9th August 2015 at Ormiston House Wellington Point ,Queensland. Amazingly beautiful weather saw a large number of both entrants and visitors take in the sight of some of Queensland’s loveliest Mercedes paraded on the lawns of Historic Ormiston House.
A short video showing the 6.3 up and running to check it’as C/O level at hot idle .
A customer has bought in his early 380SEC to replace all the front suspension joints and reseal the steering box.
Replacing the rubber parts in the front end is very straight forward ,even the brake support mounts which get damaged by engine oil and steering box fluid dripping onto them
Above is the puller I used to extract the old rubber mount and then ,reversed to force the new bush into place. It takes about 5 minutes to remove the old one and fit the replacement .
There are two different bushes on each side and they must be checked to ensure the metal piece is level with edge of the housing.
But when i went to change the passenger side components i noticed that the whole assembly seemed to move . The forward mounting had broken free from the chassis.
The part had to be cleaned up ,along with the chassis rail then welded back together again.
The PVC underseal was rmoved and then painted with Etch primer,primer and a finish coat .Followed by a coating of PVC undercoat to protect the paint.
Next job was to drop the steering box out and strip it down..
The inside of the steering box full,with what can only be described as Mud…. lots of black oily mud which can be seen in the left hand pic ,all that black stuff is dirt .. A good reason to flush the hoses,lines and steering pump before the steering box is refitted.
In these pictures of the distributor, the inside is full of the damned bicarb which was used to strip the older paint of the cars body before painting.
The distributor will be stripped and overhauled because the bicarb will affect the fuel injection trigger points which are in the lower part of the distributor.
In this picture it can be seen that the bicarb has infiltrated the igniton wiring.
The engine is now together and just needs tuning , after the heads were checked an the tappets adjusted.
The shroud was derusted ,then painted with POR15 gloss black .
So far the oil cooler line has been repaired,the cam covers wet blasted ,the therrmo fitted and the right hand exhaust manifold fitted to the engine. The engine is now waiting ofr a new thermo time switches and the new left hand exhaust manifold to arrive. The original manifold was too badly damaged to repair owning to a gasket leak in the past. The repainted booster and the replated brackets are now in . The engine bay is filling up fast!.
A new fuel line has been fitted using the original brackets etc which were in good condition after 40 years…!
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The engine bay needed a clean and after a wash it was revealed to have a few places where the paint had disappeared because of engine heat . 
With the heads off ,a few little things became apparent such as this feed wire for one of the thermal time Switches. A couple of the firewall grommets needed replacing .Missing grommets allow noise,fumes etc into the cabin .
The Steering box was leaking through that round part on the top part of the
Steering box . A new seal had to made for this and the two copper washers were missing. the cover nut and lock nut were both loose. The oil return pipe on the steering box has also been damaged in the past when some one bent it.
With the heads off and the engine due for a repaint ,the booster was removed and rust removed . it was then etch primed and primed. The other objects in the picture belong to the 280SE 3.5 ute project..
The car was completely masked up and the engine bay resprayed in the black satin as before.
BUT before the black could be applied and the engine bay was still in primer one or two other jobs need doing.
The firewall brace on the left hand side was cracked almost right around and had to be welded up.
With the engine bay now painted the heads were fitted ,along with newly plated relay brackets . There is a lot less wiring now the original loom has been cleaned up and things such as a mobile phone loom removed .
Big Surprise today,Saturday 9/05/15. The roofers finally turned up to repair the damn roof. Because the old one was asbestos sheet,the whole shop had to sealed up while they removed every on top of the building. Amzingly it took only 8 hours to strip the old roof off and fit insulation ,then fit the new Zincalume roof.
Brilliant light now!.
I was sick of placing the lathe chuck keys etc on top of the lathe ,although it has been happening since the machine was built in 1968.
It’s a peice of 1″ thick plywood mounted on the upright from a small bench top drill press .the wooden circle is mounted to the shaft on a drive flange from a Mercedes diff. The little tray that the magnetic dial indicator holders are sitting (sticking too) on is the vice stand of the drill press.I can move it and lock it in any position. It’s bent to allow the wood part to be easily accessible…
benzkraft 
