AC Expansion valve

[flutes]

This thread is very versatile, here's an update on my floor/insulation etc.

After removing the passenger seat I've spent the last few hours pulling up the old tar matting.  It was quite easy to get up in most places, I used a 8mm flat head screw driver as a chisel with a hammer.  Mostly it came up in chunks quite easily - the glue has deteriorated I guess.  Some areas, particularly just under the rear bench seat, were very difficult and had to be almost scraped.  The tar here wasn't hard either - it was still quite elastic.  I have no plausible hypothesis for why this would be the case - water perhaps?  Who knows.

Could anyone enlighten me as to the purpose of the round rubber ring and what looks to be a plugged bung? There is one on either side, about equidistant from the door and the rear seat.

This is the thing (and I apologise for the crappy photos, my wife has cunningly hidden the charger for the camera battery somewhere neither of us can find it so I had to use my phone):




Here is the before shot (you can sort of make out the cracks in the matting):




And here is the after!




Next step: clean up all the debris, break out the drill and wire brush attachment and clean the area up prior to painting with Miracle Paint.  This is also giving me a good opportunity to clean areas around the seats you can't normally get to.

[TJ 450]

Nice work Matt.

This is something that is getting pretty important for preserving 116s as they get older.

Tim

[KenM]

Matt just out of interest did you take out the matting in the rear because it was wet or because you wanted to check for rust and put in the dynamat for sound insulation? You got me worried now that my rear floor may be hiding moisture under the matting.

Ken

[flutes]

Ken it's a bit of both.

The water gets in the cracks (which it probably caused) and just sits under there - doesn't dry out.  This was really obvious in the right hand side, but the left hand one was a bit of a mystery as the cracks weren't as bad.  So of course I had to pull it all out to check!  I figured it's one of those 0% or 100% tasks before I started - you can't just pull a little bit up, you have to do the whole thing.

I'm really glad I did - gives me a chance to clean it all properly, and I'm quite excited about putting the Dynamat in tomorrow.  I've coated the front floorpan with Miracle Paint this afternoon and put it around the seat mounts as well, which were the only areas in the back showing very, very early signs of rust.  I decided against coating the rear floorpan as it just didn't seem necessary - there was no rust at all under the matting and it would seem like wasted effort.  I may have a different opinion in the morning!  I'll take some shots tomorrow.

Ken, as Tim suggests, I think this sort of job is going to be necessary for any w116 that's had water issues.

Since you've had water in there in the past, it would be worth inspecting closely for cracks.  If there are cracks, the matting will pull up very easily and in big chunks - you can see this in the right rear floorpan in the second shot - all of that came up with a bit of gentle prodding and then just pulled away by hand.  The water was pretty easily visible, even when just drops.  Of course, like with my left hand side, even just investigating a crack pretty much means ripping the whole lot up.

One more word of advice - doing this properly really requires taking out all the carpet and plastic channels for the wiring - something which I obviously haven't done.  It is fairly punishing on the carpets that are still there - you need to fold them out of the way to get access to remove all the matting.  This didn't bother me as I'm planning on redoing the carpets soon anyway, but it's something to keep in mind if you're going to keep your existing ones for a long time.  Having another pair of hands would help to be a lot gentler on the carpet if you leave it in place.