If only you were nearer... Covid edition (1 weekend, 3 cars)

Now that's just teasing !! 😁😁😁😁
Nigel,

So, the delivery was a bit fraught.

When we viewed the cars, the seller said he needed to get his truck through an MOT.

This ended up taking a bit longer than planned... more than a month later, the seller sent me this photo...



And the cars were ready to embark on their 500 mile journey south.

A couple of hours later...



Both rear wheels on one side of the truck had come loose, and made their escape. The wheel bolt holes had elongated, so they had no choice but to abandon the delivery attempt that day.

One week later, the truck had two new wheels...



and was ready to go

7AM, and they showed up in Bristol



The gold parts donor was abandoned at a mate's house:



and my 560 finally was at it's new home:

I bolted the bumper back on, and already it didn't look so bad.



Initial impressions are good

and ohhh that velour...





Next up... reawakening it from 15 years of slumber

Really looking forward to seeing future updates on this thread,
Nice motor,
Nigel

Thanks everyone. The last few weeks have been busy, but not too much has changed visually.

A quick win was solving the central locking issue - it didn't work on the driver's door.



A missing pin here, which is part of the door lock knob that pokes out of the top of the doorcard, solved that problem.

First proper job was to give the engine a good service. It hasn't been started in 15 years, and the timing chain guides are plastic and known for disintegrating. If they disintegrate, it's not great as they often result in the engine lunching the timing chain, valves and everything else that goes with it.

They are held in place by pins which are removed by pulling them out of the block. Not especially fun, but I've done worse jobs.



Ah yes, that was in need of replacement. I'm glad I didn't just try firing it up

With that done, I also replaced the sprockets:



I did intend to do the chain, but I was sent the wrong links, so that's a job for another day. The current one doesn't show signs of stretching. At that point I'll also do the top end oil lines, which have plastic inserts, and the hydraulic timing chain tensioner.

With the engine back together, it was time to see if it would start after 15 years of slumber.

A few attempts found it wouldn't fire, even with fuel chucked down the inlet.

Checked the ignition timing, and found the previous owner had put the leads on the distributor one position clockwise to the correct ones...

With that rectified, and fuel down the air inlet, it roared into life:



I'd identified that one of the fuel pumps was dead, which is probably why it wouldn't run on it's own.

While removing the fuel pumps, I found it took 24hrs to drain the 10l or so of fuel from the tank...

This culminated in two new fuel pumps (they run in series), two new filters (one in tank, one by the pumps) and a new hard line between the pipes (because it was so corroded I broke it...). Luckily all still available, either from MB or Bosch.

That resulted in:



which resulted in:



You'll note it has a high idle.

On the W126 groups, whenever anyone has a poorly running engine, the first thing people suggest is to try the over voltage protection relay. This is intended to protect the ECU from... over voltage

This little thing on the firewall:



I was lucky - in mine, the fuse was blown (possibly from it being used with various battery packs etc). Replacing it led to a nice solid idle.



It sounds a bit horrible there, mostly due to mechanical noise from loose belts and the water pump pulley not being secured properly.

Happy with that. Next job will be oil change, and sorting out the gearbox. Apparently it came off the road back in 2006 because the gearbox was shifting roughly.

21 days since the last post.

Come ON! ;-)

I always wanted a 126. Always. A 560 is a dream for me, I used to walk past one in Paddington a lot, used daily. I used ot think it was stalking me in the hope that I would take pity on it and buy it. Turns out that it was just a guys daily! Imagine!

Anyhow, good luck!

Thanks folks

It's been a busy time since the last update, but not all that much photo-worthy...

I started by investigating the gearbox... this was the reason it was laid up 15 years ago - rough shifting.

I started by going to drain the sump. But nothing came out - which doesn't bode well.

Sump removed, and there was probably 1/4 litre of oil which couldn't drain out of the sump due to the design.



The torque converter still had it's fair share of oil, so that was drained via the special plug in it.

I fitted a new sump gasket and gearbox oil filter, and put the sump back on to hide the witchcraft within.

New ATF (about 7 litres!) and it moves itself forward and backwards under it's own steam

I then took some time out from the Benz to replace the cab floor in my '71 VW Camper. A brief montage...









Before going back to the Benz, to begin the next task - replacing the rear brakes.

When it was delivered, one of the rear brake lines had been cut as a caliper was stuck on. The rear brake lines were steel, and absolutely crispy.

I went to remove the caliper, to find Mercedes didn't put the captive threads in the nice thick hub casting. Oh no, that would be too simple. Instead, the caliper bolts go through the hub casting and the M10 captive nuts are in the flimsy backplate. Which, when rotten, just falls apart allowing the nuts to spin.

I had to remove the old caliper one half at a time...



before some creative welding and repairs to the brake backplate.

With some assistance from my canine helper, we eventually had new rear calipers and hard lines. Old discs seem pretty good other than surface rust, so are re-used for now



(no axle stand as I took the photo just before letting the car back down!).

A brief interlude as my small Volvo broke down on the way back from a work trip with 4(!) simultaneous faults... (failed rotor arm (2 years old), huge gearbox oil leak (rebuilt 400 miles ago!), coolant leak and a seized turbocharger...)



That got brought home in disgrace and parked up to think about what it has done...

Back to the Benz, which has just had new front discs, pads, calipers and hard lines:





With the brakes bled, it was time to see if it would go (on my private road)...





Stay tuned for exciting exhaust repairs, a bit of welding and then an MOT test soon

Awesome!

So, the rustproofing was expensive, but I figured it was worthwhile to save spending days on my back removing rust from the car, and then days removing rust from my eyeballs afterwards.

I had an email, with a few pictures of rust (some of which I knew about, but I didn't think they would be worried about as it wasn't areas I wanted rustproofing). I also

Here we go... (apologies for the close-up pics, I've borrowed those sent to me by the rustproofing place)

Driver's side rear arch (was holed on the inner arch and also bad at the rear corner and middle section too)



Driver's side rear bumper mount:



Passenger side was even worse:



Several rusty jacking points...



Rear valence...



Front passenger wing:

Time until wedding at this point: 3 months.

I just couldn't justify the £4500 quote for the welding (NOT including bodywork/paint!), when I'd not paid anything like that for the car.

Time to get welding, prepping and painting.

Gulp.

Thanks Grizz! It's definitely 'putting up with', although she does rather like the 60s cars, she isn't a huge fan of the boxy 80s designs...

The first thing I knew I'd need was the rear bumper mount. Mercedes have unfortunately discontinued many W126 panels fairly recently, including the under-rear-window panel which almost all of these cars need.

I scoured the internet, putting my credit card details into a number of dodgy looking websites (not like that!) and normally being refunded after they couldn't get the bumper mount repair panels any longer.

Eventually, I found a place in the Netherlands that had ONE left in stock! So if you're reading this, apologies, I may have bought the last example of part number 1266300036 in existence!




Each side is a mirror image, but the bumper mount is made of two mirror image pressings (the body curves round, so the mount sticks out more). Luckily, I only needed the bottom half of the mount on each side, so I could split the mount in two and use it!

On the driver's side, I was fortunate that the bit of body the bumper mount is attached to is solid. A simple job of drilling out spot welds and welding the new one in.





On the passenger side, I wasn't so lucky, so a lot more work was needed.











Some other wheelarch holes were welded up, as were the jacking points.

Top tip - a place on ebay sells jacking point repair panels from Germany. They were lovely pressings, but utterly did not match my car. I fabricated my own in the end.



Rear valence repaired by a cut from the donor car (although I could have fabricated my own otherwise!)




As was the wing:

Old metal cut out:



New metal in:



It's worth noting that 560SELs had different front wings from all other W126s - the arches are flared 1-2cm more, giving a more aggressive look, so I had to try to save this wing rather than bunging a repro one on. Eagle eyed viewers will note that the driver's side wing is NOT a 560SEL one, but I now have a RH 560SEL wing ready to be painted and fitted.

Last up, the rear wheelarch. Klokkerholm make panels which alledgedly are for this car. I wasn't overly convinced, so only used what I needed to!



That concludes the welding, probably about 2 months to go until the wedding at this point.

On to making it look good...