's trapped in the garage.
Everything's always in the way of something else, so I first had to pump up the tires on the Frankenheap so I could move it. Then I fired up the Unimog and used the crane to move the 190D parts car to where the Frankenheap had been sitting. Getting it set securely back on its three firewood chunks took some time. After that I could move the bad transmission and other junk out of the way, then I lowered the car off of the jack stands. Of course during the lowering somehow the hoist for the SL hardtop managed to hook the wind deflector for the sunroof, which broke in half. Great. I'd planned on getting rid of it someday, but for now it gets a big ol' chunk of lovely duct tape on it. After pumping up the tires I took it for a little test drive. The car basically hasn't moved in two years, and it worked fine and seemed powerful enough, but there were some odd noises. Probably mounts and exhaust leaks. I got it up to speed and man, does that thing handle bad. I know it has two bad tie-rod ball joints and a defunct steering dampener, but somehow I doubt that's the end of the story. It wants to do all its own steering. The steering is stiff, and very darty. This car had really been let go, and probably was best suited to supplying parts for other cars. (That, of course, is not what is going to happen!)
Still, a momentous day with some very serious progress. Long ways to go, though. I think I'll call it quits for the day.
...
...
With that out of the way I examined the always-on low washer fluid sender and found it to be defective, so I disconnected it until it can be replaced. No sense burning out the dash bulb too! (The float is not stuck, the sealed reed switch seems to have gotten too sensitive.)
Next I started looking at reassembling the console. The plastic clips were broken off of the shifter's wood surround, so I glued them with Shoe Goo and set it aside to dry. This panel lifts up from the back, guys, not the front!
Pulling out the upper console piece it was time to confront the jammed blower switch. I had bought a used replacement on eBay, but since the broken one was held together nicely with screws I thought I'd have a look inside first before just replacing it. There are three plastic rockers inside driving spring-loaded electrical contacts, with a spring-loaded roller wheel that travels along the rockers. The first rocker had spun around on its post allowing the roller wheel to wedge itself down into the gap next to the rocker. Careful examination showed that the reason this happened was that a little plastic protrusion on the rocker's axle post that mates with a travel-limiting hole in the rocker had broken off, allowing for more rotation of the rocker than was intended, and opening up a big gap for the roller to drop into. This is a weak bit of design there, and the reason that #1 rocker is more susceptible to breaking off the pin is that there is only the one rocker supporting the force from the roller, everywhere else two rockers (and limit pins) share the load. To try to fix this I used a small drill to drill through the shell right next to the axle where the nub had broken off, then I glued a metal brad into that hole to serve as a replacement nub, with a reinforcing wire wrapped around the brad and bent around a corner and screwed into a handy hole. (I left the brad long so that on the back side there was plenty of protrusion for the glue [Shoe Goo of course!] to grip to lock it in position.) I then set it aside to dry.
As it turns out, these units are not supposed to be easily opened, they are normally heat-staked closed. Someone else had been inside it and had drilled out the stakes and replaced them with small wood screws and washers, so it's obvious it had been broken for some time before. I suspect they missed seeing the little broken-off plastic pip, it's a pretty subtle failure (though not in its effect). If I can't repair it I always have the replacement I bought, but I could re-sell that back on eBay if this repair works out. We shall see!
It is interesting that there are two Bosch ice-cube relays inside this switch assembly. (For the auto-Hi and auto-Low functions from the HVAC controller.) They're welded in place, not socketed, I doubt they'd be easily replaceable if they went bad.
The in-dash speakers are missing, but the parts car still had them. I
moved them to the car so I can at least have stock sound. The car was
also missing the speaker grille retaining screws, but the donor
supplied those as well. There are four shielded cables running to the
back of the car from the 'killer' stereo wiring job, I'll hook up two
of them to the rear channel output of the JVC stereo if/when I put
that in. I may go with the stock Becker hookup for now, I have one
that's a plausible fit for the car and the connector is still there in
the harness. I should be able to make the harness accept either the
Becker or the JVC, so if we ever sell the car I can easily put it
back to stock configuration.
...
Got out the instrument cluster, which was a PITA. The speedometer
cable came apart, I hope I can get that back together again. The trim
piece (around the center vents) that I was actually trying to get out
was also a big pain. It was not obvious that there was a fourth screw
hiding behind one of the switch holes. Also less than obvious was the
Allen screw to the center flap. I think I got it out without breaking
it any more, though it did get some bending stress put on it. Once it
was out it was obvious why the sunroof (and other) switches were
falling into the dash: two of the ledges that the switches normally
bottom out on were cracked off and lying loose inside the dash. I
should be able to glue them back in place, at least I still have the
pieces! Getting the rubber boot hooked back to the vent outlet will
also probably be a huge pain.
A lot of the wood trim had come unglued from where it belonged. I think I can glue it all back in place with weatherstrip adhesive. The piece around the ACC control panel comes loose by sliding two clip releases that are not obvious when looking at them. I discovered these clips by taking off the bottom panel of the ACC box. However, once I had done this I found one burned solder joint, so there is obviously a bit of work to do inside.
The strategy with all this trim junk is to use Shoe Goo for the structural gluing where it doesn't show, super glue for the visible cracks (if carefully done you can barely see it), and weatherstrip (high-temperature contact) glue for the veneers. It's going to take awhile.
The shifter surround is installed and all its switches put back. The RR window doesn't roll down, but I'm not going to worry about it right now. Also, the rear fader has been discombobulated, I may try putting that back, I believe the parts car still has a socket.
Something I would like to do is put an unobtrusive auxiliary power socket in the car somewhere, ideally it would be in the rear of the console behind the rear ashtray, for use with travel coolers, etc. However, I don't quite see how to do this cleanly.
I then (after getting rained out trying to collect some more firewood) took apart the ACC unit. Unlike in earlier cars, the 'brain' is inside the pushbutton array. (A bunch of LM2902 and LM2904 op-amps, and power transistors.) This makes taking it apart a bit harder. The usual requirement of prying out all the pushbuttons holds here too, but the extra tricky step is to set the temperature wheel on one of its detents (remember this setting!) and then pry out (with a jackknife) the hexagonal-headed axle post from the side. This will release the top board from the shell. This exposes the bottom board, which is released with three plastic spring clips. With the PC boards out of the shell I could examine everything, and determined that the bad (burned) solder joint was the common terminal of the single relay. I resoldered it (and it needed a lot of heat) and then tested the connection with the ohmmeter. (The relay can be switched by hand, and I could get continuity to both NC and NO terminals from the connector pin that was wired to the common terminal. I then reassembled the unit. (This is where remembering the wheel's correct position comes into play.)
It should be noted that the wheel's detents are purely mechanical, there are no switches involved. I believe this differs from the earlier units' construction, and if true, indicates that the MIN/MAX settings can't override a sick ACC brain.
Both lamps inside the unit were burnt out, and I only had one spare. So I had to stop reassembling at this point. My wife was out on errands, so I called her on the cell phone and had her stop off at McParts to pick up some more. Which she did. Meanwhile I went out and resumed my interrupted wood gathering.
When my light bulbs were delivered, I was done with the firewood. I installed two new bulbs (so they start with maximum life expectancies) and tested them, then reassembled the ACC panel. That was moderately difficult, the plastic bits are tricky to get aligned while trying to close the snaps. With it together the next step was to reglue the wood face to its backing. I used contact cement and two big wooden clamps. I painted both mating surfaces and put the pieces together wet so that they could be repositioned. That went well, so I also did the first gluing on the wood that goes around the blower switch. This consumed my third (and final) wooden clamp, so I was therefore done with the contact cement for the moment. These items were set aside to dry.
The broken plastic center vent surround (and switch panel) I glued yesterday was dry, so I used a sharp chisel and acetone to remove the small amount of glue beading on the face. This left a tiny amount of scuffing and discoloration on the switch panel, so I masked it off and gave it a light dusting of black spray paint. Looks good! I also trial-fit a spare switch into each of the holes to make sure the glue hadn't beaded up to prevent a good fit there. No problems.
To support both radios I have to rig it so the fader's in-circuit for the Becker, but out for the JVC. I think I can reinstall the front/rear fader, I have enough wiring harness from the parts car. For the JVC I'll just unplug the fader itself and have it drive the rear speakers directly. (If you forget to unplug the fader the JVC will be bridging the front and rear channels, which would probably not be good.) The rear speakers are totally shot, they'll need replacing. Also, the wiring to them seems to be disrupted somewhere along the line, there is no continuity. That promises to be extra fun!
The red speaker wiring (stock) is for the left speaker, not the right. Odd, rechts/rot/right/red would make sense, but there you go. Green is right.
This instrument cluster has one of the low-oil timer circuit boards on it. (VDO [Vereinigung Deutscher Ordensobern] part number 645.138] This board's job is to suppress the low-oil indicator lamp until the sensor reports continuously for something like 60 seconds so that sloshing in the oil pan doesn't panic the operator. Many report that these little boards stop doing their job, resulting in a lot of false low-oil indications. Nobody has been able to fix one, but not much is known about their construction. I note that it has an electrolytic capacitor on it, and these devices are known to fail with age. There also is an 8-pin DIP IC on it, in this case marked with a "v 301" legend and a date code. This is not an LM301 op-amp as the pinout doesn't match up, nor is it any related part or a LM311 comparitor as pin 4 (the negative power lead on these parts) is a no-connect on the board. It's not a 555 timer part, the pinout doesn't match that either, nor a 2907 or 3909 (other common jellybean parts that get used in a lot of places). The board has four pins on it that connect to the instrument cluster. I assume that these are power, ground, input, and lamp output. They are labeled KL15, KL31, GEBER, and AUSG. (15 and 31 are the standard Bosch/Mercedes legends for power and ground, and the board's circuitry bears this out. Geber is giver, or the input, and Ausgang means output.) The remaining complement of components are six resistors, and one each diode, transistor (C33725), and non-electrolytic capacitor.
The radio sounded pretty good! Unfortunately I managed to break off one of the shifter surround retaining ears I'd glued in place before, so it is gluing up again. It's just about time to start actual reassembly of the interior.
Searched the vintage National Semiconductor data books I have for parts that might match what's in the low-oil delay circuit board. No joy.
I can speculate that if the 0.047 µF capacitor (or the traces or solder joints thereto) opened up the RC oscillator could start running much faster than it ought to, perhaps resulting in the device acting like there was no effective delay because the clock frequency was much too high, assuming it still ran at all. That would be one place to look on a dead one, and you certainly would want to put a scope or frequency counter on the IC's pin 8 to see if you had the 256 Hz waveform, assuming you had such an instrument. (Some DMM's will also measure AC frequency.)
[Yes. At a later date I procured a 'dead' board that had exactly this problem. The oscillator runs at nearly 600 kHz, reducing the delay to some 27 milliseconds instead of 60 seconds, effectively eliminating it. Resoldering the capacitor (C2, 0.047 µF) cured the problem.]
I can see that while an analog circuit could be designed to do the same thing, this approach is in theory much more reliable. In practice, however, not all silicon chips that were ever made exhibit the long-term reliability that one would expect. (Certain expensive and capable analog Tektronix oscilloscopes that are dying like flies come to mind, for which there are no replacement chips.)
[In fact, the earliest low oil boards are analog, I now have one in the parts pile. This digital board appears to be the cost-reduced version.]
Another replacement thought would involve an 8-pin PIC microcontroller. (And no, the pinout on the board does not match that of the PIC either.) It ought not be too hard at all to write the program, and the PIC is very cheap. I don't know that I'd want to go there, however, as that's a fair amount of trouble to go through. I think you can do an external slow RC oscillator, but I'm not sure you can get away without an external voltage regulator. There are 12-volt PIC's, but I don't believe they're available in the 8-pin jobs.
I made a schematic of the board, for future reference, in Illustrator, PostScript, PDF, and GIF
formats. C1 is the power supply filter. C2 and R4 are the RC time
constant for the oscillator. D1 is there to protect Q1, the lamp
driver, against inductive kickback from the incandescent lamp. U1
contains the power supply Zener diode, the oscillator, and the
counters.
Next I fooled with the sinking clutch pedal, and was all depressed until I started to smell brake fluid. Turns out the fitting nut on the master cylinder was loose and leaking onto the car's floor. I tightened it down, I expect that to cure the problem.
Then I installed a set of yard-sale Delco speakers (10 ohm) in the back deck to replace the sun-rotted and blown out stock speakers. They fit perfectly, and seem to work OK. Stock speakers are apparently 4 ohms (the front ones are, and the rears look to be the same part). The price was right, anyway! (They came in a nice Altec Lansing box, and were obvious take-outs.)
The speedometer cable just doesn't fit. Perhaps it's too short for a stickshift transmission? The donor car's cable was cut, so it's of no use. I'm going to have to ramp the car to get under it in order to disconnect the transmission end of the cable, making enough slack in order to connect the head end. What a drag! TFM says you can do it all from underneath the dashboard, we'll have to see.
The fuse box cover doesn't attach right, partly because one of its two hinges is broken off. The parts car also had a broken off hinge, so its cover was not a suitable replacement. What I did was to break off the remaining hinge from the spare cover and glue it to the 'good' cover, hopefully in more-or-less the right place! I used super glue to tack it in place, checked the alignment once more, then potted the (ill-fitting) hinge in Shoe Goo. The secret to getting the cover out of the car appears to be to first remove the cover from the relay box immediately forward of the fuse box. (Yes, I blew another fuse working on the radio. And yes, this 'secret' seems to be in TFM.) I set it aside to dry, tomorrow I should be able to see if I've fixed it.
What a dummy! Since the dash switches are all in place I tried out the sunroof switch. The wind deflecter only looks like it's screwed to the sunroof panel. It's not. The sunroof works, but of course it's as gummy as the Albatross's was, and needs the same clean-and-lubricate treatment. Too bad the add-on wind deflector was broken by accident earlier. I have a friend who does a lot of plexiglas work, perhaps I can get him to help me glue it back together.
Working slowly, I was able to reassemble the bulk of the center console system. The Becker is in place, as is the ashtray. The dash lamps all seem to work, but I'll have to test it at night to be sure. The blower wants to run at near-full speed at all times (except when off), I don't know what's up with that so I'm not going to push the ACC panel in all the way. (It's a bitch to get back out.) I managed to lose the two screws that hold the top of the center console, so I can't put the vent grilles back yet.
The 201 is definitely not as nicely put together as the earlier cars I've worked on. It has a cheap feel to it, that's for sure.
The blower squeaks a bit and sticks so that it won't start if it's set on low. Needs a lube job obviously.
I reinstalled the repaired fuse box cover. That is one badly-designed item I'll tell you that!
When the sunlight was just at the right angle I noticed a penny sitting down in the defroster duct. What I've found that works fairly well in these circumstances is to bend a piece of wire such that you can just touch the offending item with it while not touching anything else with the tip along the way. Then you put a drop of weatherstrip cement on the end and go fishing. Leave the tip of the wire on the item for a few seconds, then lift out the item. Worked great!
Search as I might, I just couldn't find the two black screws that hold in the top of the console so I rounded up a couple from the junkbox that would serve. Then I was able to put the rest of the console together. I then tackled the glove box, which was missing a retaining nut on one of the hinges, accounting for its loose floppy nature. The parts car supplied this. (It is handy having one of those.) It's starting to look like a car again!
The squeaky blower fan was next. I figured out, via TFM, how to remove the air grille and the monowiper. The blower housing shell then unclipped, as did the motor. The motor still seems to have some brush life left, so I lubed the bearings, first with PB Blaster and then with Mobil 1 15W50, and set it aside to 'soak'. The motor's commutator looks good, so new brushes should be a possible repair when/if the time comes. Next I taped a long piece of 1/2" hose to the end of the shop vacuum and poked it down into all the crevices I could find, sucking out the bits of leaves and dirt. This included the exposed part of the air plenum behind the blower. Then I lubed the blower once more and put it back, after testing it with a battery charger (it still worked). Putting the cover back was less difficult than I'd expected. When tested all speeds worked properly, even low. Success!
With the firewall area all exposed I could see that the rubber vacuum connector to the heater valve was split, which could definitely explain its propensity to heat, so I replaced it. The valve moves freely, and when shut by hand and then covering the vacuum port with my thumb the valve will hold shut, so the diaphragm is not leaky.
The flimsy shield behind the battery got cracked when I removed it, so I Shoe-Gooed it and set it aside to dry. I also covered some holes that had been worn into it. I don't want water dripping onto the electronics that are back there! Tomorrow it ought to be solid enough to reinstall.
Getting all those trim bits back on the windshield area is an even worse PITA. Not easy getting everything tucked into and over where it goes, and then getting the aluminum cover strips to seat where they belong. There was a missing bit of weatherstrip that went from the windshield to the hood on the right side. I dug around in the parts car and found a length of what looks like unused weatherstrip, though old. It was the correct profile for the missing piece (as determined by the other side's piece), but was too long and didn't have the rough 'S' shape to it that an installed piece has. I cut it to length and installed it. (That parts car, though in severely depleted condition, is still worth having around. I bet that with a lot of care and some eBay time I could make back most of what it cost me just on the parts it does still have.)
I found one of the missing console screws: it was down in the defroster duct. I bet that's where the other one is too. I used a magnet to fish it out of there. Memo to self: never put screws up on the dashboard no matter how handy it is!
Then I moved to the interior and put back the driver's footwell stuff. The difficult part there was cutting a new slot into the underdash panel for the clutch pedal. That went fairly smoothly, however. I modeled it after the brake pedal slot, first peeling back the sound insulation and then using tin snips to cut out the piece of plastic. Then I cut out a narrower strip of the sound insulation and glued it back down, sans the black felt edge treatment of the brake slot. (Nobody can see this stuff way under there anyway, especially with the knee bolster.) The rest was just trying to remember how it all went together, and finding the right fasteners. No real hitches, though it was surprisingly hard to get the carpet back in place. Then I moved to the passenger side which went much faster. The interior is now reassembled.
Out shopping today I bought a new wiper blade. That's about the last thing the car needs in order to be physically driveable, though there is still a tremendous amount to do before I'd call it good enough. The loose front end is probably the next thing that needs addressing. After that I'll probably do the paperwork and start driving it around.
I did wash the car since I had the hose out to wash our road-tripper, the SDL. It cleans up nice!
Whatever glue I'd used before on the cracked headlight frames has failed, yellowing badly, getting soft, and coming unstuck, and the right fog light had gotten flooded. (I think it was 5-minute epoxy.) I cleaned it off and began gluing it up again with Shoe Goo.
I put the rear brake drum on a jack stand and then jacked up the front of the car to access the wonky tie rods. Turns out the 'bad' right tie rod isn't itself bad per se, but was merely loose in the inboard socket. Unfortunately I was unable to loosen or tighten the nut because the 5mm Allen socket in it is stripped. I then removed the idler arm pivot bolt so that I could try to remove the idler arm (with tie rod) from the steering link. So far no good, it's stuck on the steering link. Heat, banging, and a badly-applied puller have not done the trick, I'm going to have to investigate getting the special tools.
Out on errands, I dropped by the U-Pull to find they had a 1985 190E (auto, complete with oily sludge in the coolant tank) (and a 1976 300D, auto), and liberated a spare passenger mirror glass, a better-than-mine driver's door seal, a non-smashed AC condensor, a spare cruise control amplifier, a door lock pump, and a windshield washer tank sender. There was no blower switch knob, nor any seats from which to get a hinge cover (the other items for this car I'm after). (The 115 provided a quartz clock and a white-dot momentary push-pull defroster knob.) I bought the 190E's rear ashtray assembly for power socket experimentation, though it's blue and not black. I also dropped by Harbor Freight and got a tie-rod puller and a pickle fork, they were not too expensive. While I was at the yard I dropped the tire off at Les Schwab to get the leak fixed.
(The 115 quartz clock seems to keep good time, though the hands are misaligned. This is unfortunate, as there's no easy way to open these to realign them.)
I then went over to the parts car and liberated the matching tie rod, it came out no problem—a little pressure with the puller and a tap or two and it popped right out. (While I was there I tested the 'spare' steering damper, it is only marginally better than the bad one in the car. I think I'm going to go to the junkyard and see what the one there is like.) The spare tie rod appears identical to the original but was bent and its outboard end was shot, so swapping ends was the right solution. I noted the orientation and counted the exposed threads on the car's rod and counted turns as I removed it. (22.5 in fact.) I then matched this with the 'new' end. That ought to be good enough until I can get the car aligned. The refurbished tie rod looks good, both joints are tight and the boots are good. Of note is that the 'new' end has a paint splat on it, implying that it was a used U-Pull part, and the 'old' rod had painted numbers on it, indicating that it also was a junkyard part. Obviously tie rods are wear items! At this point I broke for breakfast.
I went back to the U-Pull and liberated the steering shock from the 190E. It was good, nice and stiff, so I bought it. (It has a 124 part number, like so much of the 201.) I also picked up the plastic knob from the 115's center vent, which works very well as a blower control knob for the 190D. I picked up the 190E's clock/tach and the four-gauge cluster with the Economy gauge, even though I don't need them for anything. These might end up on eBay or something. This gauge cluster also has a low-oil delay board, but this one uses a lot of discrete components and a RCA CA239AE IC. (Hand-stuffed board, much like early transistor radios with resistors on-end, etc. The LM239 quad comparitor is a cross-reference for the IC. There are three transistors and four electrolytic capacitors on it as well. Resistors aplenty and probably diodes as well, but the glue potting obscures details.) Obviously the digital circuit board was developed as a lower-cost, and perhaps higher-functionality, replacement. I'm told:
'85 was the first year for the low oil light. By '86 the circuit was more complex and I believe there were several different versions. Mercedes never made the circuit available as a part—if it failed you had to replace the entire instrument cluster printed circuit board.
While lying under the 190E it became apparent that the under-engine panel had been cut off rather than having its four screws removed. Probably was done by the U-Pull yard, the cut was pretty clean. The jerks, I could have used that panel! It probably took more time to use the saw than a wrench would have taken. The bulk of the panel was not anywhere in or around the car, it probably went into the dumpster. Had it been there I could probably have repaired it easier than I'll be able to fabricate a new one.
Finally I installed the 'new' steering shock and the right-side wheels (which were off for access and tire repair). When I reinstalled the wheels I wire-brushed the rust off of the bolts and rubbed paraffin (candle wax) on them. I'd heard that that was a good anti-seize treatment, we'll see. Of note is that the increased offset (ET49) of the wheels on the 124 and 201 models seems to make wheel handling much more difficult, they're more off balance and want to fall off the car much easier than the ET25 wheels I'm familiar with from the earlier cars. I think that the (always-missing) toolkit peg for wheel installation is more important for these than before. Next up: the left-side tie rod!
On the bench I powered up the spare clock, we'll see if it keeps time.
The spare clock's running fine. That makes it a saleable item, I guess.
Mailing list response on tie rod business:
For the tie rod, loosen the clamp nut (outer one), put the rod on an anvil of some sort, and work it over with a 2# sledge, hitting on the flats of the sleeve. This will crack loose the rust and let you unscrew the end. Penetrating oil is good, too, but you must start the rust or it will never turn.OK, I guess that indicates that the funny double-nut is just a nut to be loosened, and business as usual after that. I'll try pinning one end in the parts car's steering knuckle as a vise before wrenching.
I think I've finished up the re-gluing of the nasty right-hand headlight frame. I also washed out the worst of the swampy grunge that had built up in it. With luck this will serve until a good set of lights can be found economically.
Unfortunately while reassembling the headlight one of the bench multimeters came crashing down onto the pathetic rats'-nest that is my workbench and broke the needle off the 190E temperature gauge, scratching the face in the process. While the needle can be glued back on invisibly, the scratch will be a problem. There goes my $6! (I put the meter stack back in a more secure fashion.)
The broken strap for the washer reservoir cap was easy to deal with, I just cut a small length of narrow vinyl tubing (washer tubing from a 115) and slipped it over both broken ends. That tethers the cap nicely.
I installed the 'new' washer fluid level sender I got at the U-Pull. Nothing to it! It has made the dash light turn off as it should.
Vising the 'spare' tie rod in the parts car's steering knuckle, I was able to break loose the end I'm interested in learning about (using a crow-foot wrench for better grip than an open-end). It's a 19 mm LH jam nut, jamming a flatted squeeze collar (looks like a nut, but it's not) against the threaded and slotted (pinchable) body of the rod. Easy to take apart in fact, if it's not too rusted. Now I'll move on to the ones I'm interested in mix-n-matching. They've been soaked in penetrant since yesterday.
...And they came off fairly easily, now that I knew where/how to apply force. (Using the car as a vise really helps.) I counted the turns to remove the end from the car's rod (19), and put back the 'new' end to match. Again, this should be close enough until I can get the car aligned. The boots on the tie rod were starting to crack and tear, though the joints themselves were still clean and greasy. I used acetone and Shoe Goo to patch the tears. I really ought to replace the tie rod, but this job should do for a couple of years. I've got more immediate problems to deal with before I go spending money I don't have on the car. Moving on to the icky ball joint problem...
Ugh. I slid back the boot over the ball joint and it was absolutely filled with dusty rust. I blew it out with air and then sprayed in PB penetrant. I then worked the joint a bunch of times, then sluiced it out with PB. I repeated a time or two and then blew it out with air again. Then I used a grease gun with a needlenose point (the same thing you do door hinges with) to fill the joint with grease, and put the boot back. (That isn't all that easy due to the retaining spring.) The joint works much easier now. There was a small tear in the boot, so I'm going to clean and Shoe Goo it, though that's probably pointless. Maybe after breakfast.
Yes, this joint should be replaced, but it isn't yet loose, and I think the cleaning and lubrication will give it a new lease on life, for at least the initial shakeout of the car. It will remain on the to-do list. I just don't much care for heavy wrenching, such as a ball joint replacement requires, nor do I have the special tools required. I wield a mean soldering iron, but hand me heavy tools and watch me hurt myself.
After breakfast I did Shoe Goo the ball joint seal tear and I put the repaired tie rod back on. The steering now can be moved from the jacked-up wheels like other cars, unlike before. While the car was up in the air I removed the automatic transmission oil cooler lines, and capped the radiator fittings with aluminum foil tied with wire to keep the dirt out. (Just in case.) I also removed the remains of the transmission shift-point linkage. The vacuum line to the transmission was too difficult to ferret out from underneath the intake manifold, so it's been left capped off and tucked away underneath. At some convenient time in the future I will remove it permanently. I then lowered the car and washed my (very greasy) hands.
Test drive time! It started right up, and there was no sign of the former squirrelly handling. Handling seemed decent, and I even worked up some speed on some corners. I don't know what 201's are supposed to handle like, I'm told they handle particularly well, but I certainly noticed nothing wrong with it. It seems to me that the engine is not quite as torque-y as the one in the Frankenheap, but I'll need to research this more. I had to fiddle with the hazard switch again to get the signals working, but there's nothing new about that. It's just about time to convert the car into a daily driver, and to do that I've got to get the State involved, and the insurance company. And I probably ought to take a stab at the air conditioner, since it is kind of hot out now. Especially since my wife is the real fuel-burner these days, and I don't want to subject her to too much inconvenience.
I just got offered a dead oil delay circuit board, so I hope to have more information about that soon.
I stopped by the licensing place, and found that even though the car had not been licensed in awhile I could either pay now to get the car renewed only until September, or wait 'til then and get the full year. Either way I have to pay in September for a full year. However, she also pointed out that in September I'll be required to have new plates at an exorbitant $24 (new state law), but that if I get new plates now they'll only be $7, and will be good for X years, whatever that is. So I bought the license and the plates. $17 (nearly half) of the three-month license fee was saved by buying plates now, let's hope the rest can be made up in fuel savings before the end of September!
So I installed the new license plates, which required finding some correct screws rather than the US ones that had been jammed into there, but not fully so that the plate flapped. The right metric screws (salvaged over time from the U-Pull) did the trick. Then I installed the new wiper blade insert.
Feeling perky, I then put the AC gauges on. I had to disconnect the mount for the suction pipe near the low-side fitting and shift the pipe some, as otherwise there wasn't enough clearance at the fitting to attach the service hose. That done, I found 10 psi of residual pressure, so it's not like the system has a bad leak. I put the vacuum pump on and sucked it down to zero, and corked it off. This was at nearly 6 PM, so we'll see if it holds a vacuum for a few hours. The condensor is nasty looking, but might still work good enough. I have a spare, if/when needed.
...Two hours later (after 8 PM) it still has a full vacuum on it. Looking good! I pressurized the system to 50 PSI, but neither switch on the drier closed. One of them whichever is the low-pressure cutoff, should have reacted. Not so good. (I looked it up, the unit with terminals facing up is the pressure switch, it has blue wires.) I swapped it with one off the parts car, and still no reaction. Could they both be bad? Spec. says 2 Bar, which is about 30 PSI.
Went to the U-Pull and got the 190E's auxiliary fan and its pressure switch. Also picked up a headlight assembly, for merging with the one that's missing a mounting ear. (Cut and glue?) Got the headlight mount, too, the plastic one below the light, as one of mine is broken.
Funny thing, I ran into a guy at the U-Pull who was looking for parts for his '79 280E, a fuel pump to be exact. (There weren't any.) He wondered if I wanted to purchase his car, as it'd been sitting 'cause his wife absolutely hated it and he largely drove something else. I recommended that he fix it before selling it , if that was what he was going to do, because you don't get squat for a broken car. (And he said that was his position, tell his wife!) Or fix it if you're keeping it, 'cause then you can drive it. Either way, fix it. I told him to check okiebenz.com for a used fuel pump and the window regulator he needs. We chatted cars for a bit, and I helped him get a door handle to replace a broken one.I powered up the fan on a battery charger and it worked fine. However, the fan didn't install too easily because of the damage from that past wreck. It did eventually go in, and it doesn't even interfere with the condensor which is a bit of a surprise considering the condensor's bent-ness. One complication was getting the fan standoffs (which were also missing) in place: I dropped a sheet metal screw down between condensor and radiator where it lodged point-in. Each attempt to pry the two delicate items apart to look for or to try to retrieve it wedged it in tighter. It didn't seem to penetrate, however, and I was eventually able to fish it out with a magnet. I had to pull the headlight to route the wire, and it seems to me I should have gotten the headlight mount plastic top bits as well, mine are really quite beat up. Sigh.
The pressure switch installed easily, and works properly. That, at least, is a relief. Using compressed air I got the other two switches responding, but I wouldn't use them except in an emergency. (Or at all if it cost more than $7 to charge the AC system.)
The neighbor (who bought our spare 115) dropped by to pick up the block heater I got for him at the U-Pull, and I reminded him that he was already planning ahead for when his son started driving the 115, and he'd been wondering if a 190D would fit him. So he sat in it. He does fit, but barely. He allowed as though while it was a bit tight, for 40+ MPG he'd get used to it! While there he noted that it still had a Becker, and while I was regaling (read: boring) him with its story he punched the ON button. And it came on! Obviously a feature of the newer Beckers, where you can turn them on even with the key off.
I used a jumper to short out both the engine temperature sensor and the drier overtemperature switch. The former runs the auxiliary fan at high speed, the latter, low. Good. The fan system seems to be OK now, modulo that sticky sensor.
Nah, that sensor's no good. Its other contact turns off the AC compressor, and it's stuck too. Unplugging it resulted in the compressor running normally. Banging on the sensor did nothing to relieve this problem. I have a spare sensor that I'd bought for Jill's 560 SL, which had a stuck fan contact, but that problem cleared itself up before I could install the new sensor. It's been sitting on a shelf since, I'll probably put it in this car. The full-throttle switch atop the intake manifold also works to shut off the AC compressor, as it should.
While doing this testing I noticed a large fuel leak out of the injector return line between #'s 2–3. That's new. I pulled it off and replaced it with new line.
I started putting in a test charge of refrigerant. It fills slowly, perhaps because it's not too warm out yet today, or perhaps because there is a restriction in the low-side valving. (I've seen that before.) But I was able to get a fair amount of test refrigerant in there and I was starting to get reasonable pressures. Unfortunately my vent temperatures never got very low, and I thought I even detected some heat coming out the center vent. The sight glass showed plenty of refrigerant flow. (Very foamy, as is normal for this refrigerant.) So I pulled the access panels to the water valve and had a look. It's not always shut off properly. I don't know if it's a control problem or a vacuum leak problem, this will bear some looking into. I manually pulled the valve shut, and then I could feel the vacuum system kick in, but that never really changed anything at the vents. The water pipe remained pretty hot. I wonder if the water valve leaks? (I know it can take awhile to pull the heat out of the heater core at summer temperatures.) Gotta dive into that too.
Only one of the horns works. Shoulda grabbed that horn bar at the U-Pull! Maybe I'll go back to get the horns, and have a look for water valves, etc. Must remember to grab the headlight mounting plastic bits too.
So I went back to the U-Pull after breakfast and got the horn bar, the heater water valve and auxiliary pump, and the trunk lock actuator (to replace my spare that got used in the SDL), all for $6.50, not bad. (The plastic fasteners for the headlights are a no charge item. Also no charge for the Willie Nelson's Greatest Hits CD I found in the back seat, complete with unbroken jewel box. Washed the mud off of it and popped it into the player while I worked on the car. Tres cool, I like Willie.) There was nothing left of the 190E's cooling system, other than the oily coolant reservoir, so no spare fan switch for me. I nosed about a bit and found that the 123 they have has a trailer hitch, or at least part of one. The trunk was locked and unmolested, so I was unable to check it for toolkits, or anything else interesting like the interior component of the trailer hitch. When I came out there was a Slavic guy standing by my Frankenheap, he asked me if I wanted to sell it. Sorry, no!
Once back I resumed charging the AC. I also replaced two plastic headlight mounts, and a missing bolt on the horn support. While I was in the area I checked out the auxiliary coolant pump and found it seized, though the one I bought at the U-Pull is not. I'll be able to swap these if I want to, but for now I just unplugged the seized one. (It's open-circuit, so it may have burned out after seizure.) After a bunch of fooling with it, I was only getting vent temperatures of about 65 °F, even with a water spray on the condensor. (The spray did seriously lower the high-side pressures and temperatures, but had at best moderate effect on the vent temperatures. Watching the water evaporate off the condensor's coils I could see that the front and back serpentine were about equally hot, so the smashing didn't occlude the front pipe, and the tops of the serpentines were hotter than the bottoms.) The high-side pressures and temperatures were a bit on the high side, and the low-side pressure was perhaps a bit low, though the temperature at the low-side fitting was not, and it matched (more or less) that of the vent air. The auxiliary fan came on periodically during this, if either the AC or engine temperature got too high. (While working on the car I noticed that the thermostatic 'shark gills' in the engine compartment had both opened up due to the engine heat, so that's cool.) Adding more propane really didn't result in any improvement in the AC situation, so I stopped doing that. I decided to take a test drive, just to see how it all worked together. Windows all open, no air recirculation.
After a few miles down the road things stabilized at a 59 °F vent temperature, with about an 85 °F outside temperature according to the instrument cluster's readout. (It might read a bit low.) Engine temperatures climbed to a little over 100 °C, not unusual for one of these with the AC on. (And especially as I don't believe the main fan clutch is working. The auxiliary fan does come on periodically, depending on how fast I was driving.) When I turned off the AC, engine temperatures dropped to nominal, and the vent temperature rose quickly to 95 °F. I think the heater valve must be leaking a bit, if there's a 10 °F air temperature rise through the venting system. Regardless, it looks like the AC is accomplishing about a 35 °F delta, which is not bad. Though 59 °F vent temperatures aren't that impressive, it is just about according to spec (see the chart on 83.11-035/3 of the 201 service manual), so maybe I don't get to complain too much.
Because of the front end smashing this car experienced (or perhaps not) I can't get the main fan off without removing the radiator, there's simply no clearance between the fan and the radiator. That will slow down anything I might do there. If I do have to remove the radiator that will be the time to dig into the auxiliary heating pump and the water shutoff valve. And why not then do a cooling system flush and acid flush? And new coolant... At that point in time I might as well consider replacing the condensor with the non-smashed one I got at the U-Pull. I'm not sure if/when I will do this. It also would be an excellent time to experiment with refilling the fan clutch with silicone oil, but access is so poor that you would not want to guess wrong about the amount of oil to put in. The U-Pull's 190E fan clutch was still there, but was missing the bimetallic strip on the front, so it's not complete. Not worth the price to get it for experimentation, as fan clutches are one of the things the U-Pull charges a fair amount of money for. I should have one or two around anyway, and I think I've probably got a good one off of the SDL from when I stupidly replaced it due to bad diagnosis, it'd be nice to put that to use.
The car drove well during this test drive, though I'm still pretty sure that the engine is less torque-y than the 200D's. It might have a tiny bit of wander in the steering, felt like possibly a toe-in problem. It certainly wouldn't surprise me considering the state I found the front end in! Gotta get it in for alignment soon.
I had to buzz down to the neighbor's to help move some furniture, and it was hot out, I used the car's AC on the way. As the car's cooling system wasn't hot the vent temperatures dropped quickly to about 57 °F, lower than yesterday. On the way back it never made it down past about 65 °F, but the car was up to temperature. This indicates to me that there is a fair amount of heater core leakage flow.
I also had to make a Goodwill run, but this time it was outgoing rather than incoming: makes for a nice change. I loaded the car up to the gunwales and dashed off to town, windows closed and AC on, fan at one notch off of maximum. Most of the trip was in third gear, and the outdoor thermometer hovered around 100 °F. The engine temperature stabilized at about 110 °C, and the vent temperatures eventually stabilized at about 60 °F. On the way home when ambient had dropped to about 96 °F and road speeds were at their maximum (45 MPH or so) the vent temperatures actually dropped to about 55 °F. Tolerable, but nothing to write home about.
I'm more convinced that this engine has less low-end torque than the Frankenheap. The heap's pretty tolerable driving around the rural roads in fourth (direct) gear, but not so the 190D: it gets a little bogged down at lower RPM's, so keeping it in third helps a lot. Also, my usual rural 'California stop' needs to be accompanied with first gear, not second, because the lugging torque isn't there. Not a problem, but interesting nonetheless.
I think I'll poll the mailing list about my fan options.
I don't think the main fan clutch is working right on my 190D 2.5, it's the silicone-filled kind. I have a few options to pursue, all of which unfortunately require pulling the radiator due perhaps to front-end damage that has pushed the radiator to within 1/4" of the fan:Opinions, all?
- Replace clutch, I might have a still-good one from our SDL. (New-style, from plastic fan not the original.) Somewhere.
- Attempt to refill existing clutch with silicone oil. I have some, though the viscosity is rumored to be a bit high.
- Swap in the electric-clutch fan from the 190D 2.2 parts car. It's there, but not the sensor.
Voting Results:
1 - Replace: 0 2 - Refill: 0 3 - Redesign: 1
I also did exactly the same thing to the broken under-light trim strip, cutting the necessary mounting tab off of the donor strip. This is also gluing up, and will take a session or two more to finish gluing.
I had a closer look at the electric fan clutch, and found that it probably won't work for me. It's a little deeper, the fan itself is definitely smaller, and the water pump appears to have a mount for the clutch on it that isn't there on mine. So, it won't fit, won't cool, and requires substantial disassembly to put it on. Nah! That still leaves me with two viable (?) options.
...Another session of gluing. While sitting in front of the car I noticed that the vertical piece of sheet metal between the headlight and the radiator, where the air intake is, was bent towards the radiator. This pinched off the air intake scoop, and one of the AC pipes was rubbing on the metal and digging a groove in itself. I bent this back towards its normal place with pliers, which relieved the situation somewhat. Stupid wreck!
After the glue dried a bit I spray-painted the repaired area silver. Not a real close match, but looks better painted than not. Now we wait for significant drying. If I put it on too soon it'll fall apart.
I needed to go off on errands, so I put the headlight back in. (But not the trim, it needs to dry a bit more.) On the trip the AC (after a puzzling start-up delay) worked well. On the way home it was 91 °F, and at speed on the back roads the vent temperatures had dropped to 52 °F, the engine temperature was again about 110 °C.
In a fit of madness I sent my wife off on her errands in the car, we'll see how it went when she gets back!
...Not a happy camper! The AC was spotty, she seems to have forgotten that all cars with stickshifts are started in first gear (only some heavier trucks may be started in second, when unloaded, and she kept killing it when starting out), and she said it couldn't get up to speed on the freeway. (Wonder what's up with that, and why was she there anyway? I thought this was a local trip, I'd never intended for her to go on the freeway yet. That was for after the alignment.) And she couldn't find the cupholder that was in the trunk, and she took our son when I was expecting a solo trip, and she forgot her cell phone...
Not really an auspicious first trip for her.
I checked the throttle travel of the pedal, and it looks good. Can't blame anything on that!
On the trip home from the neighbors' (after dinner) I found that the headlights were aimed a bit low, and the righthand light is aimed a bit too far left. Will start to work on that next.
Used the Unimog's crane to put the parts car back in the woods. Much easier said than done, but still much easier than any other method of dealing with it. My wife should be pleased, she's recently been complaining again about having to look at it.
On the way to the alignment place the car, whose low-fuel light was on, started sputtering. I pulled off the freeway and dumped in my 2-gallon can of diesel I'd brought along just in case. While turning around in the parking lot it became apparent that the motor mounts are indeed shot, as cornering resulted in huge changes in engine vibration. Anyone know if '87 300TD mounts are a good substitute? They look similar, and I have two down in the woods.
With great difficulty I found the alignment place, which is tucked into an odd corner of town. They jacked up the car, and found that both right-side wheels had unacceptable levels of play in them. The front was caused by the steering idler, which had loosened up. The rear was a totally shot bushing in the forward linkage. I will need to fix these things, and reschedule. Drat! I wonder if these parts are any good on the parts car?
On the freeway to the fuel stop the broken (but taped) wind deflector nearly blew off. Made a hell of a racket flapping against the roof of the car, nearly ruined my clothing. I spent the rest of the trip holding it down with my hand through the sunroof, it made shifting into fifth on the freeway rather interesting.
On the power front, it seemed fine to me. With the relatively low torque and the bad motor mounts it's definitely preferable at the moment to drive around town in third gear, at under 3000 RPM. In the Frankenheap, under the same circumstances, fourth gear works well. On the freeway it accelerated just fine (for an economy car) in fifth gear. No neck snapping, but it did go faster when you pushed down on the go pedal. At 'California stops', where the heap will go on in second gear the 190D requires first. I suspect, however, that as the car is sorted out it'll work better and better, so we'll reserve final judgement for now.
The clock was wrong today, I wonder what's up with that? Will have to keep an eye on it, it may need some work.
I jacked up the parts car (sadly back in the woods, which slowed the procedure somewhat) and removed the rear suspension link that matches the bad one on the car. It looked good. I then swapped it into place in the car, which went very smoothly. The car had a clip-on plastic splash shield on its link, which I moved to the good one. I then put the bad link back into the parts car, it seemed like the best place to store it and maybe it'll hold things together better. The right rear wheel no longer has slop in it.
While I was under the car I loosened the parking brake about three flats. Probably about two too many I found out when I lowered the car. I'll get it dialed in perfectly one day. The left parking brake cable sheath is broken, but the one on the parts car is still good. Another someday.
On the test drive (errands) the car behaved well enough, but I can't say that it handles any better. The ACC is certainly acting odd, the whole first part of the trip it wanted to heat and not cool. Then it settled down. The compressor control didn't necessarily want to run on the snowflake setting, but the defrost setting forced it on. The one inoperable rear window has been working fine since it spontaneously began working, I guess I'll mark it as good until further notice. I'm also hearing odd whirring noises, I may have a marginal wheel bearing. Just gotta shake it out more!
Noted that the Klima relay is the same as that in the SDL, for which I now have a supposedly-repaired spare. I installed the spare in the car to try it next time I take it out.
Noticed that the car is also missing one of the seat belt mount covers on the lower B pillar. Stupid PO's, that makes three missing black plastic covers in the interior.
I jacked up the car's front and unhooked the steering idler arm. Following the instructions in the service manual I was able to pull the two slide bushings. Measuring them with a caliper, I found that they were a couple of thousandths (of an inch) thinner in the middle where they contacted the rubber slide bearings than at the end where they didn't. Probably from wear rather than a design feature. Rather than replace the bearing kit, which I did not have and didn't want to spend $40 and some time getting, I decided to try an experiment. I cut two inch-wide strips of 0.001" steel shim stock (which I had on hand) sufficient to wrap almost entirely around the slide bushings, greased them up, and slipped them into the bearings with the slide bushings. It was a bit difficult to get it all together without kinking or crimping the shims too much, but it eventually slid together with the aid of the BFH. I had to use the big bolt to pull it together far enough so that I could get the rubber dust seals to go back into place over the slide bushings. The big bolt was also a bit loose in the slide bushings, so I removed it and did a similar bit of shimming there too. After this the idler arm was nice and tight once it was put together and torqued down. Eventually it'll get a proper bushing kit, but this ought to get it on the road and alignable right away, and it ought to last for awhile. I then broke for lunch.
After lunch I went to the 87 300TD (124) parts car in the woods and liberated its motor mounts. It was easy, since there was no motor on them, but I did manage to lose one of the mounting bolts down into the frame crossmember, and it would have been an extreme pain to retrieve. Watch out for that! Fortunately I didn't need it, but I took extra care when removing the mounts on the car. The procedure was to crack loose the Allen bolt underneath, then lift the engine with a block of wood under the pan, then remove the top bolt, then remove the bottom Allen and finally lift out the old mount. The new mount went in by putting the top bolt in so that it was still a bit loose while making sure the locating finger was in the notch in the engine support arm. Then I went underneath and tightened the Allen into place, then let the engine down and tightened the top bolt. I repeated this for the other side, except that it was complicated by the necessity of removing the air cleaner cover first. Also while I was there one of the two rear screws on the starter (the long spindly ones) had backed out, so I tightened that back down. It was ironic, but the 'new' mounts had 201 part numbers and the 'old' ones were 124! All in all one of the easiest engine mount swaps I've ever done. Of note is that there was no obvious sign of failure in either set of mounts, we'll see on a test drive whether or not there is any difference.
Test drive. Transformation! The 'new' motor mounts are infinitely better than what were in there, the buzzing motor-on-rails noise is gone. We'll see if it holds up. Unfortunately the 'repaired' Klima relay didn't work, so I put back the original, since I need to use the car this afternoon. I'll take another whack at it soon.
On the freeway the car is still quite darty, the alignment is obviously off. But in general I think the steering feels tighter.
It appears that the resoldering job was successful, but the patient died anyway. Memo to self: before attempting a Klima resoldering repair, check the relay coils. If dead, don't bother unless you've got a replacement relay source lined up.
I swung by the U-Pull to see if the (destroyed by monkeys) ACC control panel had the right kind of small relay in it (I know it has one that looks similar), but unfortunately the car had already been sent to the crusher. (Which fact was not recorded in the notebook out front.) So I shopped around until I found a fairly small Japanese relay, we'll see if it can be made to fit.
I cut the case off of the little relay, and most of the spade lugs. I had to use the hacksaw to cut off half the base, but once I'd done this, even though it was considerably larger than the original, I could tuck the relay into the hole vacated by it. I think I can wire it in place loosely, and then insulate it so it doesn't short out on anything. It'll be a fiddly bit of work, though. Not particularly cost-effective in terms of time!
Decided to pick up the pace a little as I've got a road trip next weekend I'd like to use the car for, so I took the cruise control amplifier out in the evening. On the bench it did the usual spastic dance, so I put paint stripper on to remove the solder-side varnish. Then I scrubbed and dried the board, and resoldered it. On the bench it seemed to work and wasn't sensitive to shock or flexing, so I buttoned it back up for installation and testing tomorrow. Tedious, but straightforward. Hands go a bit numb during one of these, though.
By popular demand I photographed the repaired low-oil board, and annotated it in Photoshop per the schematic.
Next, I removed the Hirschmann 6000EL antenna. It looked OK inside, and the belt was intact. Removing the motor connectors from the PCB I could apply power direct to the motor and it ran. I removed the mast, and found it to be intact, but dirty and sticky. I spent considerable time sluicing it out with acetone, trying to free it up. It's significantly better now, but I may not be done with this process.
The antenna's circuit board is built with three IC's: a CMOS 40106 Schmitt trigger hex inverter, a CMOS 4060 14-stage ripple counter, and a 555 timer. There are four power transistors, and six signal transistors as well, plus the usual crop of diodes, resistors, and capacitors. There is one power resistor that is probably for motor current sensing.
On the way to church the cruise performed properly. But on the way back it would work, and then get into this neck-snapping throttle yanking cycle. I suspect that its internal gain resistor(s) are wrong for a stick shift, it was too regular (and intermittent) for it to be still bad soldering, etc. Need to research this I guess.
I dug into my box of spare cruise amplifiers, and didn't find what I needed. I have one manny-tranny vacuum box, but no slushbox models with the same PCB layout, so inferring the differences from the vacuum circuit is no good. And, of course, no manny-tranny servomotor boxes. (If I had one, I'd just use it.)
I tried the antenna out, and it's completely dead. The paint stripper I use for cruise amplifiers is methylene-chloride-free, and did not even dent the RTV coating that's on the antenna board. I did some searching, and it appears that methylene chloride itself will attack RTV. Got to find some, I guess.
But as I don't have any methylene chloride, and whereas I do have some other solvents, I thought I'd try some of the others first. I placed the board in a glass dish and put a puddle of Xylene in it just deep enough to cover the bottom of the board. (Xylene can be used to thin RTV on application.) I then covered the dish to retard evaporation. I let it sit for an hour and then scrubbed it with a wire brush. The Xylene softened up the RTV enough that a lot of it scrubbed off the board. Another two dips and scrubs finished the job. Then I washed off the board with running water and a scrub brush, and dried it.
Unfortunately resoldering had no effect on the board. What's worse, it was difficult to do, since it is a tightly-packed double-sided (at least) board.
So I started probing around with the 'scope. The 4060 counter gets a 665 Hz clock on it for several seconds after power-up. No doubt this is part of the initial retraction logic (since the switch was disconnected at that time). When the switch is (virtually) set to UP, the counter again got a clock for a time. Also at this time the 555 timer pin 2 (trigger) voltage begins to sink, and after a few seconds it fires. When the switch is set to DOWN the clock again runs for a time. In other words the circuit appears to be reacting to stimulus OK. The two big heat sinks are home to the motor's 'H' drive, and each sink is common to the collectors of a complementary NPN/PNP pair of BD437/438 power transistors, and to one of the two motor pins. Two of the transistors have a small base voltage on them which goes away when the motor is supposed to be running (at least in one direction). None of the transistors is getting power, however, and for an H drive the PNP transistors' emitters should be very positive. The big resistor in the center of the board is intact, as are the two mid-sized 39-ohm units. Because of the density of the board, the encapsulation, the presence of the looming heat sinks, and its multi-sidedness it is extremely difficult to trace out the circuit. I wonder if I have a working antenna to compare with in the parts box? Something is definitely wrong with the heavy drive power supply on the board. I know that the board senses motor current draw to stop running when the antenna mast hits its stops, no doubt this is what is broken. More later, I hope.
Ohming out the not-quite-so-bad (??? but heavily cooked) board resulted in finding that the H bridge got power directly through a diode yet the bad board did not, although the diode itself was OK. Examining the bad board through a strong light (the cooked board is currently nearly opaque), it appeared that a trace must have been fried, because there sure didn't seem to be any other circuitry along the way to where there was no longer any continuity. Jumping over the suspected blown trace resulted in shorted power. There was a BZT03C18 Zener diode right there at the new jumper point between the H bridge power terminal and ground, and it ohmed out nearly zero in both directions. I removed the diode to find it indeed shorted, and with it removed the antenna started to work. The diode's rated at 18 V 25 mA, and it appears to be just a spiking clamp, so I ought to be able to substitute something. (Not that the part is all that expensive, but waiting for it would be a pain.) I'm sure the thing would run just fine without it, but I don't want to put it at risk, that part's got to be there for a reason.
Digging around in the parts box I found a batch of 6.2V Zeners, so I strung three of them in series to replace the dead one. That was tedious, but ultimately successful. With the Zener string and the jumper for the dead trace in place the antenna started working. Woo hoo! Y'know, I'd heard somewhere that the circuit detected motor stall current to shut off, in addition to a timeout, but I've really seen no sign of such circuitry. Unless the one big power resistor is hooked into the ground side of the bridge. Oh well...
I installed the antenna back in the car, and it works! Good, another vital road trip item to check off.
I then pulled the instrument cluster, which I really hate doing on this model, and pulled the clock out of it. Removing the two 100 µF 16 V capacitors, one measured 25 µF and the other 8 µF. Not good, and no surprise the clock wasn't working well. The drive current for the stepper motor goes through these. I replaced these with junkbox items that tested good, probably the last two I had, and reassembled the clock. It seemed to work fine on the bench, so I put it all back together. Not fun.
While I was there I squirted some more M1 5W20 into the speedometer cable, it seems a bit jittery at low speeds. (Not too surprising considering that it has been damaged.)
On the freeway the cruise control worked perfectly. Not much of a stress test, however, as there are no hills. The too-high loop gain of the existing (slushbox) amplifier may only be an issue in lower gears, or under stressful circumstances.
At the shop they jacked it up and waggled all the wheels. While some where a bit looser than they'd like, nothing was a show stopper. They then hooked up the Hunter G111 to it and had at it.
They earned their money today, at least as far as elapsed time went. I was there a little before 9AM, and didn't get out of there until almost 11. The alignment itself went almost 2.5 hours.
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Unfortunately I don't think it handles all that well even now, I still think it's darty on the freeway. It has to be better than it was, however, especially as regards eating tires. They did use a spreader bar when setting the final toe-in, I mentioned this to them and it was also recommended by the machine itself.
I also noticed that I managed to not hook up the tachometer yesterday. More fun!
I cleaned out the 115 cigar lighter socket I procured for potential use in this car. It came apart nicely, it's a real pleasure to work with things that aren't glued or crimped together permanently. One idea I have is to set the thing in the base of the first aid kit box. That'd be out of the way, yet accessible for things like cooler power on road trips. It still would need power, but there's a nice fat auxiliary power wire (currently disconnected) going back there from the battery. Ideas:
There are unused speaker wires running forwards from the trunk to the driver's footwell area, I can perhaps use one to tap the (now unused) kickdown switch input to get an "Engine Running" signal (from the Klima), perhaps even better than "Ignition On" for the purpose of gating heavy loads.
Time to rotate the tires to put the badly-worn one (from the previous bad alignment, one presumes) on the back. No problem, except that I finally noticed that the front and back tires are of different sizes! The front (worn) tires are 195/60R15, and the back are 195/65R15. So I rotated both sides to keep it symmetrical. I wonder which size is the correct one?
I dug around in the junk box looking for capacitors. While I found one or two that would fit in the shell and were of appropriate values, they were too leaky to serve. The only non-leaky one I found was a 1000 µF 35 V unit that was 'new', and much too large to fit in the shell. With it in circuit, the delay was about 30 minutes. I tried one of the more leaky ones in parallel too, and got almost an hour's delay. I tested the relay and found that it indeed will supply power indefinitely so long as the start control lead is held high. (This will be hooked to the kickdown output of the Klima.) I think that it just re-arms itself quickly when it times out, as I don't see any way to maintain the charge on the timing capacitor through the start terminal.
I removed the first-aid box and cut a rectangular hole in the side for an old 114/115 rear dome light switch. I also drilled a hole in the side for the lighter socket. Unfortunately I had a big chunk torn out between the two holes when the 15/16" drill grabbed, so I had to glue that back. These items are on the side rather than the bottom so that water and crap won't get into them, and so that they don't hang down into the trunk where they could get caught on things.
I found a male pin to match the kickdown switch connector and soldered it onto one of the fore/aft wires, and plugged it into the correct pin on the connector and taped it up. I checked with a meter, and that pin is indeed hot only when the motor is actually running.
The defogger relay circuit
uses two PNP transistors, five diodes, two capacitors (one big), seven
resistors, and one relay. I made a schematic of the relay, for future
reference, in Illustrator, PostScript, PDF, and GIF formats. In operation, Q1 is
'virtually' on all the time, which means the relay will actuate when
its positive coil lead is powered. Q1 is deenergized by the base
being dragged high, either by the Stop input going high or by the
action of Q2 when it times out. C1, the timing capacitor, is charged
through D2 when the relay is off. The voltage on C1 begins to decay
through R7 once the relay is energized, once it sags to a point that
turns Q2 on (a little below 5V, set by R3 & R4), Q2 drags the base
of Q1 high, turning off the relay. D1 holds the relay coil on during
the timed cycle, and also supplies power to the light in the dashboard
switch.
I installed a not-too-leaky 2200 µF 25 V capacitor (from the junk box) in parallel with the existing 1000 µF 16 V timing capacitor (C1) inside the relay. The time delay worked out to be 40 minutes. I then reexamined the schematic of the defroster relay, and discovered a problem. Because the relay backdrives its own Start (E) input through a diode (D1) from its output (87) in order to light the light in the switch, my original plan to just short the output to +12 V via the 'Solar' switch for the solar charging panel is no good: if you do that the relay energizes, and stays that way. Unfortunately I have already cut the hole for the switch, it's not particularly a standard size, and it's only SPST. I need to do some more thinking. Can the relay be modified internally to isolate its output terminal from the E input? A series diode would do it, but it'd need to be a very hefty one, and it would cause a voltage drop to the load.
With the relay assembled the time ran long. Really long. Three hours in fact. Apart again it ran 40 minutes, I think the extra capacitor is physically interfering with the internal relay armature. Going to have to change something. I had a piece of gasket material in there for insulation to keep the capacitor's terminals from bumping into the (hot) frame of the relay. I'll try gluing the capacitor to something, though normally I hate doing that.
Road trip tomorrow, I've got to stop screwing around with this. I assembled the power supply socket using the relay and the 'Solar' switch, but for now you have to remember not to use the switch unless you unplug the relay inside the trunk. (Otherwise the relay will be on, burning 150 mA continuously. Not good when associated with a feeble solar charger!) The Start (E) input needed an isolation diode in the wiring harness to avoid back-driving the car's circuitry. Testing shows that it works, though merely turning on the key glitches the signals enough to kick-start the cooler. It won't, however, run more than one cycle if the key is left on. Someday I may improve this situation...
Then I cleaned out the trunk, pried the studs out of the spare tire (which is 185/65R15, a third size!), washed it, and aired it up. I found the wheel mounting aid under it, so that's good, but none of the rest of the toolkit except the lug wrench. I pulled back into shape the smashed spare tire mounting pillar, though the securing bolt and flange are missing. I reassembled the under-dash area, and the air intake cowl. That cowl cover is really nasty to get back right. Crappy design, IMHO. I then glued up the cracks (and the broken-off chunk) of the trunk floor panel. Shoe Goo! I installed a trunk light bulb, it'd never had one before.
On the road, it's still darty. Something is not right. But it's not horrible, so onwards! The cruise control works well, except when coasting. Then it gets incredibly surgy, that bad loop gain value or something. But still quite useful.
The car certainly seems to lack acceleration in higher gears, going up passes it would drop to 55 MPH. Downshifting to fourth didn't really help, and the speed loss while disengaged was hard to make up. Otherwise it doesn't seem too bad. Kept speeds to about 65 MPH, the car just wasn't happy a lot faster than that, and I was interested in an economy run. AC was on the whole time, though. You can definitely feel the compressor when it kicks in.
The cooler timer was nice on the trip over. We made several stops (nap and potty breaks) but the cooler was kept going for sufficient time to help keep the food cool.
Filled up at home again, 5.3 gallons for 227 miles, 42.8 MPG. This leg was slightly faster, 68 MPH or so. Car's too darty at higher speeds, power is lower than I'd expect, and there's an out-of-balance tire or something. At 75 MPH it's pretty unpleasant. The car's not ready for prime time, IMHO. Brother thinks I should just off it, but he has no patience for this kind of thing. In his world if it's not a race car it's a pod, and not worth messing with. He suggested I talk with the alignment place to see what they thought, and perhaps get another check of its specs. If OK and no sign of worn/wobbly bits, he suggested trying a frame shop to have them check to see if the car was bent.
| Unit | Bd # | Bd # | # Res | Value | Car | PN | VDO PN | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 993 | 12855 | 2 | 49,400 1% Tempco 2 | EPC 123? | 002 545 91 32 | 412 205/7/10 | 5.85 |
| 51,100 1% | (Programa refurb) | (29132) | 3(/4) 2002 | |||||
| 2 | 735 | 12329 | 3 | 511,000 2% | EPC Euro? | 001 545 79 32 | 412 205/1/1 | 2.82 |
| 46,400 2% | ||||||||
| 562,000 2% || 4X2,000 2% | ||||||||
| 3 | 993 | 12X55 | 2 | 44,200 1% | '85 190E Automatic | 003 545 09 32 | 412 205/7/5 | 28/96 |
| 39,300 1% | ||||||||
| 4 | 993 | 12355 | 2 | 49,700 1% | EPC 560 SEL? | 003 545 07 32 | 412 205/7/4 | 10.84 |
| 34,900 1% | ||||||||
| 5 | X | 12329 | 3 | 511,000 2% | "For 123 Stickshift" | 002 545 32 32 | 412 205/1/6 | X |
| 53,600 2% | (Cross 002 545 91 32) | |||||||
| 442,000 2% || 422,000 2% | ||||||||
| 6 | 993 | 12355 | 2 | 42,200 1% | '86 190D Automatic | 003 545 86 32 | 412 205/7/7 | 23/85 |
| 59,000 1% Tempco 2 |
What have I learned from all this? Not much.
Replaced failing belt tensioner with a good used one from the parts car. What a PITA! I was able to do it without removing the fan or radiator, but it took hours. Critical tools were little stubs of Allen wrenches, 12mm and 6mm, and matching box- and open-end wrenches. The main (rocking) bearing was beaten to death, there were ball divots in the races. These bearings don't survive well, in my experience. (Perhaps they should be stout sleeve or roller bearings rather than ball bearings? I know that ball bearings don't hold up well in rocking applications.) I ruined the tensioner's dust snap cap when removing it, but fortunately the parts car had another one and I was able to get it off intact. (Neither car had the cap for the idler wheel, so I'll need to get one.) The parts car's tensioner bearing felt very good. Both idler wheels were good, but both were getting that dry bearing sound. I removed the dust seals and cleaned out the original, as it was a little less worn, then packed it with wheel bearing grease and replaced the seals. The parts car's idler wheel retaining Allen bolt was siezed, and I ended up having to drill off the head. Once that was done and the idler wheel was pried off over the stump vise-grips removed the remainder easily.
Of note is that both tensioner shock absorbers were still tight, but the bottom ring on the parts car's was cracked. So I reused the one off the car. Its bottom rubber bushing was very loose, so I swapped in the better one from the parts car, again with a strip of pop can slipped into there to take up the slop. I shimmed (heavily) the other shock and put it in the spare pile.
When the car was started there was still a hint of rattle at idle, which was eliminated by putting my thumb on the top mount of the shock. Though the bolt and the outside of the spacer were shimmed, there was still play between the outside of the rubber and the shock's mounting ring. I pulled the whole mount out and put a ring of bicycle inner-tube rubber around the (hardened) rubber mount. When it all went back together (difficultly, I might add) there was no more rattling noise at idle. Much better! We'll see how it holds up, it really should get new mounting rubber, but I don't know if that's separately available. According to the EPC, assuming I used it right, it is not.
The idler wheel is no longer canted, and runs true. That part of the operation was a success at least. In retrospect there was no danger of the tensioner breaking in any way that I could see, and it was also a long way from spilling the belt. This could probably have run as it was for some considerable time, but the noise was very annoying and the hammering of the shock couldn't have been good for its health.
While everything was apart I used brake cleaner and a wire brush to get off the worst of the grime. Starting the engine showed no exhaust leaks at the EGR fitting or the exhaust manifold, but it became apparent that the front muffler (resonator? First rat of three in the snake's gullet anyway) is leaking badly. It'll have to come off for me to have a look at it.
Took the car back to the alignment place. They noticed that there was more play on the right-side tie rods, and that the toe-in on the right had shifted over the nearly 900 miles since the alignment. It took them three hours to dial it back in, a large part of this time was because the alignment machine was just acting flakey. They even swapped machines, and both acted the same. After much fooling around, and some references to calling my car 'Christine', I finally noticed that the other alignment machine was firing its laser across the shop right at the one we were using! (They had a burned-out laser component to show me, and it's not a tiny one.) We put a big sheet of cardboard between the two cars and the problems all went away. Obviously the two machines were interfering with each other. This had never been a problem there before, but the particular other car had a large toe-in value that was out of whack, causing the laser to point across the shop and over to the other alignment bay. That fiasco cost us at least two hours, they'd even gone so far as to switch alignment machines and then it started acting flakey. We'd fooled around with shop lighting, power outlets, etc. Anyway, he dialed in more toe-in to make up for the looseness of the aging suspension, something he's had plenty of experience with. We all weren't sure what I owed them, so I offered them $20, he seemed happy with that. Not much of a return on their three hour callback session, but at least they did learn something about dueling alignment machines.
After (again):
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On the freeway the handling was much improved. While it's not perfect, I think I can blame most of it on loose parts that really should be replaced. (Someday!)
Anyway, only a few miles down the freeway I started losing power, and when I hit the clutch it became apparent that brakes were sticking. I got over to the side and limped to the next exit, and then (foolishly, I guess) tried to limp slowly to my next stop at the bank. Right near the end it started really bogging down. When I pulled in to the lot the car could barely move and was smoking, and I even had to blow out a small fire in the left rear brake area when I stopped. Disaster! I tried to jack up the car to take off that wheel, and I couldn't get two lug bolts out. They'd siezed up. I thought it was the parking brake that had somehow gotten stuck on, because the handle didn't feel the same anymore. I'd had some previous trouble with it sticking on, but not recently.
While the car was up in the air there was a loud POP-whoooooosh blowout sound and the car was enveloped in a big white cloud of nasty-smelling smoke. At first I though a tire had blown, but in fact the right rear brake line had melted and blown off the other side of the car, spraying brake fluid all over extremely hot metal. Once the car had done this, however, it rolled again. I determined that I could take the car home at that point, the front and parking brakes seemed to be OK. I theorize that the overlong alignment session with the brake pedal applied took out the rear section of the master cylinder somehow, because both rear brakes had been stuck on together. Once pressure was released what was left of the rear calipers released enough to let the car roll again.
Obviously I now have an undriveable mess on my hands, and will need at least a master cylinder (or rebuild), two brake hoses, and two caliper rebuild kits. I hope the heat didn't ruin the rear bearing seals or the like. Crap. We'd just gotten the insurance turned on on this car, but my wife called this afternoon and took it back off again, and put on her brown convertible instead, the 450 SL. I think the econo-box is going to be down for a little while, I'll know more once I can take it apart.
There is some question as to whether the car had done this a bit before, as my wife had reported that it couldn't get up to speed on the freeway the first time she'd driven it, and I'd heard off and on some odd brake-type noises, especially today. Obviously it hadn't done it much, or we'd have had a brake heating episode like this before now. Given the great mileage it had on the road trip it's obvious that the brakes hadn't been dragging then. I think the three hours standing on the brakes did it in somehow. (It shouldn't have, obviously something was weak.) I'd actuated both the service and parking brakes on the freeway today, but nothing helped.
On the right side things proceeded much the same. Though there were no lug bolt problems, the brake shoes were hung up inside the drum somewhat. Enough pulling and yanking got them off anyway. The shoes are cracked on that side, so something will probably need to be done there.
The brake disc/drums and the calipers all have a reddish cast to them, I suppose that's temperature-induced surface rust. I examined the front-to-rear brake line, thinking that perhaps it had gotten damaged yesterday on the lift, but there was no sign of trouble.
I went to the parts car and liberated its brake parts. Perhaps they can be pressed into service? It looks like it's got a couple of usable parking brake shoes, at least. Will have to disassemble the calipers to see if they're OK.
While under there I also noticed that the exhaust pipe is cracked right where it enters the rear muffler, and there is a soot track. More leaks in the exhaust system to weld up!
I then tried to make a puck-removal tool using my spare master cylinder and some brake hose pieces. Too messy and unweildy, as it turns out. (But I did find out that the inside of the brake hose fittings is coarsly threaded, I was trying to flange together a male-male hose out of my bad pieces of hose.) So I moved on to Plan B. I'd bought a spare thrift-shop grease gun some time back. The fitting on it has exactly the same threading as the brake calipers. It was missing the T handle and the grease nipple fitting, but looked like a high-quality unit, and is much the same as my old grease gun that used to be my grandfather's. It's stamped "B-K Service Products No. 4-817."
Anyway, I spent quite a bit of time cleaning the old grease out of it, and disassembled it completely in order to do so. I found that the sliding 3"×1/4" 'nut' from a Mercedes driveline center bearing mount threaded nearly perfectly on to the end of the grease plunger shaft (even though it was certainly a metric/US mismatch), making a pretty serviceable T-handle for the plunger. With this missing piece replaced the grease gun was ready for service. I removed the plunger and end cap, leaving just the open grease tube. I threaded the recalcitrant caliper on the end of the fitting and filled the grease tube with water, keeping the open end up of course. With the bleeder opened I pumped until water was coming out, then closed the bleeder and pumped until one of the pucks popped out. (It's best if you clamp the other one down so it doesn't move.) The tricky part is getting the second puck out. I found a large metal fender washer that fit over the bore in the caliper body, but wasn't so big as to not seal against the puck's bore. I cut a length of bicycle inner tube and stuffed the washer into it like an envelope, then put another washer on top and clamped this sandwich to the bore, with the exposed rubber against the bore's lip. This sealed the open bore, allowing the other puck to be pumped out. I then blew compressed air through the grease gun to dry it out, I don't want it to rust.
With the caliper bits in a bucket of water I first carefully pried out the rubber sealing rings and then used a small piece of 600 grit wet-and-dry sandpaper to clean off all the corrosion on the pucks and inside the bores. (Work parallel to the sealing rings, not perpendicularly. You don't want scratches [and there shouldn't be any if you're as gentle as you should be] in a direction that will encourage leaks.) The metal parts cleaned up very nicely, and the rubber was still 'live' and undamaged. (As are the dust caps, I cleaned off all the rubber in the water.) I used compressed air to dry everything to prevent rust. I took particular care to blow out the bleeder passage, then used the sealing washer to cap off the bore that it empties into and blew into it again, thus drying the between-bore passage. I'd say that the caliper refurbished very nicely. A little brake fluid makes an excellent reassembly lubricant, things went together smoothly.
The other caliper went exactly the same, though of course much faster since all the tools and techniques were in place. After that I took off one parking brake, as an experiment. I found some spring bits in there, I think it is the mortal remains of the return spring (#31 in the MB manual). I guess I'll need another one of those. Half the friction material is gone off the shoes, those are shot too. We'll see what the parts car has in the way of goodies for me.
The 'good' parking brake cable had a crack in the sheath in the same place the bad one was ruined, so I used brake cleaner to clean off the area and potted it in Shoe Goo. That used up the last of my tube, it's time to get more! I believe I have done all the disassembly at the rear that I need to, reassembly should be the next steps. But first, breakfast!
Next up was to clean up the buggered threads in the driver's side hub, which is best done with all the brake guts out of there. My 12×1.5mm tap did a nice job of cleaning up the threads. I re-threaded the two holes that got messed up, and chased the threads in the other three for good luck. Of the two bolts one was sufficiently damaged as to be ruined. The other cleaned up with the die and while it's not perfect it'll serve, at least until I can find a replacement. (I only had one spare bolt on hand.)
I then reinstalled the parking brake cable, that went smoothly. I greased everything (as recommended) lightly with Moly wheel bearing grease. This included the shoe adjusters. The replacement brake shoes slipped into place, and I didn't even have trouble getting the four springs in place. I flipped the brake drum/disk over and placed it on the hub. From there I could use a handheld grinder to take off the lip of the drum where the shoes go. It looks a bit sloppy, but there is no contact there (or there wouldn't be a lip) to worry about. I also used the power wire brush to clean up the hub and the drum/disk. With the drum/disk mounted correctly I then adjusted the brake shoes outward until they made contact, then backed them off as recommended.
While I did look at the parts car's drum/disks, and found their unscored parking brake surfaces to be much superior, the pitting in the main disk surfaces has gotten so bad that I think they can't be used, at least without turning. So I'll attempt to reuse the ones that got hot. If that doesn't work out I'll try something else.
I got the brake drum/disk wire brushed off, and ground off the parking brake lip. I chased the lug threads with the tap, put the drum/disk back on, and adjusted the parking brake shoes. I checked the parking brake handle adjustment and it was good as it sat, no need for adjustment there.
I then jacked up the front of the car too and removed the front wheels. With my wife's help, as I was unable to make progress by myself, I then bled the brakes. We used the pump-the-pedal technique, and verbal feedback as to when to push and release, synchronized with the wrenching. No worries using that technique, I'd already given the master cylinder a clean bill of health. Once we'd finished, the pedal was nice and solid.
I then dropped the exhaust system. There was a huge crack in the top of the pipe right where it entered the front resonator. There was also, as mentioned before, a long crack in the bottom of the pipe right where it entered the rear muffler. Both cracks were in the 180° ballpark: fairly significant!
The MIG welder made short work of the cracks. The large crack got bridged with some scrap sheet metal, bead served to repair the other. The welding went smoothly, and the exhaust system reinstalled without significant trouble. Time to test it out!
It worked! The test drive went well; the brakes performed normally, the parking brake was better than ever, and the exhaust leaks were gone. The total bill for the repair? Zero. Nothing was purchased as part of this repair job, all parts and materials were already on hand. I moved the car behind the house (along with all the other vehicles) and cleaned up the mess. The old and leftover brake parts are now back in a box in the trunk of the parts car. The driveway area is completely empty, only the camper and the boat are visible. (We just don't have alternative places for either of these, or I'd have moved them too.)
Happy birthday, Jill.
I don't know why, but the radio antenna is again not working. Kind of a bummer on a road trip, no antenna means no reception outside of the city. Oh well, it's not like I really need tunes in order to drive (unlike some people, one of whom I might be married to).
Started working on the design for the modified defogger timer relay that runs the auxiliary (cooler) power plug. The existing circuit has two problems: one, the switch for heating up the cigar plug continuously (for the solar charger) triggers the relay, and two, the timer runs a 40-minute cycle from when the timer was (re-)started, not from when the ignition was turned off. It's not a retriggerable timer, in other words. This means that the cooler can run for up to 40 minutes when the key is turned off, but it could be as little as seconds if it was about to time out when the key was turned off. Fixing problem number two is easy, just move a diode internally (D2 in my schematic). The other problem will take some more thought. (There's a third minor problem in that the auxiliary power glitches when the timer retriggers on the road every 40 minutes, but that will go away once the retriggering problem is cured.)
...No, not quite done yet. The timer works well, except that when engaged it clicks on for a half second, off for another half second, then comes on for the remainder of the time. Apparently the charging time of the timing capacitor is significant, and the new circuit (which essentially lost D2) didn't charge the capacitor until it was engaged, unlike the original circuit, which kept it charged in readiness. I think I can add another diode to allow restoration of D2, which should cure the double-start problem.
This time for sure!
Modification (in addition to the large capacitor [C3] that was added
earlier) consisted of adding Q3, another general-purpose PNP
transistor (I used 2N3906), R8, 3900 ohms, and D6. The modifications
also required rewiring D1 by cutting two traces and adding a jumper.
The schematic of the modified relay, for future reference, is in Illustrator, PDF, and GIF formats. The original circuit
remains essentially the same, except that the relay coil is powered
during the timing cycle via the new Q3 instead of through D1 from the
output. D1 remains (but in a new role) in order to jump-start the
relay. D6 is added to keep the timing capacitor charged while the
Start input is energized, eliminating the retriggering problem.
If it were not for the Solar Charger switch, the relay modifications would consist only of the addition of C8 and D6. (In which case an external diode is needed to keep from back-powering the ignition while the relay is timing out. With the full set of modifications the external diode is no longer necessary, D1 in its new role takes care of that problem. As the diode's already in the car wiring, however, I'm going to just leave it there, it doesn't hurt anything.)
...Coming home at night showed that I have again lost the rear window defogger, plus the high beam indicator light, and the windshield washer fluid level light. The SRS light also came on a few times. Sigh. I did get a box of stuff from Rusty for the car, especially my new glow plug, so that was nice. I wonder when I'll get a chance to put any of it in?
I installed the finished Road Trip Relay, which passed all its tests.
...I had a little time after work, so I pulled the instrument cluster and the defogger switch. (What a pain.) The defogger switch has a light bulb inside, not an LED! First time I've ever seen that on a car this new. Of course the bulb was burned out, as was the one for the windshield washer fluid level. I'll replace them, probably with good used. (It's not like either one gets that much on-time.) The high-beam indicator lamp, however, is OK. Something else is wrong there it seems.
I then replaced the two burned-out bulbs. My parts box is full of mostly burned-out bulbs as it turns out. (I just grab them at the U-Pull when I see them.) But eventually I found two that worked. The high-beam indicator was a little more involved. I disassembled the cluster only to find that the PCB trace to the lamp had been worn through by some of the plastic of the cluster, probably due to age and vibration, perhaps in conjunction with a too-tight mounting screw. I soldered a wire across the break. Then the bulb worked again, and I reassembled the cluster. While I was there I numbered the big cluster connector's pins on the back (which are labeled on the trace side) with a Sharpie. I can install it again tomorrow, it's dark outside!
...After work I (finally!) changed the oil. Who knows what kind of nasty sludge it's had in it since who knows how long before I bought it. It was long past time to do this, I have no excuse. Mea culpa! I had my boy 'help'. He was actually able to fetch and carry the gallon jugs of Delo from the carton in the garage, and to remove the screw tops. (The peel-off seal was beyond him.)
...After work I find another care package from Rusty. Motor mounts, etc.
Also, the glow plug cycle seems to be running very long. Too long, if you ask me. Even when the car is warm. Runs smoothly, though.
While working on the car I checked, and it appears the AC compressor is seized. (So, the Klima is doing what it should: protecting the serpentine belt.) That's a big disappointment.
Driving it to church the car was much smoother than before. Still a little more engine noise than I would have liked, but all the nasty on-frame-rails noise is gone, and it started and stopped much smoother.
I'm kind of torn about this whole headlight thing. The old lights, while cracked and ugly, can have their USDOT sealed beams replaced with Hella E-code inserts and thus be euro-ized in lighting pattern and use (potentially larger) H4 bulbs. The new lights look great, but I don't think I can get any kind of E-code housing for them, without going to the expense of full Euro lamp assemblies, and they use those wretched 9004 US bulbs. It does look like perhaps the bucket could be adapted to use an E-code insert, but it's probably not a drop-in proposition. I'll know more once I have both headlights out and can compare them side-by-side.
Going out to dinner, I noticed that the glow plug light is again out. Sigh.
The left headlight assembly was in better shape. One broken (but not missing) bezel locating pin, and a chunk out of the foglight compartment where it contacts the seal. That will be a pain to reproduce, but I should be able to come up with something. I so prefer it when I can find the pieces to glue back! It all cleaned off in the sink fairly well. I glued the locating pin back, and will need to fabricate some little piece of plastic to fit the coin-sized chunk out of the foglight compartment.
I checked the resistance of the glow plugs, and #5 was at 4 ohms. Not good! Fortunate that I ended up with a full set of five new ones more-or-less by accident, instead of the one I ordered. It doesn't look like it, and took me some time to find out, but in fact you can get your hand (and a wrench) around the back of the engine onto #5, making it in fact the easiest of the glow plugs to change out. These glow plugs are dropping like flies, I dread losing #3 or #4, the two originals left, those look to be nasty. With the plug changed out the light again comes on properly. (Though the temperature-sensitive timer may be misbehaving, I'll need to dive into that some time. It runs long if you ask me.)
...One last package from Rusty today: the antenna grommet. Tomorrow I can put the trunk back together!
I also filed the repaired divot in the fog light housing and gave it another coat of glue so it'll be ready to reassemble tomorrow.
I also did the final filing on the left headlight bezel, and trimmed the excess glue out of the right headlamp's repaired mounting tab channel. Tomorrow, assembly of the left lamp. (I can't wait to get these in. Last night the stinking headlights were very annoying, and we nearly clipped a deer we couldn't see in time. My wife asked: "Those are the HIGH beams?" The high beams are aimed low, nearly like low beams, and the adjusters are broken. These new lights, besides looking better, ought to at least be aimable.)
The car looks a lot better. The left-side lamp assembly doesn't meet with the grille very well, but it never did, and that's because of the bent metal in that area. I did what adjustment I could via the light's mounting screws, anything further will probably require actual body work. (I did use the rubber mallet to correct the position of the metal below the left-side turn signal, that was a bit displaced and kept things from fitting well.)
The new-style fog lights definitely are brighter than the old, something I expected given my experience with the SDL, which has similar lights.
...At lunch I stopped by the U-Pull, and they had a 190E in. I managed to get my missing plastic seat trim bits (outside hinge covers, I got both though I only needed one; they were loose in the car's trunk and I didn't know which was which), a spare right-hand heated mirror glass, and the blower knob. The plastic is the wrong color, but I'm sure it can be painted black. It's intact, that's the important thing. I also got the missing seat belt hump attachment bolt cover, it's already black. Due to lack of tools I had to break it to remove it, but it should glue back together easily, and invisibly. (Sadly, its AC compressor was also siezed. The one on my parts car is not, but who knows what kind of shape it's in, it has been open to the elements for years.)
...Coming home at night the lights were obviously extremely cross-eyed. I'd set them this morning by eyeball, but because of the bent radiator support the left-hand light needs to be aimed somewhat 'out'. The height was pretty good already, but I dialed that in a bit too, the left was a touch high. I set the fogs to somewhat below the low-beam level, we'll keep trying this out until it's perfect. What I can say is that the lighting at night with these new lights is clearly superior. (Though not, of course, any brighter. Thank you, USDOT.)
...After work I did some more fine adjustments to the headlight aim, based on my dark-driving impressions. I also put two more coats of black paint on the seat hinge covers. I did the back sides too, so light color won't show through any gaps or cracks where things fit together. They look good, and should be dry for tomorrow.
...Another package from Rusty, a blower knob! Too bad I already have one, I'll just keep this one in reserve.
The glued-on bolt cover is solidly attached. Even if it gets destroyed during some future removal there will be no problem, because I have (I believe) three spares. (One even has the retaining clip, a fact I didn't notice until I'd installed the broken one using the glue dot.)
No obvious signs of leaking brake fluid, I didn't see anything inside the footwell (from the clutch) either. Will have to search further.
I pulled the passenger door panel off, looking for a persistent rattle. None of the attachment hooks are broken (yet). Didn't find anything inside really, except a few chunks of flimsy black plastic. (Some kind of shield(s).) It got dark before reassembly time. This door's definitely a lot more cheaply assembled than earlier designs. Progress, sigh.
Anyway, I reassembled the passenger door and then decided to tackle the driver's door, for which I had a replacement (used) check strap. I got the door opened up (and fairly quickly too) and managed to get the old check strap out. It had, as usual, blown-out one side of the slider and a detent ball had escaped. A wreck, in other words. I lubed up my replacement and put it in, only to find that it only had one of the three mounting screw holes! WTF? It was not the proper replacement, thank you eBay. So, I disassembled the blown-apart one and the 'new' one and cleaned all the intact pieces in the solvent tank. (This required hammers and vises, etc.) With the parts clean I greased them up and assembled one good check strap out of the parts. Essentially I took the blown-out metal cylinder (detent cartridge) out of the original assembly and replaced it with that from the 'new' one. Getting the spring-loaded balls back in place is not an exercise for the faint-hearted. The secret is to 'twist' them back in place in the track rather than to try to push the assembly in from the open end. A bit of hammering with a hard wooden stick used as a drift with the mess held in the vise made it snap into place. After that it was reassembly as usual. One benefit of doing it this way is that I kept the original door check strap, so the color still matched. (The 'new' strap did not match.)
Finally I picked the rattly pieces of loose crap (detent balls, spring bits, pieces of water shield and chunks of glue, etc.) out of the door and reassembled it. It went quickly. The door 'grunches' a bit now, but I expect this to smooth up with use. The ball track was a bit rusty, but I've chipped out all the crud, sanded it, and lubed it. It'll just take some breaking in. I hope.
Still a fair puddle of oil under the car when we used it today, I'm probably not done there.
The brake fluid level continues to drop, I topped it off again. No obvious sign of leaks, but I haven't looked very hard yet.
The trunk has managed to get quite wet recently, so I dried it out with a space heater and a fan. I hung the carpet in front of the fire inside to dry.
The driver's door check is working well now. The front doors seem to have lost their rattles, too. Good.
There was only one of the two front seat mount covers, plastic, that are so often missing. I've not seen one at the boneyard yet.
I checked, and the trunk is still leaking around that light. Crap. I want to find some kind of goopy non-drying putty to seal this kind of stuff. All I have is rope putty. It's a bit stiff, but I may have to try to make it work.
While I was in the area I took the seat back panel off, there was nothing inside to indicate that the mystery brace had come from this seat. (My money's now on the driver's seat since its armrest feels loosely mounted to me.) Since I was there I removed the cargo net from the back and took the slack out of the dead shock cord. It really needs a new cord, but I couldn't find the extra piece I know I have. It comes apart easily enough that this will be no big deal to do at some later time.
With the seat reassembled and reinstalled it works much better than before, and the height adjustment now works. Mission accomplished! And I found $0.31 during the job. What a deal. With both adjusters working you can actually get decent legroom in the front or the back, your choice.
I would have done the driver's seat today too, since I had all the tools out, but turkey time is approaching and I have many other things to do first. (Such as cook it!) So, reluctantly, I put everything away.
Out at lunch I stopped by Les Schwab and bought a Group 49 battery. $97 out the door, and no core charge. That's in line with other sources of that particular size (which Costco does not carry). Let's hope I actually need it fairly soon!
...Tonight it was still taking charge, and was bubbling and hot. Not good!
I need to think some more, it's starting to look like there's no easy way to use the SPST shorting switch I already cut into the car's first-aid compartment. If only it were a SPDT toggle!
... A second contact set on the existing relay is what is needed, but it doesn't have one. A second relay inside the timer's case would also work perfectly, but there's no room. Hmm, I wonder if there's enough stray magnetic field near the existing relay to operate a reed switch, of which I have a few somewhere in my junk box? That would do the job, and they are pretty small. Must experiment...
Found one of my old reed
switches. (I must have had them thirty years.) When held next to the
relay coil, axes aligned, it would operate with the relay. What's
more, it will fit within the timer's case in this orientation. Yes!
I glued it in place and revised the schematic. I then removed the
added Q3 circuitry and wired up the reed switch. The 'final' Mark III
relay works perfectly on the test bench. (To be fair, the Mark II
relay would be perfectly fine in an environment where power wasn't
pushed back into the output. Due to my problems with the
already-installed switch for the solar charger, that was not
possible.)
The schematic of the final (!) relay, for future reference, is in Illustrator, PostScript, PDF, and GIF formats. The original circuit
remains essentially the same, except that the relay coil is powered
during the key-off part of the timing cycle via the new reed switch
instead of through D1 from the output. (This eliminates triggering
the relay when the always-on switch [for the solar charger] is
engaged.) D1 remains (but in a new role) in order to jump-start the
relay. D6 is added to keep the timing capacitor charged while the
Start input is energized, eliminating the retriggering problem.
The (bad) battery has been on charge overnight again, and had stopped taking charge. It seems to have come back from the dead, but who knows how long this will last or even how well it would work. I'll defer putting the new battery in until the car's ready to be driven, however.
Strategy:
So, all stalling aside, I dove into the car. I managed to get #1, #2, and half of #3 (the fan) done this morning. The radiator is really bent in the middle, and quite the mess. I'm actually rather surprised that it, A, didn't leak, and B, didn't overheat. There's a lot of occlusion, from bent fins, dirt, and pinched off tubes where it has been soldered. It probably should be replaced. (The condensor is in condition nearly as bad, but I have a used replacement in the trunk.) It was very difficult to get out, due to its deformation.
More disturbing, however, was the darkness of the coolant, and I can see that the head is leaking oil on the exhaust manifold side. I suspect that we probably have a head leak, I hope it's just the head gasket. I may have to dive in and do that too. This car is really turning into a heap-o-project.
...I checked, and a new radiator is $300. Head gasket set is $60. Perhaps B, and no A?
I removed the valve cover then rolled the engine, as specified, to '-15°ATDC' on #1. With that extra '-' sign I'm not sure which this is supposed to be: 15°ATDC or 15°BTDC. I will need to find out! I assumed the '-' was spurious and set it to 15-A, but have as yet done nothing that precludes rolling it around again to the other position. I removed the intake manifold. (I'm not impressed with the ease of service aspects of this engine, things are just packed too tightly together for easy working.) The rubber blowby manifold is hard, cracked, and ruined, I'll need to get a new one. Same for the intake manifold gasket. The intake manifold collars (at the air filter end) are nicely intact, but a bit loose from shrinkage. I should get new ones if they're inexpensive enough, or fit bicycle inner tube collars over the metal parts to fill the gaps. (Easy.) The throttle linkage is a bit stiff, this will be an excellent opportunity to clean and lubricate it. (I also need to fit the throttle damper that manual transmission vehicles are supposed to get, and that this one doesn't have. This car is very prone to a cyclic lurching when you start out. I need to check to see if the parts car still has this item or not.) I removed the vacuum pump and the chain assembly basket. I removed the injector lines. At this point, modulo the correct engine timing position, the scary stuff is slated to start.
If I'm going to remove the head it actually looks quite doable at this point, except that I don't recognize the conglomeration on the coolant port at the back of the head where the heater core draws its flow, nor do I see how it comes apart. Fuel preheater? I don't want to wreck anything, and it has to come off in that event!
...One reply to my queries on the mailing list suggests that if it's not obviously oily, dark coolant is just old and not to remove the head unless it's obviously leaking, pressurizing the coolant, putting floating oil slicks in the coolant, or losing coolant—the usual suspects, in other words. And that the correct timing setting is 15-A, not 15-B. OK, that all sounds good to me!
With it out the big O-ring flange seal was exposed. It was flattened, though still somewhat flexible and not cracked. Not a smoking gun, but it could well be responsible: the area under the flange was very oily. Of note is that the O-ring seal looks nothing like the (much smaller) seal I'd ordered from Rusty. I think he sent me the internal shaft seal rather than the big flange seal. One can result in oil leaks to the outside world, the other cannot. I will have to get the right one.
There is a timing adjustment screw on the back of the timing vault that mates with the IP's flange. That would be handy when making fine timing adjustments.
I went to the parts car and found that it does have the throttle damper on it. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be a sluggish oil-filled thing, or more of an air-filled damper. I'll have to find out, this one is definitely not full of oil. It was not clear where the other end of the damper hooked on the parts car, there was nothing obvious left in place. That could be fun.
While I was down there I noted that the heat exchanger at the heater tap is sealed with a fat O-ring, and held in place with a spring clip. (The parts car's was undone.) I also grabbed an alternator from out of the back of the '87 TD, we'll see if it's the right one and if it works. I also checked that the parts car's AC compressor is not seized, so we'll be taking that at some point.
The IP for the manual transmission car also has a vacuum control valve on the side of it, probably just for the EGR. I'll probably be removing all this stuff anyway, it'll help reassembly and will cut clutter in the car. (The EGR is already gone.)
I'm going to call a few Bosch diesel service places in town to see what they'll charge to do a re-seal job on the pump. If it's reasonable I may have that done. (There are a number of places it can leak oil to the outside, and the delivery valve seals should probably be refreshed while they're there.) I don't intend to have a full calibration done as I know that's a not insignificant expense, and the car was running well after all.
...After lunch I stopped by the local Bosch injection pump service place. He said they'd be happy to look it over to give an estimate of what they think it might need, but was unwilling to even guess a price range beyond $75–$375. He also said that they are extraordinarily reliable, and that they hadn't seen one in maybe two years.
(Their bread and butter is the Bosch VP44 rotary IP from the Cummins 24-valve motor. As I have a Dodge diesel truck, and know several other people who also do, we chatted a bit about these. They see a lot of the VP44's, about half due to low fuel pressure [bad pump or clogged filter], and half due to electronics failures. [The latter was news to me.] He said that their test stand for those was in use all day every day. The Bosch P7100 used in my 12-valve engine [a pump very like Mercedes' usual fare] is very robust, and while 'too large' for that engine it had been used for emissions purposes, and was 1/3 the cost of the motor. He also said that many folks put auxiliary fuel pumps on their 24-valve motors to try to prevent IP damage, but that they run higher pressure than the 10-15psi it should have and end up blowing the front seal out of the pump, filling the crankcase with fuel. This is also Not Good. He confirmed that a fuel pressure gauge on such trucks was a Very Good Thing. I also found this useful link about the VP44.)
I removed the dead AC compressor, and its mounting bracket. (The latter for cleaning purposes.) I used more rubber stoppers on the exposed lines to prevent the incursion of moisture and dirt. There are no obvious signs of 'Black Death', but I haven't yet looked closely for AC debris. The exposed O-rings are black, not green or blue; I'll probably put in the green ones I got in an AC ring kit at Harbor Freight when it was on sale. ($10 for 224 or so of mixed sizes.)
I put the IP in a box for show and tell purposes.
...At lunch I took the pump to the shop. The woman manning the desk couldn't tell me anything other that one of the guys would look at it. (They were all out.) I also stopped and bought a case of brake cleaner, $2 a can on sale rather than the usual $3.
...And an hour later my wife called and said they'd called and could do nothing with it. So back I went, all the way downtown. (I was attacked by a 'chicken' during the freeway trip, which was quite startling. I'd rolled the windows down and the buffeting dislodged the Chicken Wagon's mascot from the first aid box and it came flying forward at my head, nest, plastic eggs, and all. The raffia nest made quite a racket as it rattled forwards at me and then swirled around in the back of the car. Good thing I don't have a weak heart!) The pump guy said that they never saw those particular pumps and suggested Coast Diesel in California, a place I'd even heard of, though it may be under a different name now. I'm not going to do that, as it was running well. But we chatted a bit about my potential leaks. He rummaged in a box and found a big green O-ring that looked like it would fit the flange. He gave me about four of them, in fact, and said it was their standard seal. He also gave me a few various sized small O-rings to try on the shutoff shaft seal. He noted that it was quite loose, and that the whole pump would have to come apart in order to properly fix that. The bushing is worn, but he thought I might be able to jam the O-ring in to help stem the leak somewhat, and pointed out that there was oil sign on the body that indicated it was leaking from there pretty heavily. He warned against letting that shaft push back into the case while the lever was off as the pump would then have to come apart to get it back out. I have the dead 4-cylinder pump in the woods I can play with to learn on. He said that black sealer goop can be used in place of the official seals for the flat plates. There was no charge for the O-rings and advice, he just asked that I bring him some regular business when I could! I appreciate the courtesy, and will of course throw what business I can his way. (Everybody I know with the VP44 has already had their pump replaced. But I suppose if it happened once it could happen again.)
After breakfast I tackled the alternator. I used a pipe wrench with its jaws padded with old inner tube, and a screwdriver stuck in the vanes of the fan. With both of those in place I was able to loosen the nut. (Either alone would not do the trick.) The body just knocked apart once the screws were removed. The brushes, btw, were definitely in need of replacement. The slip rings are grooved, but I hope not unusably far. Getting the bearings off the shaft was a frustrating exercise. Eventually I got a bearing separator and a large three-jaw puller to do the job. I'll look into replacements for these worn parts, it ought to be significantly cheaper than a rebuilt alternator. We'll see.
Advice via the Internet:
Jimbo, the typical leak points for those pumps are the bottom-plate seal, the fuel shutoff arm seal and the black rack position sensor next to the ALDA/ADA on the top-plate.And:The bottom-plate seal can be replaced with the large oil filter o-ring from an OM617--at least on the OM603 pumps. I believe the fuel shutoff o-ring can be replaced with the small o-ring from an OM617 oil filter center post. I don't know if you can fix the rack position sensor o-ring, without disassembling the pump--I'd just loosen the top nut, then clean it with starting fluid or brake cleaner, and lay a bead of gasket sealer, then re-tighten the nut.
I've messed around with these pumps a fair amount, and I can't see any reason to send them off for re-sealing.
The most common source of oil on the right hand side of OM60x engines (above the alternator) is the head gasket at the front right side. Six of my 7 60x engines suffered to greater or lesser degree. There is NO official fix other than to replace the head gasket (because of the torque to yield specs) but in one case I did tighten the far front right head bolt and the fast ooze diminished to a very slow ooze.Hosing the engine down about once a month kept thongs under control. Oil consumption was NEVER any problem (these engines used a qt in 4-7kmi).
I think I've nearly reached the turnaround point, reassembly should begin soon.
...At lunch I hit the local bearing supply house. No joy, the front bearing is apparently an odd size. They could order it, but it would run to about $30 or so for that one alone. At their new competitor's next door, much the same story. On a gamble I swung by an old-line electrical repair shop, Spokane Auto Electric & Repair, and they had the bearings in stock, along with the regulator/brush pack. Altogether it was $65, with turning the slip rings thrown in for free. Fast, too. They did it while I waited at the counter.
While I could perhaps have shopped the job down to about $25–30 (the small bearing was available and cheaper at the bearing house, and solder-in brushes alone should have been cheap, assuming I could find some), it would have taken much more time. These savings (about $100) are sufficient, assuming I can put it back together so that it works again and lasts.
Since I was downtown I swung by Dick's for a burger and malt, and stopped at Goodwill where I found another Sony car-ready CD player, the same model as I have in the Frankenheap, a model that is a perfect mix of features except that it refuses to play CD-R's. (We'll just carry two in the car: the Sony that remembers where it is and has anti-skip, and the newer one.) I find, however, that it exhibits quite a lot of motor noise in this installation, but otherwise works well.
That would do it. I got out my Harbor Freight E-clip assortment, and found one that would work. I reassembled everything properly, and snapped on the new E-clip. When I put the shutoff device back I noticed that there was no seal on it, though the IP case looked like it had a socket for a big O-ring. Theorizing that it couldn't hurt, I got out my Harbor Freight O-ring kit and found one that fit OK. I installed the shutoff device, with both bolts installed correctly. The O-ring ought to help keep out dirt as well as prevent oil splash from migrating out.
It is well known that if you install the shutoff wrong you can get a runaway engine, but it is actually quite easy to install correctly, at least if you have good access to the IP. It has a pin sticking out the bottom of its shaft that hooks into a fork in the internal shutoff lever. It is also easy to test: push the shutoff lever down, cover the vacuum hole with your thumb, then release the lever. It should hold in place, and then snap up when you remove your thumb. It should resist if you try to lift the lever without releasing the vacuum.
That took care of the obvious problems. Because it will never get easier than this I decided to look at the other seals too. I removed the vacuum control valve and its dust seal, I won't be putting it back as there's nothing for it to drive in this car anymore. The throttle shaft seals are not O-rings and didn't look like they had been leaking. I decided to leave them alone. I then removed the side plate, which covers the fuel rack. Its gasket was thick rubber, but very hard. I decided to make another one, so I got out my scrap inner tube and cut out a gasket using tin snips and some hole punches. Once I had the gasket formed I cut/scraped off the old gasket (which was not easy) and reinstalled the plate using the new gasket. The screws can't be tightened too much or the gasket squeezes out the side. We'll see if this works! Access to this plate, at least, should be possible later if necessary.
I then removed the fuel pump, cleaned its thin paper gasket and seats, and then reinstalled it using some shellac gasket sealer. At this point I had run out of time, I will have to deal with the bottom and rear access plates later.
I thought I should record the pump's information plate info for future (parts-ordering?) reference, so here it is:
PES 5M 55C 320 RS 159
(011) 642 90 362
0 400 075 976
(M) 602 070 04 01 ER 0011
Bosch
The parentheses represent circles, the (M) is the mercedes logo.
I reinstalled the AC compressor bracket, there's a little plastic shield (tool-catcher?) over the compressor bracket that I can't seem to get back into place. Maybe it'll become more obvious when the IP goes in. I did some more cleaning, and used up a couple of cans on the fuel filter and power steering pump area. The low-pressure power steering hose looked 'wet', so I took it off. (Messy!) I'll get a new piece at the hose shop. It was a short morning, so that was about it.
...New hose was $2 at the hose shop. US 3/8", not metric, not fabric-covered. We'll see.
I then greased the throttle linkage pins, roller, and ball sockets with Lubriplate and installed it. It works a lot smoother than it did when it came off. One of the bolts was now too long due to the removal of a support bracket for the EGR's crossover tube, so I used a large nut and a washer as a spacer. (I couldn't find a shorter bolt.)
With that done I then reinstalled the injection pump, at least partially. I'm using the new green O-ring the IP shop gave me for a mounting flange seal. It seems fractionally thinner in cross-section than what came out, yet it's what the shop uses for sealing Bosch pumps. I guess we'll see if it seals, it looks like it will be able to. I will not be happy if I have to pull this all back apart again to change the seal, but at least I won't be scared of the job now, and it should go fairly quickly. The IP's shaft had self-rotated such that its shaft marker no longer lined up with the paint mark I'd made on the timer. I had to fabricate a locking pin for the IP as I didn't have the official tool. (It turns out that the official reference position is not a stable one.) I took an old driveline flex disk bolt which was about the right diameter to fit down into the hole and used the cutoff saw to slot the end of the bolt. This was a close-enough fit to the bump on the governor. The bump had a little play in the slot and the bolt had a little play in the governor housing. Nothing was holding this bolt in except that it was wedged against the side of the hole in the housing by the bump itself trying to rotate out of position. The bolt's tightly-fitting mating washer nestles just inside the threaded opening, which helps to cut the play down even further. While far from a precision tool this kludge was sufficient to get the timing marks aligned again. Oh, and I didn't have an official IP rotation tool, I just used padded vise grips. (Later I remembered that I had a spare timer in a box, that would have worked very well. In fact, I'm told that the official tool is just the center piece of a timer. I should have used the timer, the vise grips bit through the pad and put a nick or two in the shaft that I had to file off so that the timer fit on smoothly. That's a sliding surface in operation, it has to be a good fit.) It is interesting to note that with everything done more-or-less officially the marks would not have lined up, they were one spline off in the advance direction. (The slop in the homemade locking pin actually improved the situation!) I had to rotate the cam slightly to give the upper chain length enough slack to allow the timer to rotate clockwise enough to let it go onto the shaft in the original position. (There was more than enough slack in the bottom length of chain to allow the necessary timer rotation, perhaps too much. Initially I'd tried barring over the engine a fraction to rotate the timer, but that was a mistake due to the loosened chain tensioner. That mistake is why I now need to check the cam timing. I rotated the crank backwards to its correct position before tightening the chain, but I can't assume that it didn't jump a tooth.) I'm guessing that a 'normal' installation still requires a final dialing-in of the timing by using the adjustment screw (the one that rotates the IP's flange). This based on the (perhaps unjustified) assumption that the original timing was 'perfect'. My plan was to put it back exactly as it came off, since there was apparently nothing wrong with the timing originally. I believe I have done so.
The IP is not yet secured, but it is in place. I installed the timer retaining bolt finger-tight, and put the chain tensioner in so that I can rotate the engine and check that all the timing is still correct. I know that the cam-to-IP timing is unchanged, there was no way for that length of chain to jump a tooth, and both sprockets and chains there were paint-marked anyway. I just need to check that the crankshaft to cam timing is still correct and then we're good to go.
I then hooked up the fuel system. There was a slow fuel drip at the fuel thermostat that had begun recently, I wasn't sure whether it was the feed hose or the thermostat itself. I removed the primary filter and the feed hose, unmounted the thermostat, and removed the snap clip. I took the guts apart and cleaned it, and had a look at its seal. The seal didn't look bad, but it wasn't an O-ring so rather than replace it I just put it back together again. I did replace the feed hose, and the primary filter. The filter was black, and had been installed backwards. I verified the operation of the check valve in the fuel return side of the IP, it works fine.
The real fun came in priming the fuel system. Rather than kill the battery (either one) cranking I just used the old fuel hose to tie to the spare grease gun I use for disassembling brake calipers. I used it to pump about a tube's worth of diesel through the system. I left the return line cracked open at first, once fuel started coming out with the air I closed it off and kept pumping. There was definitely fuel and no air coming out the return banjo fitting when I cracked it at the end. This should dramatically reduce the cranking required for starting the first time. In spite of its propensity to leak, and the lack of need due to the supposed self-priming abilities of this fuel system, the old-style primer pump would have been a welcome component.
I then buttoned up the fuel system and hosed off all the spills and splashes with my (next to last!) can of brake cleaner. When that dries I'll be able to see if there is still a leak at the thermostat.
I cleaned off the vacuum pump in the solvent tank, that took a lot of scrubbing! (It's a lot cheaper than using brake cleaner, which is for the things that can't make it to the tank, though a bit slower.) I did use brake cleaner to sluice off the solvent at the end, but that doesn't take much. I squirted a bit of oil into the bearings, then installed the vacuum pump, I reused its (paper) gasket. (Original pump? It's the old style with the crimped-on cover, but it's in perfect shape.) It's much easier to put the pump on if you rotate the engine to a low point in the pump's cam cycle. I did reinstall the chain assembly basket. I know the instructions say to take it out, but if I do that it'll get lost. It made it this far without problem, I can't see pulling it out now.
That was so much fun I then vacuumed off the injector area and used brake cleaner to clean off the worst of the gunk. I vacuumed out the intake ports, and used fingers and rags to try to get off the worst of the caked-on EGR slime. That was messy.
I then used a screwdriver to wedge the throttle on all the way and cranked the engine. I got little fuel fountains out of all (I think) of the injector ports on the IP. I'd wanted to do that to make sure it was primed, and to make sure to blow out any junk that might have gotten down in there. I used brake cleaner to hose out the injectors themselves.
The valve cover and its gasket then made the trip to the solvent tank. The gasket, once cleaned with a scrub brush, seemed very good and was still quite pliable. I installed the valve cover using the old gasket. Another quick round of brake cleaner followed to clean off the solvent, etc. I'm down to my last can of the case, and am trying to conserve.
The engine's starting to look pretty good! I laid rags over the intake ports and the injection pump to keep out dust, it may be some time before I get another chance to work on this. I think it's just about time to make a parts order, I need an intake manifold gasket, the rubber blowby manifold parts, the injection line clips and bumpers, and two brake reservoir grommets.
...Later today I got e-mail telling me the clutch removal tool is out of stock, and won't be in for some considerable time. Other sources I found were all too expensive. Back to the drawing board! [The Autozone #27006 looks like it might work too, but I didn't know about it at this time.]
Oddly, the replacement Nippondenso AC compressor I got Monday doesn't have the same sort of clutch removal threads. The original clutch has better-sounding idler bearings, so I'm hoping to re-use it on the new compressor.
Here's a bad ASCII drawing of the rough layout of the tool:
M24×1.5 Washer
Drain plug | Machine screw
| | M10×1.5
| +=========|| |
|WWWWWWWWW|| |
MMMM/| ||=+ |
||===+ ||MM =+
wwwwwWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW=|
mmmmmMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM=|
||===+ ||WW =+
WWWW\| ||=+
|MMMMMMMMM||
+=========||
|
| | M10×1.5
Big nut Small nut
This stupid tool took forever to come up with, mostly wasted time on my part. I could/should have just ordered one in the beginning I suppose, it would have been quicker, but it is quite satisfying to have made it myself entirely out of junkyard MB parts. (Well, the big nut's pedigree is unknown, but certainly wasn't critical.) And now I have the tool for any other Nippondenso compressor (of which we have several) that might need servicing.
Onwards!
There was some black smudge on a lot of places such as the piston and valve faces, but it rubbed off. 'Black death'? Didn't seem too deadly to me, it could have just been decomposed oil residue. Looks to me like the compressor siezed up quickly enough that it didn't damage itself. The car's belt-saver circuit may have helped. At the moment I see no reason not to reassemble and use this compressor. I should have a new seal kit for it, but I don't. Next time!
I'll reassemble the compressor body first before cleaning the exterior clutch parts.
The front and back body halves are nearly identical, but not quite. I eventually figured out which was which by sticking them together and seeing how the thing mounted to the adapter plate on the car. It'll only go on one way, which identified the front body half.
I re-used all the seals, bad me. Honestly I don't know if this compressor is going to be any good at all, so I was unwilling to spend money on it just to have it blow up soon. I can deal with slow leaks, the test refrigerant I use is inexpensive. If warranted, I'll consider re-sealing it later.
All back together it looks pretty good, nice and clean. The clutch bearing is very good, and the clutch engaged when I put a battery charger on it. The compressor turns over easily now, no more siezure. Next up will be installing it in the car.
.. I talked to my brother, and he said my black smudge was probably the infamous Black Death. It didn't seem deathly enough to me, but what do I know? He suggested picking up an in-line filter at NAPA.
Moving beyond this job (finally), I then contemplated the vacuum plumbing. I'm wondering whether or not I do need to keep the VCV (vacuum control valve) on the IP. (It's removed right now, but it'll go back on easily at this stage of disassembly.) I will have to keep it if it's involved with the intake runner flap on the air box. I have to trace the piping to see what goes where. I don't need anything associated with the automatic transmission or EGR valve, which I thought was all that the VCV was driving, but I could have been wrong.
I wonder if this vacuum-increasing valve would have any significant impact on engine braking? Might be interesting to activate it while decelerating down a hill to see if it has any material effect. If so, it might be kind of nice to rig it so that it operated when the engine was at idle throttle but increased RPM's. It might be possible to use the existing EGR valve's control unit to do the RPM sensing (it's normally active from about 1200-3000 RPM) and cobble its output through the existing throttle microswitch assembly. That's a project for later.
I pulled the cover from behind the battery (so that I could soak the battery tray's retaining nuts with PB Blaster before removing it for de-rusting and painting) and found the beginnings of a mouse nest. Damned rodents! I hope the poison and/or cats got them. I soaked the nuts, perhaps tomorrow I'll remove the tray.
...This evening I held my nose and jumped into the WIS and EPC that I have installed on Virtual PC on my Mac G3. (233 MHz, not the fastest thing out there, but it was free and has been working well for me for years.) What nasty programs they are! I did find a nice sketch of the throttle damper in the WIS, from Job 30-310. There were also some linkage sketches in the EPC. I took some screen shots (no print path on my installation) to look at later.
I then went to the parts car in the woods and liberated its simpler throttle pivot (at the rear of the engine), I will substitute it for the more complex automatic-transmission version the car currently has. (I'm not sure if there's a real need to do this, but it should be easy enough to do.) There was no trace of anything the throttle damper's top ball mount connected to. Of course, the intake manifold is gone, and that's probably what it hooked to. (I also note that the donor car threw a rod: cylinder #1 has a big hole punched in the side, and there's no piston in sight. Souvenir? )
Anyway, I pulled off the original throttle bell crank assembly and replaced it with the simpler manual transmission version from the donor car. The original one has a threaded ball stud that I can steal, but unfortunately it's got smaller threads than what is required. Unless I can find another threaded ball around here somewhere I'll probably just weld it onto the end of a suitable bolt and call it good.
...In the evening I turned the battery tray over in the bucket.
I bought a stronger throttle spring today and installed it. It's able to overcome the stiffness of the new throttle damper. If it should turn out to be too weak I can put it down the middle of the original spring and use them both together. I installed the intake manifold. Much fun trying to figure out where things go. When I tried to install the blowby hosing I found that I was short a piece, so I had to re-use the 'Y' connection segment, at least until I can get another one ordered. Part number 601 016 04 81, there's also a v13 molded into it. The old one is split at each opening so I had to duct-tape it sealed. That's lovely.
The installation of the vibration dampening brackets for the injector lines took the most time. Getting those plastic clips on was not easy, and I had to take apart the throttle linkage in order to get everything assembled. I have extra plastic clips left over, too. The rubber bumpers themselves were NLA, but the old ones were still 'live' enough to work. The throttle linkage now works properly, and feels damped due to the hydraulic cylinder. It returns to the idle position properly.
I removed the extraneous vacuum plumbing, replacing a three-way splitter with a two-way from the EGR system. One vacuum feed line goes directly to the intake butterfly actuator, the other (through a restricting orifice) goes to the car's interior. Things are pretty neat and tidy under the hood now, without all the extraneous vacuum plumbing. The EGR relay module is nicely accessible behind the battery, it should be easy to remove and operate on if my throttle butterfly engine braking idea ever pans out.
I then vacuumed out the battery tray area, and chased the threads on the studs. I re-tapped the nuts too, and put the rusty ones into the bucket with the tray itself. I'll probably re-use them, mostly because I don't have any spares in that style.
The car is pretty much ready to start, sans cooling system. I want to do a final bleed on the injectors (the lines to which are only finger-tight) and see if it'll start before I put in the cooling system. If there's a problem I'd need to take it back out again anyway, so no sense potentially wasting work. It's also still too cold to be safe using only water for coolant, and I don't want to risk wasting my Zerex G-05 until I'm sure the car will run. Tomorrow? It's been down for more than nine months, but I can smell completion on the wind! Jill's going out of town this weekend, it'd be really nice if I could pick her up Monday in this car and again send the Chicken Wagon into retirement, a car whose faults she does not much appreciate.
...In the evening I turned the battery tray over again in the derusting bucket. (Last turn?) The rusty nuts are also cleaning up. While I was out there I fished the vacuum vent line (black) out from behind the IP and hooked it to the vacuum valve that runs the air cleaner butterfly valve, some of the surplus EGR vacuum piping was very handy to make it reach. If it (the butterfly) did get used the vent is appropriate, and I also don't want any loose hoses left when I'm done with this job.
...In the evening I pulled the tray out of the oven. It was still a bit tacky, but I was tired of waiting. I installed the tray, with a bit of grease on the bearing surfaces of the nuts. I then painted the two nut/stud sets that hold the tray down. (The third set is for the battery clamp.) I put back the plastic electronics cover, reclaimed the old battery from the generator, and put it back in the car. (I'm not going to wear out the new battery on the initial crank-fest.) I pulled the control plug off of the glow plug relay and stuck a bare 10ga solid wire loop between pins 1 and 2, the ignition and start terminals in the plug. (Violet [start] and Black/Red [ignition], I'm not sure which is which.) I got out my old manual cranking switch (automotive tool bought at Sears quite some time ago) and clipped it to the loop and to the fuse stud in the GP relay. I then pulled the vacuum shutoff line off of the IP, and put the battery charger on. I made sure the car was in neutral.
Crank! I hit the switch and let it crank a lot. A lot! I was starting to despair when I noticed that #5 injector was wet. I let the car rest (and the battery charge) for awhile, and hit it again. After a bunch more cranking #4 got wet. The battery is definitely exhibiting signs that it doesn't appreciate this treatment. At this rate I may end up killing it entirely, which is no great loss except then I have to purchase another battery for the generator. (And at that point I really should get two, as it's a 24 V system.) I let it rest (and charge) for 20 minutes while I brought this record up to date.
Another cranking session didn't last long before the battery started to flag. However, just at the end #3 started to get wet so it does look like I'm on the right track. 20 minutes is not enough recovery time, I'm going to have to wait more like an hour before the next session.
...I gave it about 3 hours and went out for another cranking session just before bed. I didn't take the battery down as far as before and I got #2 wet, and #1 was just starting to show fuel. Tomorrow I shall try starting it.
With that done I pulled the brake reservoir tank off the car and replaced the two grommets with the new ones. I put back the tank and filled it with fresh brake fluid, then I dumped a lot of the derusting bucket's nasty water all over the area to wash the spilled brake fluid off the car. Messy.
Next, the cooling system. I pulled out the radiator and found that the radiator fairies had done nothing to clean it or straighten the fins while it was put away. I guess I have to do it. It was filthy, the AC system had dumped some oil on it and there was oily caked-on dirt blocking a lot of the fins, as well as a lot of bent fins from the supposed wreck. (The radiator is seriously deformed, enough to push it into the fan clutch which has left circular tracks of flattened fins on the inside.) I spent some time straightening fins to improve airflow, then I took the thing to the laundry tub for a wash. I used laundry detergent and a bristle brush, I seem to have improved it quite a bit. I'd really like to hose it off outside, but it's too cold. I don't want to have to deploy a garden hose and then try to re-winterize it. I could look through the radiator towards a window and see a lot more light than before. Maybe I'll call it good enough, it's a lot better than it was and as I really should get a new radiator anyway I hate to spend a lot of time on it.
I cracked the drain on the laundry tub so that the dirt would settle in the tub rather than go into the septic system. When I later looked into the drained tub there was 1/8" of oily black fuzz coating the bottom. Gack! I mopped it out with paper towels and threw away the evidence, then washed the tub clean.
I then slipped the radiator back into place in the car (having first hung the shroud over the fan) and broke for breakfast.
Diving back in I put the front of the car back together. It was apparent after a few attempts that the proper order is from front to back, with the radiator going in last. I put in the horn support, then the auxiliary fan, then the AC condensor, and finally the radiator. (I had to take time out to weld a broken bracket back on the condensor, and to do a fair amount of fin-straightening.) I flushed out the cooling system with a bucket or two of water, displacing a fair amount of green, then filled it with water. I back-filled through the upper radiator hose so that the head would be full. Then I buttoned up the cooling system and filled the reservoir. (All this took quite a bit of time.) Then I started it.
Heartbreak. The engine runs OK, but idles rough and blows a lot of white smoke. Could the timing be off? Clogged injectors? I revved it a fair amount, and though it sounds OK at speed it's blowing too much stinky white smoke to suit me. It never did stop, though it did settle down some, even with the engine starting to come up to temperature. To add insult to injury, most of the injectors were bubbling around their seats. And, the brake fluid is dropping in the reservoir, I think the clutch feed hose is shot. It also sounds like there is an exhaust leak somewhere under the car.
Anyway, in the evening I put the air filter back on, cleaned out access to the car, and took it for a test drive. It seemed to have about as much power as before, maybe a touch less, but even fully warmed up it smoked (white, stinky) a lot at low RPM's. Idle was still very rough, and the car tended to die at stops. I wonder if the timing being off a notch or two can be responsible for this? I tried loosening each injector fuel line in turn, and it seemed that the idle would actually stabilize for a bit then return to its usual awful state. I couldn't pinpoint any one injector acting differently than the others, so I guess this is another clue pointing towards something global like timing. Interestingly, the smoke was much reduced right after the cold start, but increased quickly.
I did notice that the car's drivetrain has a lot of 'springiness' in it, the car can bounce back and forth a bit against it if you're too rough with the throttle or clutch, but the new throttle arrangement has completely cut out the engine feedback portion that kept it going and turned into an irritating neck-snapping behavior. So that's a bit of success, at least.
No way I'm going to be picking Jill up in this tomorrow, too bad. So much for my surprise. I guess she'll have to continue to drive the Chicken Wagon, a car she is not enjoying at all.
From the mailing list:
In the past having had an IP set with wrong timing, can't remember if too far before or after, I can say it nicely produces large volumes of white smoke. The tech in question was confused between what to do with a 603 versus 617 and I think, doesn't the timing notice on the front rail give two values depending on how you measure?A little surfing indicates that increased white smoke at low RPM is an indication of retarded timing. Guess I'm going to have to learn how to do the drip test.
No time to pursue it today, however. The word from the mailing list is that even one tooth off on the shaft spline will give me my symptoms. Great.
An old net posting by Dave Meimann:
Definitely check the EGR! About the lock pin, the part number is 601 589 05 21 00. Dealer cost is ~$21, plus whatever markup they feel like gouging you with. Rusty should be able to get it for under $30 if you can't find it elsewhere at a decent price (will take 7–10 days, special order). Here are some notes from emails I sent to other people regarding the tool:The lock pin was not intended to be used to set the timing. MB has a static RIV tester ("A-B" light box) which is designed for that purpose, as explained in the service manual. It is a nifty tool but most folks won't want to pony up the ~$250 to own it. The IP lock pin, which is a mere $25–$30, can be used in place of that. It takes longer to set the timing but it does work, although the procedure is NOT in the manual. Basically you creep the crank up to 15 ATDC while trying to feel when the lock engages. When it does, read the number off the crank. If it's not where you want it, rotate the pump to adjust and repeat at least twice to confirm the new setting. I have found that setting to the advanced side of spec (to 14 instead of 15 ATDC) provides a small but repeatable increase in MPG (on 60x engines anyway).Warning: DO NOT rotate the crank... OR adjust the pump by rotating it... while the lock pin is in place! You WILL break something expensive. (The IP!) Remove the lock before turning ANYTHING.
For OM617 engines, it's a real pain to adjust the pump... there is no adjusting mechanism (turnbuckle) to rotate it like on the OM60x. You'll need to loosen all 4 mounting bolts (3 front, 1 rear), all 5 injector lines, and muscle it one way or the other. Note: When you remove the RIV plug on the side of the IP, roughly above the left engine shock, it will dump a pint of oil out! One last tip: Use the power steering pulley for large engine rotations, and the alternator pulley for small ones—the p/s would jump forward in 1–2 degree increments no matter how careful I was, but the alternator worked great. (On an OM60x, pull the fan clutch and rotate from the crank bolt.)
I'll check at the hardware store to see if I can find a bolt with a little bit bigger shank. A 27/64" drill shank fits the bore very well, it's about 10.7 mm in diameter. I'd prefer the lesser angular error I'd get with the right sized bolt and the nut drilled to match.
...In fact, a 7/16" bolt has an 11 mm diameter shank. I bought a 3" long sample of one today, 70¢, and what I found was that it was an even better fit than the 27/64" drill bit. I cut off the inch or so of threads and cut/filed a notch into the end of the remaining smooth shank. It fits nearly perfectly into the IP's timing bore, and doesn't need the nut slip collar that I was going to make. Even better. I made the notch a bit small to start with, then filed it open incrementally until it dropped snugly over the tab on the IP's camshaft. Let the timing begin!
I then re-reassembled the engine. It all went fairly smoothly, except that my Sears ratchet wrench finally gave up. (While trying to fix it to keep the release button from falling out I managed to lose something, I guess I'll check out that lifetime warrantee. If I hate the proposed replacement I'll pass on the swap, though.) I re-primed the fuel system by mashing the lift pump's plunger repeatedly against the side of the IP before I bolted it back on. That saves a bunch of time and wear and tear on the starting system. I then cranked the engine, as before, until all the injector lines were wet. Then I started the engine. It started easily and this time without all the stinky white smoke. After only a few seconds of rough running it ran and revved smoothly. Cool. I then buttoned up the cooling system and filled it with water. (Incremental flush.)
We took a test drive to meet my wife. It ran well, no smoke, about as much power as I recall from before. I think we'll call it good for now. The coolant is again dirty-looking, but less opaque than last time. I'm going to have to do the water drain/fill thing a few more times in order to get it all cleaned out. Then I'll put real coolant in.
After church I went to Sears, and they had a refurbished warrantee replacement ratchet wrench that was acceptable. (Some of their new ones were naaas-tee!)
In the evening I again took the car out, and it behaved itself well. I still believe that the Frankenheap has a better engine/transmission combination for around-town driving. It feels more torquey and powerful, in general. You really can't drive this car in fourth gear around town, whereas in the heap it's just fine. (And you can't lug it at all, you do need to downshift at times. It definitely feels 'lightweight' and not overpowered at all, much like other econoboxes I've driven.) But this car cruises on the highway more comfortably, and does get up speed faster. You just have to wind it out more. In general the drivetrain in this car feels much lighter and less solid than the heap's. It still feels underpowered for its fifth gear, I often find myself losing speed on the freeway unless I set the cruise control or stay in fourth gear. It may be that it indeed needs the (shorter?) rear end from the donor car, but if we do go that way the speedometer will need addressing.
I (re-?)note a short list of as-we-get-to-its:
When I got home I put it up on the ramps again and drained the coolant. Getting better! The left headlight seemed a bit low, so I cranked it up a bit.
At lunch my wife picked up the license tabs, so we're good there now.
This evening I adjusted the left headlight some more, out and up. I think the headlight alignment is good now.
I also cleaned out the trunk of its miscellaneous spare bits and put them into a dedicated box, preparatory to passing this car on to Jill. I got inspired and looked in one of the dusty boxes near the car and found the JVC CD player! So I'll next be able to tackle the minor in-cabin electrical tasks.
After work I pulled the floor and underdash panels and carpet, and liberated the warning module. (Which is behind the side panel.) I found quite a bit of corrosion on Pins 1, 3, & 5. I also pulled the Becker out. I cleaned up the corrosion and checked the diode, all was well. When I put it back together things worked again, though there is also an intermittent problem with the selector switch up in the light. (That's common to both doors.)
There is a brake fluid leak from the clutch feed hose. Gotta fix that!
I got the JVC plugged in, but the front speakers don't seem to work. I ran out of time to chase that.
After I dropped Daniel off at school I plugged the rear fader back in, which restored the front speakers to operation. I need to figure out what's up with that, the fader is supposed to be unplugged when there's a four-channel (fronts + rears) stereo in place.
After work I placed additional reinforcing beads of glue across the backs of the glued gaps in the tow-hook cover. That should strengthen it up.
I got out some modeling clay and made a little dam around the worst rust spot on the hood and filled it with water and put in a pinch of washing soda. I pressed a loop of wire into the clay so that it was underwater and hooked the battery charger to it and the grille. (Positive to the sacrificial wire!!!!) The rust just boiled off of there, in the half hour I spent on the above items the rust was gone, reduced to blackened (a benign form of iron oxide) pitting and shiny metal. I then removed the paraphernalia, dried the area, and put on a little bit of primer to protect the exposed metal. It's a start! There are two other rust patches and a lot of failed clear-coat to address. Somewhere around here I have a can of paint that should be pretty close in color that I'd like to try.
I managed to get the instrument cluster out again, it was very difficult. I had to pull with pliers while pushing on the back. Once it was out I could push out the defogger switch, for the opener operation. I cut a length of surplus zip wire, and soldered it to the A and ground terminals of the switch connector, and ran it down to the open console area below the radio. I then soldered up a power source for the opener using parts from the junk box: a 6.2 V Zener diode, a string of four regular diodes to add a few volts to get up to around 9 V, a 100 Ω series resistor, and the connector panel from a dead 9 V battery. I liberated the opener from the SDL and put it in the car. It worked. I then put the dash and console back together. I left the shifter surround out since the glue on the connector is still drying. The bottom cover panel and the carpet are still out and will remain so until the clutch leak can be taken care of.
I then swapped the cars, so that this car is now in the main garage slot for Jill to drive, and the SDL is in the operating theater. Just about ready!
In the evening the glue was dry enough to put the shifter surround back. I was going to replace the window switch rocker as the old one was burned with a cigarette and the painted legend was worn off, but all my replacements were for the right side. (Stupid window shapes lean in opposite directions.) I used a Sharpie to draw back the black. That will serve until I can find a proper replacement.
Since I was in the area I also used some spray teflon lube on all the door handles. The two front doors can be sprayed through holes in the door that are covered with plastic caps. The two rears I was forced to spray where it came out through the handle surround. They used to stick a bit when out, they work much easier now.
I then examined the cupholder situation. I found another one of our favorite cupholders (a springy plastic skeleton that has centering fingers, intended to hook over a door edge or the like) and drilled a hole for a screw in the top part. I used the heat gun to bend the joint to a more acute angle, matching that of the dash below the glove box. I then removed one of the under-dash panel screws and affixed the cupholder there. It's in more-or-less the place she asked for, but of course in this smaller car it's much more in the way of any passenger. We'll see how it works out, I left the one hanging from the glovebox to give her a choice.
Here is some bad ASCII art (is there any other kind?) showing the cupholder's hook detail:
/\ <= More acute bend, 45°?
/ \
/ \/ <= Screw holding on below-dash panel.
/ /\
/ \ \ __ N (Up)
/ > <=90° /|
/ / /
/ / /
/
/
...
^--Actual cupholder continues on down from here.
Note that the left-hand line should appear vertical, as the equally-bad
compass arrow attempts to show. Tip your head, if it helps.
The geometry of the smaller trunk means that much of the trunk is actually in shadow when opened in the dark, more so than any of the other cars. I threaded an iron wire through the trunk hinge arm and used it to pull an additional zip wire through the hinge. I then dug up a spare 5 W courtesy light. (I had to scrub it clean, it was filthy.) I think I can wire it so that it comes on with the existing lamp and then affix it to the ceiling of the trunk compartment under the hat rack (package shelf), filling in the lighting pattern. However, I ran out of time to finish today.
...The rest of the parts (except the clutch hose) came today. Jill reported that the car only got 33 MPG when she filled it up today. That's low, but it's the next tank that I think will be more telling. (Even so that's 10 MPG better than what she was driving [Chicken Wagon].)
I had another look at the cleaned-up courtesy light, and it's just too nice to hack on. However, I knew that there was a really banged-up one (all glued together and even so missing chunks) in one of the rear doors of the SDL, so I traded for it! Its inability to snap into place will be of no consequence in its new home. I then glued (Shoe Goo, naturally) a metal tab on the side of the ratty one to serve as a mounting ear. I'll drill a mounting hole in it after it dries.
I drilled a hole in the light's new mounting ear and bent it at a 90° angle, threaded an 8mm self-tapping screw into it, and then drilled a hole in a suitable place in the trunk ceiling (under the hat rack). I then mounted the light there, it's nicely nestled into a recess so that it is somewhat protected. I then put spade lugs on the wire and attached it, using duct tape to keep it from hanging down in the middle. The trunk swings open and shut without stressing the wire, and none of the newly-installed parts show at all. Up above I threaded the other end of the wire along the existing wire's path, and attached it to the existing trunk light fixture. There is room for a spade lug on the positive end of the lamp's spring clip, the negative end's existing uninsulated spade lug just got many wraps of bare wire around it.
...And it works! Unfortunately it was a bit dimmer than I'd hoped, at first I thought it wasn't working. But it actually does throw light under there, so it's much better than nothing. Probably a 10 W bulb fixture would have been better, but that's not what I have extras of.
I then took an 8" square of aluminum foil and covered the less-shiny side with spray glue, and lined the recess above and around the lamp with it. That makes a noticeable difference, enough that I don't think any further work is called for. It's a pretty ratty looking reflector, but the only way you can see it is while lying on your back inside the trunk!
Next up, the box-o-parts. I popped the hood and pried out the remaining dead rubber from the blowby system and removed the duct tape. I then installed the two new pieces. Easy-squeezy. Writing this about the radiator cap replacement operation took longer than actually doing it. The new cap is a 140°, the old was a 120°. Coolant, washer, oil, and brake fluid levels were all acceptible. Down went the hood again.
The first (left) rear door check replacement was easier than the front, largely because you can reach into the door. The worst part was getting all the screw holes lined up, I think the body of the strap runs into the wiring in the door which tends to push it out of place. I found that the moisture barrier was missing, so I had to fabricate a new one from a water softener bag. (I sure wish I could remember where I put the roll of clear plastic that I bought for that purpose.) These new check straps have nice protective plastic sheaths to keep out water and dust, they should last longer than the originals. Oddly, the rear straps were delivered with the straps fully retracted. You can't install them unless they're out at least one notch, but pulling them out by hand is quite difficult. I got them wedged into a hole in the garden tractor and put a screwdriver through the strap's eye. Then I could plant a foot against the tractor and yank hard to get them to come out.
The vinyl was peeling back from a couple of places along the top of the door skin, so I got out some spring clamps and Shoe Goo, and glued it back in place. I used strips of wood to evenly spread the clamping force. Due to the missing vapor barrier the bottom of the panel was wet and turning to mush in spots, and the glued-on retaining hooks were coming undone. I glued those back on as well. (Emptying another tube of Goo in the process. Two days ago I found a tube of Plumber's Goo [same product line, and likely the same product] at the discount store, so I bought it for $2. Can never have too much of that stuff, especially at less than half price!) Door reassembly will have to wait until the glue is dry.
At 10:00 it was still snowing heavily and there were maybe 3" accumulated. It looks like perhaps Spring is not quite here yet. Anyway, I then pulled the other rear door skin. Big surprise: no vapor barrier. Though decomposition was less advanced several of its hooks were also coming loose, so I glued them and set that panel aside too. Replacing that check strap went much easier, I guess experience helps. That door didn't open as far as it should and it turns out the reason was that one of the balls had blown out of the check strap's slider and gotten wedged against the stop. Time for replacement, indeed! The retaining clip for the pin was missing, I replaced it with one from the junkbox. I then cut up another salt bag and glued and trimmed it in place. Now we wait. Once the glues have all dried I can put the car back together.
Weird weather, all day it's been a full-court press from Winter, with blizzardy gusts and a snow accumulation of more than 4", but in the afternoon the sun came out and it warmed up, taking the snow down to maybe an inch, with clear roads and sidewalks. Freakish. It would have been kind of interesting to get this weather on Sunday (Easter), we could have taken some pictures. I was joking with Jill, suggesting that we should hunt eggs today 'cause it'd be real easy to hide them: stand at the front door and throw them out into the yard. Wait ten minutes for the snow to cover the holes and send Daniel out looking. There was a notable lack of interest from both parties.
Turns out the clock she was complaining about is the one in the CD player, so I set it. (It's not that hard, but it's definitely a more cryptic procedure than the dash clock, which is what I'd thought she was talking about. It wouldn't kill her to be more specific when making such complaints.)
I cut a chunk of styrofoam and wedged it behind the cupholder support to push it out more. The hitherto unused extra part of the original hook holds it in place, keeping it from dropping onto the floor. (See above.) Maybe that'll do it.
After work I stopped by Harbor Freight and bought their ball joint press kit. I'm told that it will work for this car, with some fiddling. We'll see, it was about $80 for the two co-kits, on sale. (I'm not sure I'll need the adapter kit for this, but it is needed to do the joints on the Dodge.)
Next I got out the gauge set and the deep vacuum pump. I was unable to put on the low-side fitting, the pipe has apparently been twisted at some time pointing the fitting toward the fender. So I got my 27mm wrench and twisted it (carefully!) back enough that I could put on the gauge's hose. With both fittings on I then turned on the vacuum and let it suck for about half an hour. While that was going I washed the cup out with soap and hot water and wiped it out well, then slotted it for the dishwasher.
Vacuum fully applied I turned off the pump, and closed up the system. I made sure the Schrader valve stems were snug, the high-side one was a little loose. I don't have time to do more this morning, nor is it a particularly good time to put a charge in, given the nature of the charging process with the test refrigerant. We'll see if it holds a vacuum 'til tomorrow.
...I stopped by NAPA today to enquire about inline filters for the AC system. They have several in the book, but nothing that looks like it'd fit easily in the suction side, where it would be optimal. But they have some liquid-state filters with fittings that just might be of some use in the hot side, probably after the receiver. I'll have to take a close look. The guy just tore a couple of pages out of their book to hand to me, said they have lots of those books around. Beats copying down the information by hand!
...After I picked up Daniel from school I stopped off at NAPA, and we determined that they didn't really have anything that wouldn't require heroic effort to install. So I guess we'll make do without. Onwards!
Since I was there I put the AC vaccum back on. It had still held a good vacuum since the last session, I'm confident that the system is intact enough to hold a charge well. It's just been so freakin' cold that it's hardly worth trying to charge it.
...And she's off! A couple of hours later she calls from the side of the freeway. Tire failure, apparently fairly dramatic. Yes, honey, you've got a spare and theoretically you can just change it and go on. Well, we'll see! She says it's been maybe 20 years since she's changed a tire. I guess getting new tires is not going to wait until I get that ball joint changed!
...She called again, from the road this time, and says it all went pretty well. She used the locator pin to get the new wheel back on, and a helpful gentleman who had stopped right at the end made sure the bolts were well torqued. She'd had Daniel helping, which is good.
...She called again, from a place with a compressed air, asking about the desired pressure. She'd decided to stop and check the spare-that-was, something I had neglected to do this morning. (I'll try to do better in future.)
...She called again, and confessed to having left the jack hole plug on the side of the road. I assured her that it wasn't going to be a problem. She was nearly to her destination. The AC was working well, she reported 45 °F vent temperatures.
She also reports that she got rear-ended today in the Wal-mart parking lot. Fairly minor, but it did crease the driver's rear quarter panel above and below the light, and shatter the light assembly. Great.
I drove the car today, and Jill's complaint of the AC not wanting to start is accurate. But what I found is that if you use the AC's ON button (the little defroster grid) rather than the AUTO button (the little snowflake) you can force it on at will. Jill says she tried every button but that one, thinking it to be like the main defroster button. If you ask me, that column of buttons should have been labeled AC ON, AC AUTO, and AC OFF. Stupid icons.
...According to the collected wisdom of the mailing list:
They [struts] are gas charged, and if yours is actually moving easily (as opposed to the rod moving in the now-loose mount!) it's bad. Should be nearly at full extension as the car is sitting, usually requires only a small amount of compression to put the bolts into the steering knuckle. If you can move the shaft up and down easily and it doesn't push back up firmly, it's dead.There's a test procedure in Section 32 of the factory manual, I suppose I could actually follow it to see just what kind of shape the strut is in. The strut's half-removed already anyway.
...Suggestions from the mailing list:
You will need some sort of an adapter to push the old ball joint out (a short bit of pipe, sawn off straight across will work) as none of the sleeves supplied with the tool will fit inside the hole.One of them will fit going back in.
What you want to do is put a large sleeve and the "cap" fitting underneath (to push the old ball joint into) and then your custom sleeve and the other "cap" on top. Turn the screw to force the old joint out. Usually stuck, you may need a bit of tapping with a hammer to get it to start moving.
Once it's out, find the sleeve that will fit around the hole and use the sleeve that fits the flange on the bottom of the ball joint, with appropriate caps, to push the new one in. If I remember correctly you can just flip the "cap" over and it will push on the flange, but check. There will be one or two notches in the new joint depending on manufacturer—one of these notches must point to the other side (toward the centerline—check the one in there before you push it out). The joint is directional—more movement one way than the other across the top. If you don't get it in right it won't last long.
Be sure it starts square—again, a hammer may be necessary to keep it moving in straight. My tool is bent from removing and installing a ball joint in my brother's W126, which put it in a bind; you may have less difficulty.
The C clamp of the HF ball joint kit is now permanently deformed, though not enough (I hope) to prevent its further use! The real press is supported on both sides, call it an O clamp, and that sure seems to be something that would be useful here.
...At lunch I bought a variety of plumbing and electrical pipes and fittings, $32. I'll use what works out and probably return the rest. That's the plan, anyway.
...At lunch I returned the unused fittings and got back $24, so the net tool cost was about $8.
Cool. I then spray-painted the area with primer and black paint, since I had scuffed it up pretty well with the wire brush. I also cleaned, primed, and painted the back of the steering knuckle.
I never did need the auxiliary kit for the ball joint press. Oh well, it's supposedly useful for the Dodge.
Well, it failed, big surprise. I measured about 12# either way I conducted the push test. At 1 Newton = 0.225 pounds force that's 53 N! A far cry from even 170 N, much less the optimal value. The pull resistance was more, as it should be, but the push value is so low that it's not worth the effort of measuring the pull value. It's certainly not right. Time to order new.
I had some extra time this morning so I put the strut in on the other side too. Just the strut only is actually a pretty easy proposition. The bellows on the right side was in better shape, but the shock wasn't. I noticed that the new struts didn't come with the little clip that holds the brake wear sensor wire in place, then I noticed that these clips were actually removable. Oh. So I removed it from the old strut and moved it to the new. Then I had to go over to the other side and do that one too. At least it can be done with the strut on the car. I wire-brushed and waxed all the lug bolt threads, they were getting pretty rusty.
With that done I then installed the new windshield washer pump seal. It still leaked down there, so I cut off the enlarged end of the hose coming off the pump. A little heat with the heat gun made the hose go onto the barb easily. I think that will do it. I then put away all the tools and cleaned up.
Ready to drive!
...No, it's not. I was going to drive it today, but it would only crank, not start. Probably a glow plug problem of some sort, though the light was working. I put it on charge and took Ethelred instead.
The washer tank was low, but dry and no longer leaking, so I refilled it.
The drive to work showed that the windshield washer level sender is stuck on 'empty' again. However, the car handled well and the thumping from the front end is gone. The rear shocks might need attention too, I'm not sure.
When we got this car the handling was truly vile, you might even say dangerous. But up front new (well, better) tie rod ends, idler arm bearing shims, steering damper, new front struts and a new ball joint, and in back a replacement drag link, plus a four-wheel alignment and new correct-sized tires and now it's handling pretty well. Amazing what kind of difference throwing a bunch of money at a problem can make. (Not amazing at all, actually.)
The spare tire is not tied down, I need to figure out what's missing so that I can cure that source of noise on bumps. From the net:
The spare tyre hold down looks like a shallow bucket with a large plastic screw thread sticking out the bottom. 201 890 00 07, not sure of the year of yours, but 85 1900E, 87 190DT's are all the same.Just like the SDL then. I'll have to look at that.
It doesn't have the bucket, it should have the long screw thing that sticks down in one of the lug holes and screws in the bottom of the spare tire well.So, lug or center hole? A mystery.
Today I cashed the check from the rear-ending: $733.59, it may be that we don't bother to fix the car. (The rust, you see. Hardly worth it.)
I then jacked up the LF corner. The car's been making a heavy clicking recently, and I wanted to check for loose work. Nothing loose that I could find, but I did get the heavy clicking while jacking it up. I couldn't reproduce it, however. I did remove and replace the steering box bolts, and I checked the tightness of the bolts I'd done for the ball joint. Nothing. I don't think it's the steering linkage itself, so that leaves the bushings on the control arm. Lovely. Regardless, I don't think there's any impending death, so I can drive it until it worsens enough to pinpoint.
The second side went exactly the same, in about 45 minutes. The old shock wasn't nearly in such bad condition as the other side, in fact it was a replacement junkyard unit from a 190E according to the painted lettering on the side, so it was harder to get out. A twine lasso helped compress it enough that I could slip it out quickly. I'll save it for some kind of spare, the other one is pure trash.
The weld to the muffler is cracking, I'll have to fix that at some point. I think it needs a reinforcement tie to the pipe too, so that flexure doesn't crack it loose again. I then lowered the car and put everything away.
I pulled both taillights out so that I'd have a reference surface. I then hammered out the dents on the one side as best I could. This messed up the paint something good around there, but it was ruined anyway. The edge below the light was torn a bit, the body shop had indicated that some welding would be required. Hey, I can do that! I straightened out the lower edge area using pliers, then started welding, grinding, and hammering to get the profile back. That took some doing. When I started the area was very weak, easily bent with the pliers, but by the time I was done it was much stronger. I used a small hammer on the outside to planish the hammer bites from the inside hammering as best I could, then I mixed up some of my almost-dead Bondo and smeared it over the area. The hardener had dried up, but I mashed it in there anyway. It won't be great, but maybe it'll be good enough? The Bondo was setting up, anyway.
While the Bondo was setting I took the welder to the muffler, which was flexing and cracking loose where the exhaust pipe went into it. I welded up the crack, then I welded a piece of 3/16" rod as a strut between the edge of the muffler and the pipe. That stiffened up the area considerably, and should prevent such problems in the future. I then broke for lunch.
...After lunch, and a nap, the Bondo was dry. I used the rasp to take it down to its rough profile, then used the sander to smooth it off and feather it. Looked passable. I then sprayed primer on and let it dry, then painted on a dollop of the gold paint I'd gotten for the 250C, which never did match that car too well. I think it matches this one better. Airbrush time?
The new-model 40-quart Coleman thermoelectric cooler I got a couple of days ago at the thrift shop for $10 was also clogging up the car, so I removed it. When I tested it I found the exterior fan, a brushless DC box fan, was siezed. I removed the eight screws that secured it and its shroud to the heat sink, and found it very dusty and stiff. I blew it off and slopped some M1 5W20 oil into it. Once it got down in there the fan started spinning and eventually got up to speed. I left it running for awhile with the oil cupped into it, then I reassembled it. Runs fine now.
...After work I took a look at putting in a switch so I could easily leave the trunk open while having the lights off. (My former technique of just removing the bulb is not sufficient anymore since I put in the auxiliary trunk light. I've had the lamp fixture pulled out and the power wire disconnected, but the fixture was just dangling there and getting pretty banged up that way.) I found a nice toggle switch in the junk box, though I hated to waste it on this. It had spade lugs, but was sufficiently large that it couldn't easily be mounted in the trunk lid. I next tried a slide switch from the junk box, but it was a bit too large to fit in the open part of the plastic lamp carrier. (I'm not fond of slide switches anyway.) While staring at the situation (and contemplating that this kind of pin switch is entirely capable of having a pull-out-to-disable function that is self-resetting, and why didn't they spend the extra dime on that anyway?) I finally noticed the threaded bushing around the post. Ding! I got out a .410 shotgun shell casing and cut it off with the hacksaw so there was about 1/8" of red plastic left above the brass base. I used the heat gun to soften the plastic and pliers to squeeze it in a bit, then I put it over the pin and threaded it over the bushing to set up. Voila! Instant thread-on cap, with molded-in soft plastic threads. When it's threaded on the pin is depressed, and the lights are off. I reinstalled the light fixture in the trunk and tested it. The cap does protrude down just enough that the trunk can't be closed when it's on, I'm not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing. The cap tucks nicely into the plastic lamp fixture just below the lamp when not in use. If it should bounce out and get lost it'd be trivial to make another one.
I also got a set of rear taillights, one from each donor car, and the outside temperature display, sensor and all, from one of them. There was also a big wad of bare stranded copper wire lying on top of one of the donors. So I grabbed that. Scrap!
...Yes, it certainly did. The plastic came out of the dishwasher looking new, or at least as good as I remember the lost one being. It's amazing. I put the light all back together, first cleaning the contacts on the PCB and switch. I replaced the bad map bulb, and cleaned both bulbs with alcohol. I cleaned the black knurled knob, and painted a white stripe back on the correct rib where the original had worn off, I used the MB "Artic Weiss" touch-up paint I have. It looks pretty good now.
Jill reported that the radio hasn't worked for a couple of days. Its problem was the fuse. Easily put right.
On the test drive all was well. I also tried out the AC, and it was working. Good.
While I was there I mucked out the car a bit, including mopping of that wretched spilled coffee my wife likes to decorate with. The carpets smell a bit of urine, I wonder what the story is with that? (I think this has been so since we got it, but the cigarette smell covered it some.)
The new seat looks good, but does have a couple of cuts in the pleated part of the seat bottom. Probably glue-able, we'll see if I can patch it sometime.
From the technical data book, the 2.2 manual tranny (201.122 chassis) had a 3.23:1 rear end 'til 10/85, then a 3.91:1. Your 2.5 (210.126 chassis) auto has a 3.07:1 rear end. The manual version had a 3.64:1.The 2.2 versions (both auto and manual trannies) that we're dealing with both have a 3.23:1 ratios.
So, it looks like my spare differential (3.23:1) is not the 'right' (3.64:1) one either, but it's likely to be more satisfactory than what's on there now (3.07:1). There's likely to be a speedometer calibration problem, though.
I've also found a nice W201 differential gear ratio chart, the contents of which are (I hope) reproduced here in a more legible form:
| 190D 2.0 | 190D 2.2 | 190D 2.5 | 190D 2.5T | 190 | 190E 1.8 | 190E | 190E 2.0 | 190E 2.3 | 190E 2.6 | 2.3 -16 | 2.5 -16 | |
| 2.65:1 | A | |||||||||||
| 2.87:1 | (3.2 AMG) | |||||||||||
| 3.07:1 | A | A | –'86 | '88–'93 | ||||||||
| 3.23:1 | M4, A, M5 –10/85 | –10/88 | M4, A, M5 –10/88 | M4, A | ||||||||
| 3.27:1 | [M4, A] | [M4, A] | A, M5 –10/88 | M5 –9/89 | '87+ | (EVO) | ||||||
| 3.42:1 | M5, A | |||||||||||
| 3.46:1 | M5 | 10/88+ | M4, A | M5 10/88+ | M5 | M5 10/88+ | (EVO II) | |||||
| 3.64:1 | M5 | M5 | ||||||||||
| 3.67:1 | [M5] | [M5] | ||||||||||
| 3.91:1 | M5 10/85+ | |||||||||||
| 3.92:1 | [M5] | M5 9/89+ |
| Key: | A | Automatic |
| M4 | 4-speed Manual | |
| M5 | 5-speed Manual | |
| [X] | Special taxi edition 11/88+ | |
| At | 130 | km/h (~80 MPH) the 2.5T M5 turns 2970 RPM in top gear (lowest) |
| At | 130 | km/h (~80 MPH) the 1.8 M4 turns 4200 RPM in top gear (highest) |
From this chart I now have conflicting information, my extra differential is either 3.23:1 or 3.42:1. Neither is right, but of the two I'd obviously prefer the 3.42:1 ratio. It is also apparent from the chart that there is no other donor of the 'right' differential except the never-seen-in-the-States 190E 1.8 (with 5-speed!), or the nearly-right 3.67:1 of some of the also-never-seen-here taxis. I'm going to have to measure, or find the identifying mark on, my spare differential.
Couldn't get it started, though. Battery didn't have enough poop (yet) to crank all the air out of it. Coughed a few times...
...After work I cleaned the broken fader plug and tacked it together with cyanoacrylate glue, then potted it in Shoe Goo. I also used a bit of Shoe Goo to glue down the small fingernail-sized tear in the driver's seat pleated area, we'll see if it holds. A bit of turpentine took care of the pitch blob on the windshield.
...After work I had Daniel vacuum out the car while I worked on getting the driver's footwell side carpet reattached. I had to pull off the sill cover, that exposed the plastic rivets that had pulled out. One rivet was broken, I replaced it with a drywall screw and a washer. One eyelet on the carpet was torn out, so I used duct tape to fashion a wraparound splint for it. (All this is hidden underneath the sill cover.) Looks a lot better now.
The heater didn't want to fully shut off, though the AC system was working when called for. I had to modulate cabin temperature via the grille flaps on the side and center grilles.
The wiper squeaked, but I came to the conclusion that it was rubber rather than gearbox even though the glass was wet. The noise seemed to follow the arm across the glass. The washer worked, but was anemic. It may be partially clogged, and/or badly mis-aimed.
The fuse blew on the portable DVD player (Audiovox D1708) at Biggs, and when I bypassed it the player promptly smoked. Something died, possibly induced by a key-off transient. The road trip relay operated the travel cooler just fine.
On this trip the heater seemed to behave better. I wonder what's up with that?
So today I jacked up the car, popped the hood, and removed the instrument cluster. I found that the cable had not broken but rather the cable body had pulled out of its crimp-on ferrule at the speedometer end. Having seen that I then remembered that it had done this before, and I'd just wedged it back together (see here, for example). (Obviously I hadn't checked my records, knowing this might have changed my plan.) Had I used some epoxy or the like to resecure the ferrule in the first place it'd probably have been a permanent fix. However, now that I had paid and waited for a new cable there was no way I was going to do a hack job, even though the original cable was obviously of higher quality than the new one. Out came the old cable (which I saved, just in case). Turns out there are two rubber boots that go through the inner and outer firewalls, and to remove the inner one you have to first remove the windshield wiper, which involved first removing a lot of trim. Ugh. Once I'd done that the new cable threaded through the car fairly easily and I got the new boots snapped into place. (I checked, and the new cable seems to be exactly the same length as the old one.) I did have a bit of trouble getting the cable inserted back into the transmission, but eventually I prevailed.
While I had the instrument cluster out I removed the speedometer head and then removed its pointer and face. (The secret is to lift the needle over the post and note its resting place, then use two spoons to pry it off its shaft.) With the odometer exposed I could then clean it off with a Q-tip and alcohol, the dials were filthy. They were hard to read at night, and now they're much brighter. While it was off I re-painted the needle with the tangerine paint that I've used before for that purpose. I suppose I should have done all the needles, but I didn't want to take the time. I then put the needle back on at its zero rest mark and lifted it over the peg, then reassembled the cluster. Reinstalling the cluster was the normal pain, until I found that I couldn't quite get the new cable on. I ended up having to release it at the transmission end to get enough slack to attach it to the cluster, then I put the cluster all the way in and then re-attached it at the transmission. Next time the cluster has to come out I am not going to be happy, methinks. (This tightness is probably how the original cable got broken in the first place, I remember having to pull on it quite hard at times.)
I buttoned things up and took it for a test drive, it seemed to work well. I did not re-install the windshield wiper as I want to do some gluing on some of the plastic parts, and one of the rubber mounts for the wiper assembly. I also want to diagnose the heater shutoff valve which is under there, I think it might be leaking internally a bit since the AC through the side vents is notably warmer than that through the center vents, even after a long drive.
I got out the JB Weld and some rubber inner tube, since the original gluing I'd done on the behind-the-battery shield with Shoe Goo had not held up in the heat. We'll see if this holds up better or not.
I tore into the dash and found the vacuum valve block, which is underneath the right-hand dash vent, and measured the continuity of all nine valve solenoids. They were OK. Vacuum supply was good, which I knew because largely the venting control is good. I used the MityVac to manually pull down the heater control valve, and it helps cool the side vents to do so. I checked the continuity of the ailing circuit (#5) to the control unit, it was good. Looks like a purely control failure. I removed and opened up the 201 830 05 85 HVAC unit and resoldered all the joints inside, even though they didn't look that bad.
Inside the HVAC controller are four single-sided PCB's, five if you count the one for the light bulbs. The customary two connect the pushbutton array, one of which has a few components and a relay on it, a small one carries the AC compressor control switches, and one carries the temperature control analog 'brain': three LM2902 quad op-amps, one LM2904 dual op-amp, four BDW53A power transistors, eight BC337 NPN signal transistors, a trim pot, and one of the trouble-prone Frako electrolytic capacitors, two resistor arrays, and the usual grab-bag of resistors, diodes, and capacitors. One big filter capacitor is on the main switch board, along with three BC327 PNP signal transistors and an LM7808 8 V voltage regulator, along with some diodes and other discrete components and a relay for the auxiliary pump.No difference in behavior after the resoldering. Out of time, I semi-buttoned things back up, enough to drive. More later, I guess. I did leave the MityVac hooked up so that the heater can be turned off manually.Three flex-circuits connect the brain board (BB) from the PB array, a nine-trace and a four-trace ganged together at the Left (Xh) connector end, and a four-trace at the Right (Xj) end. I imagine that the BB circuitry is somewhat similar to what is found in the earlier discrete 000 822 10 03 TEMPERATURREGLER unit.
Brain board connections Left Right
Pin Function 1 Xh-11 Blend Flap Ref. (Vcc 8 V) 2 Xh-12 Lamps 3 Xh-9 Cabin Temp 4 Xh-10 Outside Temp 5 Xh-7 Evaporator Temp 6 Xh-8 ??? 7 Ground 8 Xh-5 Blend Flap Pos. 9 NC (diagnostic tap?) 1 (10) Xh-4 Blend Flap, Warm 2 (11) Xh-1 Blend Flap, Cold 3 (12) Xh-2 Heater Valve 4 (13) ???
Pin Function 1 ??? AC Switch 2 ??? AC Switch 3 ??? AC Switch (DEF) 4 NC (diagnostic tap?)
LM2902 Quad Pin Function Pin Function 1 Out 1 14 Out 4 2 – 1 13 – 4 3 + 1 12 + 4 4 Vcc 11 Gnd 5 + 2 10 + 3 6 – 2 9 – 3 7 Out 2 8 Out 3
LM2904 Dual Pin Function Pin Function 1 Out 1 8 Vcc 2 – 1 7 Out 2 3 + 1 6 – 2 4 Gnd 5 + 2 A bit of circuit tracing shows that two of the PNP transistors on the switch board drive its Auxiliary Pump relay, inverted from the state of the brain board's water valve output. (If the water valve solenoid is engaged [not heating] then the auxiliary pump is off, unless the HVAC is switched OFF in which case the auxiliary pump is also off regardless of the state of the water valve solenoid.) The brain board is solely responsible for the state of the water valve, and it's (currently) stuck off. More tracing on the brain board showed that there was no power to the base drive circuit for the power transistor driving this signal, which comes from Pin 1 (output #1) of one of the LM2902's.
As the heater valve seems to be always on 'heat' I made a little wire lasso from Ground (right-hand connector Pin 12) to the heater valve control (left-hand [red-marked] connector Pin 2) on the pushbutton HVAC array, this will semi-permanently disable the heat, which will be welcome for Summer. I checked with the MityVac and it indeed did the trick. It's interesting that the vacuum system has both a vacuum (#5) and a vent valve (#1) in this circuit, the vent only operates with power on. Thus the vacuum on the valve is held when the key is turned off, that's the intended purpose and prevents the heater core from sucking up a load of hot water via convection when the key goes off. (At least, until the vacuum on the pod leaks down.)
...At the store today I picked up a 1/2" ball valve, and two 1/2"-to-5/8" barb fittings.
The original had just worn through the shoulder of the tire, it feels soft and thin all along there, and there's a blister where it's started going through the belting there. Shot to hell, that's for sure. I don't know why the inside fronts of the tires on this car are wearing so badly, this car has been aligned, and more than once.
Afterwards we drove to town in the new woods truck and bought more brake cleaner. $18 for three cans of the good stuff, which were not on sale today.
Bought a new wiper blade, $17. The monowiper arm got locked in the upwards position, which is apparently common. I slathered oil all over the place, and pushed really hard. Crack!!! Seems to be OK again. I hate this design.
Not one to take 'no' for an answer, I popped the end cap off of its combination switch. Daniel thinks that the worn part on his is the cap itself, and not the slots in the switch body that it clips to. I guess we'll see! He put the replacement on the car.
We had a look. Yes, it was low, because the fan had finally scrubbed a hole in the radiator. We poured more water in and could see it piddling from the middle of the fins behind the fan. This radiator was bowed in significantly due to some kind of front-end collision in its past, before I had bought it; clearance had always been extremely tight. The motor mounts have loosened up enough that the clearance finally wasn't sufficient.
Because the AC condensor was also bowed, the newly straightened radiator would no longer go back in. I used two 2×4's, one long, to remove some of the bow, prying against the upper radiator hose fitting while using the rubber mallet as a fulcrum and the short board as a pad for the condensor. There wasn't too much fin damage from this. (Not that the AC is working right now anyway.) With this done, the straightened radiator would go in again.
We pulled it back out and checked it for leaks by covering one port with a hand and blowing into the other. The pinched fin still leaked, which wasn't unexpected, but we could also hear leaks all along the tank where it was crimped to the core. Game Over! The hammering stress had been too much for it; no need to get out the epoxy to seal the crimped tube. The radiator was a real mess anyway.
I ordered a new Nissens radiator, $197.58 ($167.79 plus tax and shipping) from RockAuto. Not as bad as I'd thought it was going to be. They had a much cheaper one, but it was likely to be no-name China; I'd never heard of the brand.
Daniel took it for a test drive, it seemed OK. It had burped out a fair amount of air, and he replenished the water. He'll drive it to school tomorrow, and I also plan to get coolant.
Anyway, yesterday he backed the car up on ramps and removed the back half of the exhaust system. He wire-brushed the mating areas, and then he held the pipe onto the muffler and I tack-welded it in place. I then held the pipe and he did the welding. It took awhile but the result, while not pretty, looks adequate. He then reinstalled the system. Fixed!
There were two blown 8A fuses in the fuse box, explaining why the radio and dash lights didn't work again. Not sure what's up with that, but we replaced the fuses. He'll keep an eye on the situation.
But it works, and the wait-to-start dash light comes on again.
There's a gaping hole in the side of the exhaust pipe between the muffler and the center resonator. Daniel says that we can fix it Thursday, his next day off.
The fusing current for 24-gauge copper wire is listed at just about 30A, so two strands seems about right.
In the daylight I found the screw on the ground. I replaced the 2 links of fused 24ga copper with 3 links, but it still blew immediately. I checked each glow plug individually for shorts, just to be safe, and due to the extreme cold they were taking a lot of current 15+ A according to the battery charger. But, none were shorted or anything, and all behaved similarly when fed (individually) by the battery charger. (They start high, and gradually draw less current as they heat.)
So, I used four links of 24ga wire for a fuse, and the car started. I put the car on the battery charger.
Since he ran the battery down and had to cadge a ride to work, for which he was late, I went out in the heat of the day and put it on charge. I found the old 'fuse' that he'd replaced, and it had not blown. Once it was charged I glowed the car, and used the clamp-on ammeter to prove that it was glowing. I let the plugs cycle off ('click') and then did another 10–15 second glow, then started it. No problem, though it was reluctant. (It was warmer than earlier, which helped, as did the slightly-warmed and fully-charged battery.)
Hence, ipso facto, protocol failure. When it's this cold you get one chance to start, and you must make no mistakes. Glow, thoroughly, and then crank until it either starts or the battery dies.
After he got home for work, I again suggested that perhaps he'd find it advantageous to deploy the block heater. We went out, and determined that the car had the heater installed, but did not have a cord. There was a screw cover on it, and it was 100% clean inside. Probably a virgin, and likely to be functional. No cord, though. We had another thrift-shop block heater, but the cord was different. I suggested he check the now-defunct Frankenheap to see if it used the same heater. It did. I had him steal the cord, and put the cover over that heater.
We got it plugged in and the cord routed, avoiding thermal and mechanical hazards, and power connected. According to the Kill-A-Watt it draws in excess of 450W, which should be ample. You can hear it sizzle.
I rigged one of the X10 modules and told it to heat from 4–6AM, which should be ample. We discussed block heater protocol, and routing the cord so that one isn't tempted to drive away with it still connected. I think he'll be very pleased with the improvement tomorrow.
Time for another (used?) alternator? Pull-and-save didn't have any likely donors, and the in-town rebuilts basically weren't available, and/or were stupid expensive. FCP Euro's didn't have the pulley and fan, so... $94.05 (shipped and taxed) off eBay for a rebuilt Bosch, with pulley and fan. An additional $51.75 order from FCP Euro added a belt and a hood support strut (Stabilus) to the party.
The ersatz 'fuse' blew, he re-did it with four strands this time. There was no time to dig into whatever the problem was with the one GP. (It's more likely the harness has a problem than that the GP is actually shorted.)