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Mercedes 250 se re- commision

105K views 177 replies 80 participants last post by  weedougall78 
#1 · (Edited)
Hi every one, I dont normally post any of my work on here but do get a lot of pleasure from reading all the other posts and if im honest after 38 years of repairing, restoring, and detailing (as its now called) it helps to keep my enthusiasm and quality of work up to a reasonable standard.
Anyway a little background that led to this car being put back on the road.
I was recommended to the owner by one of my friends and was asked if I would go and inspect a vehicle that had stood in a garden for twenty years to see what it would need to get it back on the road, so arrangements were made and at the beginning of September 2011 I arrived at the chaps home to view the car, well i wished I had taken my camera because I was led to the rear of the house and up to the back of the garden where I could see a green mound in the shape of a car,i cant print what i then said but it it was on the lines of I am not a gardener so call me when you have dug it out, I am not joking when I say you could not see any part of the car.
Well I left the premises thinking what a waste of time and quit honestly was angry at the stupidity of some people.
By the time I got home I had calmed down and was now finding it quit funny but thought I wont hear anything from the chap again, wrong, in December the phone goes "when can you come back and look at the car again as its now on the drive and we have cleaned it for you" this iv got to see I thought so I arranged to go the next day this is what I found.

















Well it looked like a car now, and not as bad as I expected it to be, the owner had put some part worn tires on it so it could be towed out of the garden and he said he had washed it five times, what with Iv no idea.
Do you think it will start ? he said, no f..... chance I replied, 20 year old petrol for a start, electric fuel pump for another, well Iv got the pump working, I hit it with an hammer was the reply, well you already know its not going to start dont you I replied.
Just tinker with it and see if it will go.
This is how it went on for a good 15 minutes before I could convince him that we needed to check certain things before trying to start the car and that it would need the petrol tank checking and new fuel in it.
Next episode, the mechanical checks and the outcome.
 
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#4 · (Edited)
After giving the car a good inspection and finding that overall the car wasnt in bad condition considering where it had lived for so long but the engine wouldnt turn over, the sump was full of fuel and oil, and I mean full (up the dipstick tube) some of the electrics had been disconnected so was never going to start it was decided that before any cosmetics were looked at we should see if I could revive the engine as is or whether to strip and rebuild or source a replacement.
At this point I had to explain that it would be February 2012 before I could look at the vehicle as I already had some commitments to fulfill, then came the bombshell, the reason he wanted the car back on the road was his daughter was getting married in May 2012 and would like the car to take her to the church.
Now normally I would have at least 3 weeks off over xmas and the new year as I do work 7 days a week and havnt been away on holiday for 8 years, plus I hate working in the cold but I cant resist a challenge so I decided I would recover the car to my home and see what I could do with the engine over the xmas holiday.
Once it was on my drive the oil was drained all twelve ltrs of it (most of it over my drive) it stunk of petrol, filter removed. plugs had already been removed. new oil and filter. Sprayed wd40 and oil down the plug holes,big socket and snap on bar on crank pulley nut and give it a tug but still no movement so decided to call it a day and let the penetrating oil do its stuff.
Next morning a couple of tugs on the bar and hey presto engine turned over ( ho the excitement) replaced the bar for a ratchet and kept turning the engine for a good half an hour hoping to clear any residue or surface rust from the bores.
Next was to install a new battery and see if the starter motor will work and carry out a compression test.
No compression on 5 of the six cylinders and very little on the other, now the car had only done 26000 miles with paperwork to substantiate this so im not thinking that the valves are burnt out and in my opinion the rings had seized in the pistons so ideally the engine could do with stripping and rebuilding.
So phone call to the owner was made to explain where we were at and an estimate of the engine work was given and left him to decide what he wanted to do.
One week later I get a phone call basically saying that his budget for the whole car was about the same as the engine rebuild would cost and with the cost of his daughters wedding he could not commit any more money and would arrange for the car to be collected from my home.
Well this made me quit sad as he had set his heart on using the car on the big day and although I didnt know him from Adam he seemed a really nice bloke, so after a couple of days pondering I rang him back and asked him to let me tinker (lol) with it and see if I could breath some life into it at no charge and if I had any success we would take it from there and after all it was my holiday lol.
Now you decide whether you want the soap opera version or the short version of what I did next.
 
#9 · (Edited)
If you remember back in December it was really cold so nothing was going to free up in that weather so my thinking was that what I needed to do was to some how get the engine warm so that the aluminum pistons would expand to allow the rings some movement and hopefully start to free up so more wd40 and oil were poured into the bores and an electric fan heater was left with the element side against the block and left on for approx 6 hours during this time I drained the cooling system of water, now because I felt there was no point in doing anything with the fuel or ignition systems as regards finding out why the sump was full of fuel if there wasnt going to be any compression to get the car started also never thought about taking any photos at this stage either as in my opinion I was clutching at straws (plenty of pics later) anyway as said after about 6 hours of having the heater on even the oil in the sump was warm now, I refilled the rad with red hot water and spun the engine over for a few minutes then let it rest for a couple of minutes the span it again kept repeating this until the battery went flat, changed the battery and attached the compression tester and what do you know I had enough compression on four cylinders to actually make the needle try and move but not enough to get the car to fire up.
By this time it was dark and very cold so left the car for the night and decided to repeat the same process the day after so after putting both batterys on charge I called it a night.
After repeating the process the next day the compressions actually came up to giving about 40 lb not enough to run the car but certainly gave me some hope that the rings were starting to move, so more wd and left again over night. next day attached the tester and the readings had come up some more so I made the decision to go over the fuel system and ignition system and try and get the car to fire thinking if i can get it to run even roughly the pistons would get a lot hotter than the heater was getting them so inspected the fuel pump to find it had no oil showing on its mini dip stick so I removed the top plate to find the slider inside was stuck, this was freed up and oil added, new point condenser and plugs fitted I removed the petrol tank sender unit and stuck the endoscope in to have a look how much rubbish was in there, surprise to say not bad at all so re fitted sender unit and went to petrol station with a big can, now i can hear you saying what about the fuel filter and residue in the pipes and bla bla bla, well not going to do loads more work to find that its not going to run, now these old Mercs have to have a minimum of 4 gallons of fuel in them before you can start them so it was 2 trips to the petrol station and fifty quids worth was put in.
The moment of truth had arrived, switched the ignition on and could hear the fuel pump working and priming loosened the fuel pipe to injection pump and fuel was there so here we go, holding the throttle wide open I spun the engine and yes youv guest it, nothing, spinning over but not firing I (I know im writing like its a fairy tale but no happy endings at the moment) I then removed the spark plugs again they were soaked in fuel ran another compression test and the readings had got a little higher on a couple of cylinders so fresh plugs were installed and this time with no throttle just kept spinning the car over, still nothing, despondent and freezing i called it a day but now it was getting personal so bright and early the next morning ( in the frost ) removed plugs again and another new set put in, points gap checked, timing checked, spark at the plug checked, back in the car turned the key IT FIRED but would not run but I was quit exited wich dont happen much these days after 30 odd years of working on cars.
Plugs again removed cleaned and refitted (ran out of new ones) span the car over and giving it a little throttle it fired and run all be it on 2 cylinders for about 20 seconds but It did run, so again removed the plugs got one of the first set and decided to warm them up with a blowtorch before refitting, turned the key and it ran again, not for long maybe 45 second but hey it was longer than the last time, this was repeated over the next 4 days each time it ran for longer but just not long enough to get the engine hot so at this point I had now worked for 7 days, put £50 worth of fuel in it, oil, filter, 18 plugs, points, condenser, blood sweat and nearly tears and had already told him I wouldnt be charging him and the only way i was ever going to be happy was if I got it running properly.
what would you do ?
 
#16 ·
Yes, it got personal, in fact so much so that I think I was pretty much prepared to do any thing to get it running properly, so I rang the owner and told him what I had been doing but could tell by the way he was talking that he was worried about the cost, even though i had told him that it was down to me but told him that if i got it running properly then he had to let me have a chance to tidy it up, he seemed quit embarrassed that I wasnt going to charge him for what I had done but agreed to talk about the cost of getting the rest of the car done if and when I got it running properly.
Now at this point I must tell you (and dont like pulling my own chain, hence why iv never posted before) but I have restored lots of old beautiful cars to show winning standards and have had numerous cars featured in car magazines but none of them have ever had the effect that this car was having on me and I have never particularly liked the w108 car, in fact even though I love doing whatever it takes to keep these oldies on the road I cant stand driving them, but this car, I think im falling in love with it to the point of being silly and phoning the owner back and asking him if he would sell it to me.
No came the reply, ho well never mind ill get on with getting it running then.
the next few days of starting it, letting it cough and splutter, swap the plugs and start it again started to pay off as the car would run for longer each time it started, then it started to run on about 4 cylinders (straight six by the way) and kept running as long as i feathered the throttle wich meant That I could get the engine nice and hot but at the back of my mind I started thinking, some of the rings are going to broken or stuck for ever, there were clouds of smoke coming from the exhaust and it wasnt clearing it, wasnt trying to fire on all six and then ran out of petrol, but the engine had got hot so we will see what happens with some more fuel, another £50 quids worth goes in but before starting it again decided to remove the plugs and do another compression test also notice cylinders 1 and 5 plugs were oiled up but carried on with doing the compressions, now 4 of the cylinders had gone up to around 100 on my tester and 2 was about 60 but these low reading cylinders were not the cylinders with low readings so putting 2 and 2 together and making five I decided to check the continuity of the plug leads and sure enough they were scrap so new ones were ordered and called it a night but feeling pleased with the fact that I had kept my patience with the car to get it this far.
more soon
 
#17 ·
I think iv waffled on long enough concerning getting the car started so I will cut to the shorter version so we can get on with the good bits, I think by now you have the general jist of where this is all leading, my only concern was whether after all this work I found that there was serious damage to the piston rings or it would burn excessive oil. but all was well (almost) although the engine ran it wasnt as smooth as it should be and the tick over very erratic but after being buried for half its life this was only to be expected and I was now confident that the more it ran the better it would get and also would have the oil and filter replaced again along with fuel filter and other service items.
Now we had a bad oil leak to contend with to, looks like front crank pulley seal has failed.
Now to get the owner round to have a look and decide what he wants to do next. now I know what I want to do to the car but I am pretty sure he wont be able to afford to have it my way.
I was right,after going over and over the cost of this, that and the other it was apparent that if I had charged for the hours I had already spent on the engine there would have been no money left to do any thing else as it was he probably had enough for me to get it mechanically sound and through an mot but that was about it and that was working to half my normal labour rate just because i wanted to finish what I started, no decision was reached and the owner wanted a couple of days to think about it. Next day the owners brother arrived to take a look and after an hour of looking over the car he seemed very enthusiastic about getting the car done properly and went off to speak to his brother, a couple of hours later the phone went and the owner said his brother had agreed to give him some money to help get it done but it was still substantially short of what the cost would be but I agreed to do what I could with the funds available. I am not going to divulge the figure but if you take 3 months average mans wage thats about it and this was to include all parts, more fuel, mot, paintwork and more MUCH MORE but we will come to that later.
so now I will let some pictures do the talking, if you have any questions about any part of this job, feel free to ask.







































 
#18 ·


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All these parts were cleaned, prepped and painted in the evenings in my freezing cold garage after working out on my freezing cold drive during the day (did I mention, I HATE WINTER) anyway the oil seal was installed and some of the pulleys were refitted along with the injectors and pipes just so I could run the car briefly (no rad fitted) just to check the oil leak was cured.
At this point I knew the car would run and seemed better each time it ran so I thought I would get on with the rest of the jobs and worry about getting it to run properly when I had done the rest of the work.
I now had to consider the budget and make a decision on what was going to get done and what wasnt, so while I pondered on this I started to tidy the engine bay as it did look a little sad.
I started by bagging the alternator, and distributor and soaking every thing in sight with a mixture of Gunk and G101 the with stiff brushes got to work rubbing it in to the years of rubbish and oil whilst constantly spraying the degreasers over the areas I was attending to, I removed both front wheels to make access a little easier to the lower sides of the block, sump and gearbox as these had been covered in oil from the front crank seal leak, this took all day and at minus 3 degrees felt like a week,
the next day I started cleaning the flitch panels, bulk head and chassis rails and although they looked a lot better being white ther was a lot of staining in the paint so to most of you on here this will seem a bit unorthodox I got out some industrial cream cleaner (pretty much like jiff) and rubbed it over the panels and chassis legs, underside of the bonnet etc with a damp sponge, this done the trick and was only left with the parts that had the paint burned off by leaking battery acid, this could be repainted later on

[img]http://www.evo-host.co.uk/getimg/29179.jpg









with the engine now clean and surrounding areas looking much better I decided to start on the inner wings including inside the wings themselves as there was moss every where and while I was at it clean the suspension as well





 
#19 ·
I did my first full restoration when I was seventeen an old Borgward Isabella ts that my grandad gave me and when it was finished there was a saying amongst family and freinds and this was Ted could polish a Turd. well this merc had become my turd, I have done umpteen restorations on cars far worse than this but for some reason this car had got to me, hook line and sinker and I had now decided this car was going to get the same treatment that my open budget cars get and i dont care how much it costs me personally, the motor trade has been good to me over the years and now it was time to give something back even if it was to a total stranger ,so off I went.
Now as you may have noticed on the last pictures the brakes looked very sorry for them selves so these were stripped and as there was no actual wear on the discs they were corroded so I sent these away to be skimmed, new pads ordered and calipers were freed of, cleaned and painted along with anything else that had fell off lol



















Also while I was stripping the brakes I noticed that the drop link bushes were rotted so new complete links were fitted.
I have used my photo allowance for today and have an old mercedes 300 6.9 ltr awaiting my attention so there will be more later.
Thanks for looking.
 
#22 ·
After the brakes were refitted and surrounding components cleaned, brakes at this point will not be bled until rears are striped and checked and all brake lines checked for corrosion then fluid will be drained and replaced with 5.1.
So with the engine bay now looking cleaner and arches clean decided to concentrate on the front end paint work and chrome, so paint was mixed and chassis legs arches and front slam panel were prepped to add some colour to the bits that were a bit rusty











 
#24 ·


With the engine bay now nearly complete and the front end at a nice working hight, I then turned my attention to the body work and chrome.
I had been looking forward to having a go at the dull and oxidized body work so out with the snow foam with apc added and brillo pad (only jocking) then washed not using the two bucket method at this stage, rinsed and dried. now I would normally clay the car but I considered it a waste of good clay and decided I would just cut the crap out of the paint (shock horror I hear you say, no clay) my job my choice, judge me on the finished job, so out with the mop and armed with hexlogic pads and menz heavy cut of I attacked the car like a man possessed, both front wings, bonnet and half the front doors, stand back and have a look, looked a different car already.

 
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