1972 Mercedes W108 280SE 4.5
Discussion
It’s fair to say the Laon Historique trip went very well indeed! The car proved itself a worthy addition to the trip and was truly enjoyable!
However, upon getting back to Blighty, things were getting busy! My sister’s wedding date was getting closer and closer in time, with the demands of what to do getting inevitably larger!
Come July & August time, near the actual date, things really got interesting! In short, the wedding preparations, including marquee buying, food & booze purchasing, and other loose ends really was taking up time. At this moment, all of the cars decided to play up!
• The M3 became increasingly worse and worse to drive ; the power wasn’t there. As soon as the DSC was turned off off, it was fine.
• Mondeo I thought had an iffy driveshaft
• Merc was just thirsty, and as you know, gave issues prior to this in the form of gear linkage issues.
With the need for ferrying families and aforementioned stock around, the M3, even with you needing to disable the DSC every time you drove it was never going to cut it.
As a result, the Mercedes ended up hitting daily service:
So, what was it like to drive? Honestly, it was quite a surprise! Sure, the body control isn’t great, especially as my Mondeo got tested the week before when an old Defender went into the middle lane just as I did, but without him indicating; I almost thought I’d lose control of the Mondeo with the last minute realisation upon me!
The Mondeo dying at such a critical time was annoying for sure! The M3 was also a pain. At this point, there people who keep saying:
“why don’t you have a car on PCP or a normal car?”
“you know you do a few miles, this is why I have a new car and my classic”
I'm sure threads on PH have been debated to death over the above.
Yes, I had the Mercedes, but Christ, a 200-300 mile week can soon become a £100 hit on fuel a week as well. Ouch! But it was the choices I made, so I had to put up and shut up with the car.
But it was still mostly useless for the wedding week. I still needed a more frugal, and family friendly car, especially with no-one willing to touch the Mondeo for a month. Thankfully, a friend took pity on me, and so, enter Stage Left:
Yup, I had an 2010 Audi C6 A6 3.0 Avant S-Line lent to me! I never really ‘got’ these, but after having it for a week, I certainly fell for the car. It’s a new car on here, but it’s crazy to think that even this car is 9 years old now! If I was in a better position, I’d have bought this off my friend! It’s still for sale for those wondering
. I did however try to make the deal more fair by changing his wheels from the Chromed A6 items to the factory 19" wheels it came on, with me footing the tyre changing bill of £60. Annoyingly, I didn't use my guy in Rugby, and paid the price with 'good' vibrations from one of the wheels. Ah well, lesson learned.
With the Audi taking care of wedding duties, and me running around like a mad arsed fly, the pressure was certainly removed!
But then it was time for the Merc’s crowning moment. When I said it was almost useless for the wedding I omitted one detail. It was also to be my sister’s wedding car, which was quite a nice personal touch.
Besides the hassle of hiring a car, and meeting those deadlines, it’s just a little easier if it is your car ☺. And what a car to do it in!
It wouldn’t just do my sister’s wedding, it would also do a friend’s wedding as well! At both events, the car certainly was spoken about more than the hired Rollers and Bentleys there, and also had many positive comments for them!
So, it was a busy month for sure, but for now, the Merc has been put back into storage after a month long workout of it being a partial daily driver for me, and a wallet emptier!
Oh, remember the Mondeo’s issues? It was the wheel nuts. No joke! I do wonder if I tightened them correctly now! However, its very strange how they only undid half a turn over an 8 month period of when the wheels were last touched, and how the wheel itself was clicking rather than clonking!
At least that last point amused my friends.
However, upon getting back to Blighty, things were getting busy! My sister’s wedding date was getting closer and closer in time, with the demands of what to do getting inevitably larger!
Come July & August time, near the actual date, things really got interesting! In short, the wedding preparations, including marquee buying, food & booze purchasing, and other loose ends really was taking up time. At this moment, all of the cars decided to play up!
• The M3 became increasingly worse and worse to drive ; the power wasn’t there. As soon as the DSC was turned off off, it was fine.
• Mondeo I thought had an iffy driveshaft
• Merc was just thirsty, and as you know, gave issues prior to this in the form of gear linkage issues.
With the need for ferrying families and aforementioned stock around, the M3, even with you needing to disable the DSC every time you drove it was never going to cut it.
As a result, the Mercedes ended up hitting daily service:
So, what was it like to drive? Honestly, it was quite a surprise! Sure, the body control isn’t great, especially as my Mondeo got tested the week before when an old Defender went into the middle lane just as I did, but without him indicating; I almost thought I’d lose control of the Mondeo with the last minute realisation upon me!
The Mondeo dying at such a critical time was annoying for sure! The M3 was also a pain. At this point, there people who keep saying:
“why don’t you have a car on PCP or a normal car?”
“you know you do a few miles, this is why I have a new car and my classic”
I'm sure threads on PH have been debated to death over the above.
Yes, I had the Mercedes, but Christ, a 200-300 mile week can soon become a £100 hit on fuel a week as well. Ouch! But it was the choices I made, so I had to put up and shut up with the car.
But it was still mostly useless for the wedding week. I still needed a more frugal, and family friendly car, especially with no-one willing to touch the Mondeo for a month. Thankfully, a friend took pity on me, and so, enter Stage Left:
Yup, I had an 2010 Audi C6 A6 3.0 Avant S-Line lent to me! I never really ‘got’ these, but after having it for a week, I certainly fell for the car. It’s a new car on here, but it’s crazy to think that even this car is 9 years old now! If I was in a better position, I’d have bought this off my friend! It’s still for sale for those wondering
. I did however try to make the deal more fair by changing his wheels from the Chromed A6 items to the factory 19" wheels it came on, with me footing the tyre changing bill of £60. Annoyingly, I didn't use my guy in Rugby, and paid the price with 'good' vibrations from one of the wheels. Ah well, lesson learned.With the Audi taking care of wedding duties, and me running around like a mad arsed fly, the pressure was certainly removed!
But then it was time for the Merc’s crowning moment. When I said it was almost useless for the wedding I omitted one detail. It was also to be my sister’s wedding car, which was quite a nice personal touch.
Besides the hassle of hiring a car, and meeting those deadlines, it’s just a little easier if it is your car ☺. And what a car to do it in!
It wouldn’t just do my sister’s wedding, it would also do a friend’s wedding as well! At both events, the car certainly was spoken about more than the hired Rollers and Bentleys there, and also had many positive comments for them!
So, it was a busy month for sure, but for now, the Merc has been put back into storage after a month long workout of it being a partial daily driver for me, and a wallet emptier!
Oh, remember the Mondeo’s issues? It was the wheel nuts. No joke! I do wonder if I tightened them correctly now! However, its very strange how they only undid half a turn over an 8 month period of when the wheels were last touched, and how the wheel itself was clicking rather than clonking!
At least that last point amused my friends
.With my posts being this quiet, you'd wonder if I still have the car!
The truth is I do! It's locked away from the winter salt. Some would say I am panzying out here, but here are the facts
:
It's been in Sunny Sacramento for 47 years. It's FAR less rustier than any car I've had before and never needed a welder. Not because it was filled, but because it never rotted out. My M3 is rustier than this car and that is saying something! The only car I've had with almost as less rust that is getting on a bit is my 944 Turbo, and that required a pair of wings and sills (read £££££) to stay like that.
That's not to say it's not been used. I've somehow put 4,500 miles onto it just last year!
Part of that of course was down to Laon for the Laon Historique. Should a few more RRers want to go, let me know for more details.
The other event? It was also used at my sister's wedding. It was a superb car to have for that, and it really was something that was a little different:
Yup, it really played the part well for this!
However, it was hardly a quiet time! After all:
-My sister was getting married. Those who know about Asian weddings as @rav does will know it's no easy thing working around 500 people and having hot-headed people inevitbally surrounding you!
-We have relatives from abroad to host and look after before and after the wedding ; that was tough going ; Free/spare time? Forget about it!
A little selfish is the above! However, all of the cars had issues including:
-Merc : Sunroof broke 1 week before my sister's wedding; that couldn't have been timed better! Not!
-Dad's BMW E61 535d ; Complete power loss. It would move, just very slowly!
-Mondeo ; Suspected driveshaft failure!
-Audi in the above shots ; Friend's car lent to me during the Mondeo going bad ; Issue? EML came out during the overseas family hosting while running around.
-M3 ; Unusable without turning the DSC off. Eventually, the dash became an Xmas tree as you can read about in that thread.
The Audi going wrong really was the final straw. I was busy, running around like an idiot, and I was sick of all of my cars at this point. I have nothing that worked properly, ; The Merc drenched you if it rained, which it did! The Mondeo knocked like hell, the Audi was fine bar an EML except it wasn't my car and happened on my watch, and the M3 was a pain!
All of the cars, and more, yet every damn car had a flaw. I seriously came come to selling everything as it was and buying a new car, even if the cost would break me. At least I'd have dependable transport, and not 3 broken cars! Maybe the PCP folk had a point.
However, the dust would settle and eventually I would get some time back to myself. With this time, I tackled all of the car's issues including:
-M3 ; ABS sensor caused the issues; that was changed ;the issue seemed more like a driveshaft ring.
-Mondeo : Wheel nuts somehow worked loose over 5,000 miles. Did I feel stupid? A little. However, loose nuts are a strange issue to have 5,000 miles on! I don't have any idea what caused that, but I changed the nuts as a precaution
-Audi : friend knew about the issue ; It was the EGR ; and it happened now and again
-BMW 535d ; Trapped vacuum pump brought back most of the power as did changing the intercooler seals. However, the cracked manifold replacement was the icing on the cake.
The Merc's broken sunroof. That would be a little trickier to solve. However, I have a beagle who wants walking now, so that update will arrive soon!
The truth is I do! It's locked away from the winter salt. Some would say I am panzying out here, but here are the facts
:It's been in Sunny Sacramento for 47 years. It's FAR less rustier than any car I've had before and never needed a welder. Not because it was filled, but because it never rotted out. My M3 is rustier than this car and that is saying something! The only car I've had with almost as less rust that is getting on a bit is my 944 Turbo, and that required a pair of wings and sills (read £££££) to stay like that.
That's not to say it's not been used. I've somehow put 4,500 miles onto it just last year!
Part of that of course was down to Laon for the Laon Historique. Should a few more RRers want to go, let me know for more details
.The other event? It was also used at my sister's wedding. It was a superb car to have for that, and it really was something that was a little different
:Yup, it really played the part well for this!
However, it was hardly a quiet time! After all:
-My sister was getting married. Those who know about Asian weddings as @rav does will know it's no easy thing working around 500 people and having hot-headed people inevitbally surrounding you!
-We have relatives from abroad to host and look after before and after the wedding ; that was tough going ; Free/spare time? Forget about it!
A little selfish is the above! However, all of the cars had issues including:
-Merc : Sunroof broke 1 week before my sister's wedding; that couldn't have been timed better! Not!
-Dad's BMW E61 535d ; Complete power loss. It would move, just very slowly!
-Mondeo ; Suspected driveshaft failure!
-Audi in the above shots ; Friend's car lent to me during the Mondeo going bad ; Issue? EML came out during the overseas family hosting while running around.
-M3 ; Unusable without turning the DSC off. Eventually, the dash became an Xmas tree as you can read about in that thread.
The Audi going wrong really was the final straw. I was busy, running around like an idiot, and I was sick of all of my cars at this point. I have nothing that worked properly, ; The Merc drenched you if it rained, which it did! The Mondeo knocked like hell, the Audi was fine bar an EML except it wasn't my car and happened on my watch, and the M3 was a pain!
All of the cars, and more, yet every damn car had a flaw. I seriously came come to selling everything as it was and buying a new car, even if the cost would break me. At least I'd have dependable transport, and not 3 broken cars! Maybe the PCP folk had a point.
However, the dust would settle and eventually I would get some time back to myself. With this time, I tackled all of the car's issues including:
-M3 ; ABS sensor caused the issues; that was changed ;the issue seemed more like a driveshaft ring.
-Mondeo : Wheel nuts somehow worked loose over 5,000 miles. Did I feel stupid? A little. However, loose nuts are a strange issue to have 5,000 miles on! I don't have any idea what caused that, but I changed the nuts as a precaution
-Audi : friend knew about the issue ; It was the EGR ; and it happened now and again
-BMW 535d ; Trapped vacuum pump brought back most of the power as did changing the intercooler seals. However, the cracked manifold replacement was the icing on the cake.
The Merc's broken sunroof. That would be a little trickier to solve. However, I have a beagle who wants walking now, so that update will arrive soon!
So, the sunroof.
What would happen here?
Firslty, I would discover why the sunroof wasn't working via the button. In short, the only plastic cog in the sunroof gearbox was broken! Bah, put a metal one in! Maybe, but wait on that thought.
Initially I bought another plastic cog from eBay. At £5 it was worth a punt. However, I urge any pre-W123 Merc owner with a sunroof not to do this. The gear was of poor quality to say the least. Yes, you'll win the dick length points for saving money, but as a long term solution? I doubt it would have lasted. It's a good job as I didn't use it as it didn't fit my gearbox.
So what would I do? Simple. Buy another sunroof motor and gearbox assembly from an R107. Yes, that wasn't a typo:
But why?
The plastic gear for a W108 seems expensive to buy, due to its limited audience and in some cases, it's cheaper to buy the entire lot over the smaller assemblies. The other bonus? You get spares! You can either keep them for those 'just in case moments, or sell them on. Nothing too hard really.
And so I got to work. However, the deeper I dug into the existing gearbox on the car, the more I realised what the issue was, and that the sunroof was always going to fail in this manner at one point. Basically, (For the TLDR version, skid the bolt bits) ; it works as follows:
The Merc engineers seemed to have engineered in failure modes into the sunroof system, so that the cable is the last item to fail. The gearbox contains a 'clutch' assembly, which slips the gears if there is too much resistance at the roof, mainly due to the channels not having enough lubrication or being too dirty and requiring cleaning. Overtighten the gearbox via the ugga dugga method and thinking 'tight is tight' that's one failure system gone straight away. However, if someone decides they know better than Mercedes, they won't use the tool to wind back the roof, they'll just tighten up the mechanism so the clutch no longer functions. You can guess what had happened to mine. It had been overtightened. So great, you have a working roof! The downside? There is one plastic gear within the gearbox assembly. With all of that pressure and being the weakest component in the gearbox, that fails. That failed in mine. Yes, I could have been ignorant, and put in a metal gear, but then I'd have put more stress on the sunroof cable, which inevitably would have led to the premature failing of it. So yes, Mercedes really did engineer that sunroof system
The short story? The previous owner obviously had issues with the sunroof closing. By tightening up the sunroof clutch mechanism so it was more of a direct drive, the sunroof worked. But, it took out the plastic cog in the gearbox, about the last failure mode that 'box can do.
The nut was on so tight that I tried all sorts to remove it. I have have removed it potentially by using the sunroof cable to take the pressure, but I really didn't want to get into the pain of changing one. So I got a little brutal with the spanners and screwdrivers to remove the broken cog bolt. It was tight. Too tight for me to undo manually. I even snapped a screwdriver into it! There was no thing for it, but to go into Beast mode!
That slot obviously isn't meant to be there. I put it in with a cutting disc. It still wouldn't come off. The gears need to come out to release the sunroof cable. At this point I became a little unusual. Hating to admit defeat, I grabbed the angle grinder and cut the nut off on the end. It was never going to undo with a snapper!
Yes, it was a waste of the original gearbox motor, and yes, I did feel bad. But I couldn't dwell on that. Out came the old gearbox, in went the new item, with me initially questioning the clutch mechanism within the sunroof motor being loose, until I realised it was the correct way to have it.
What was the end result. A few more sweat and tears than I bargained on, but a working sunroof, with a clutch system that now works as intended.
What a result.
What would happen here?
Firslty, I would discover why the sunroof wasn't working via the button. In short, the only plastic cog in the sunroof gearbox was broken! Bah, put a metal one in! Maybe, but wait on that thought.
Initially I bought another plastic cog from eBay. At £5 it was worth a punt. However, I urge any pre-W123 Merc owner with a sunroof not to do this. The gear was of poor quality to say the least. Yes, you'll win the dick length points for saving money, but as a long term solution? I doubt it would have lasted. It's a good job as I didn't use it as it didn't fit my gearbox.
So what would I do? Simple. Buy another sunroof motor and gearbox assembly from an R107. Yes, that wasn't a typo:
But why?
The plastic gear for a W108 seems expensive to buy, due to its limited audience and in some cases, it's cheaper to buy the entire lot over the smaller assemblies. The other bonus? You get spares! You can either keep them for those 'just in case moments, or sell them on. Nothing too hard really
.And so I got to work. However, the deeper I dug into the existing gearbox on the car, the more I realised what the issue was, and that the sunroof was always going to fail in this manner at one point. Basically, (For the TLDR version, skid the bolt bits) ; it works as follows:
The Merc engineers seemed to have engineered in failure modes into the sunroof system, so that the cable is the last item to fail. The gearbox contains a 'clutch' assembly, which slips the gears if there is too much resistance at the roof, mainly due to the channels not having enough lubrication or being too dirty and requiring cleaning. Overtighten the gearbox via the ugga dugga method and thinking 'tight is tight' that's one failure system gone straight away. However, if someone decides they know better than Mercedes, they won't use the tool to wind back the roof, they'll just tighten up the mechanism so the clutch no longer functions. You can guess what had happened to mine. It had been overtightened. So great, you have a working roof! The downside? There is one plastic gear within the gearbox assembly. With all of that pressure and being the weakest component in the gearbox, that fails. That failed in mine. Yes, I could have been ignorant, and put in a metal gear, but then I'd have put more stress on the sunroof cable, which inevitably would have led to the premature failing of it. So yes, Mercedes really did engineer that sunroof system
The short story? The previous owner obviously had issues with the sunroof closing. By tightening up the sunroof clutch mechanism so it was more of a direct drive, the sunroof worked. But, it took out the plastic cog in the gearbox, about the last failure mode that 'box can do.
The nut was on so tight that I tried all sorts to remove it. I have have removed it potentially by using the sunroof cable to take the pressure, but I really didn't want to get into the pain of changing one. So I got a little brutal with the spanners and screwdrivers to remove the broken cog bolt. It was tight. Too tight for me to undo manually. I even snapped a screwdriver into it! There was no thing for it, but to go into Beast mode!
That slot obviously isn't meant to be there. I put it in with a cutting disc. It still wouldn't come off. The gears need to come out to release the sunroof cable. At this point I became a little unusual. Hating to admit defeat, I grabbed the angle grinder and cut the nut off on the end. It was never going to undo with a snapper!
Yes, it was a waste of the original gearbox motor, and yes, I did feel bad. But I couldn't dwell on that. Out came the old gearbox, in went the new item, with me initially questioning the clutch mechanism within the sunroof motor being loose, until I realised it was the correct way to have it.
What was the end result. A few more sweat and tears than I bargained on, but a working sunroof, with a clutch system that now works as intended
.What a result
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