Got a decent start today despite sleeping in until 6:00. Grille mounted, front and rear bumpers polished, cleaned and mounted along with the cleaned end caps and brackets. Cleaned and detailed trunk liners on both sides, cleaned trunk carpet and freshened. Removed spare tire to find it was nearly brand new but has a date code of 2004 AND a nice little sheet metal screw in the edge of the tread. It holds air for now but I’ll be looking for a replacement from CL or one of the local used tire resellers.
Touch up paint on the two small rust areas has dried and looks nice - it really blended in better than I expected. Now that it’s dry I waxed it and replaced the trim pieces that cover both areas. “Red Berries” were already installed on Wednesday, so it’s was just a matter of popping the trim on the right rear door and screwing the lower trunk lid trim to the trunk lid. No rust anywhere in the trunk but signs of leaking noticed near the trailing edge of the trunk “ceiling” near the right side hinge. The rear windows seal is in such bad shape I’m sure that water has gotten into the trunk via the failed seal, however, it couldn’t have been much as there’s no sign of it on the floor or in the spare tire well. I’m not keen about the idea, but I am seriously considering replacement of the rear window seal myself as I can’t find anyone around here that will touch it. I have done windows like it a long time ago in my VW and W112 days, so it won’t be the first time. Hmm. Doing some final checking I found that I must have overfilled the crankcase slightly when I changed oil last week, so I suctioned about 1/2 quart out. Whoops! I replaced the levers on the vacuum switchover valves on the valve cover, as one was worn away completely and the other was almost gone. Cleaned the cam of all the old grease and applied fresh Mobil 1 synthetic grease since I had it handy. Took the “whiz nut” off the bolt in the power steering reservoir as it didn’t belong. Fortunately the spring was the original one so it was just a matter of putting everything back together the way it belonged. Not sure why the whiz nut was there. Noticed that the windows had a lot of water spots that I couldn’t clean off. Hmm. Jay O’Brien from the old lists had given me this little container of some polishing compound called “Nuttin’s Better” that was used for polishing imperfections out of windshields. I must have used it up or lost it in a move, so I started looking for alternatives. A-hah! Rubbing compound! So I applied rubbing compound to the glass and polished away. Looks great and took all of the water spots off the glass, too. Nice. All that’s left for the day is to replace the “Gottlieb Daimler” signature sticker on the inside of the windshield. I’ll head out to do that next, then probably drive over to our private park before sundown to take some glamour shots. The stickers can be had from the Classic Center for around $7.00/each - part number 115 584 08 38. Tomorrow I may do motor mounts, as I’ve got a set of Lemförder mounts UPS just delivered. I’ll clean carpets and interior tomorrow as well. I need to do the power steering fluid and fuel filters along with a Diesel Purge, too. Maybe that will be on Sunday. Dan/Martha _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
