Casey's 1977 450SEL

[Casey]

Car has climate control right? That would make it lean more towards a US spec Euro delivered car.

Yes, and amazingly it works flawlessly.  Now if only the radio would stay on...

[jbrasile]

Casey that is great!

I would not mess with it... if it starts giving you trouble try to repair and leave  original, if it's working perfectly that probably means no one has fooled  with the system in the past and therefore any future issues will  be resolved using standard diagnostics and repair procedures.

Tks,

Joe

[Casey]

I would not mess with it... if it starts giving you trouble try to repair and leave  original, if it's working perfectly that probably means no one has fooled  with the system in the past and therefore any future issues will  be resolved using standard diagnostics and repair procedures.

It doesn't put out as much heat as my manual system does, though.  I'd still like to swap the manual and ACC between cars, though my manual needs something fixed as the sliders don't do much - it's either no heat if all the way down, or full heat even if only the left one is up an inch.  Fan/vent controls work though so it's manageable, and quite nice on cold days.

[jbrasile]

With ACC I have found that the best way to get full heat quickly is to just hit Defrost and once the interior is nice and warm switch to Auto-Lo or Hi. The manual system of course is much more  user friendly...

By the way, to get the levers to gradually produce heat you need to adjust them. Remove the lower panels from both sides of the dash and you should see a lever with a 10mm nut, I bet those are loose in your car. Set the levers all the way down, loosen the nuts and close the heat flaps manually, make sure they are nice and tight, then tighten the nuts, that should do the trick.

Tks,

Joe

[Casey]

you should see a lever with a 10mm nut

Where, directly behind the center console controls?  Where are the heat flaps?

[Casey]

Any chance of a picture of these lumbar supports ? I've never seen them before

Here you go Tom:




Note that the straps are supposed to be inside the net, but mine go over it for some reason.  I'll fix it at some point, when I rebuild the seats.  I'll also get pictures of the innards at that point.

[Casey]

This car also does not have any mirrors on the visors, which is nice actually since the vinyl always deteriorates around them and makes them look terrible:



I've never seen any other Mercedes like that.

Also yes, that's a warped horrible plastic glued-on dash cover there.  I'd really like to replace the dash - are new ones still available?

[Casey]

Hat rack with no first aid kit:

[gf]

good to see youre back in business!wish i took my time to find a good SEL instead of an SE-

[Squiggle Dog]

Wow, those seats are interesting! They look like there were made with headliner material.

[Casey]

Wow, those seats are interesting! They look like there were made with headliner material.

Nah, parchment leather, but not in the greatest shape.  The perforations in leather are never as pronounced (or at least never hold up as well) as MB-Tex.

Actually the leather itself is in great shape, but it's changed shape over time differently than the underlying seats, or maybe it's just because the seat padding has gone flat.  There doesn't seem to be any pleat padding left as what's underneath feels pretty firm and smooth.  The seats aren't as comfortable compared to the other two W116's, though to the touch the leather is more pleasing than MB-Tex.

I actually intend to eventually buy new GAHH leather skins, probably in two-tone green, and redo the underlying padding.  The door panels and trim are not in great condition so I'll need to do something about that too...if I'm really lucky somebody will have a good condition green SEL interior they'd like to part with, or I might have to make my own.  So this set will be for sale.

Actually looking again at the pictures I notice there's two screws holding the left part of the driver seat on (the right side of the passenger seat is not attached but I have it).  *sigh*.  Why don't people stop to think "hmm maybe putting screws through my leather isn't the best idea?".

There's also a whole bunch of screws on each side holding the bottom trim on:



...which means I need new ones now.

[Big_Richard]

.

[s class]

Nice car.  Its been completely reupholstered.  Those are non-standard seat skins, carpets and parcel shelf material.

I see it has the rare rear seat heater option. 

[Casey]

Nice car.  Its been completely reupholstered.  Those are non-standard seat skins, carpets and parcel shelf material.

I'll be darned, you're right!  I was having a look at it again the other day, and indeed that's not MB leather.  The bottoms of the headrest covers don't have zippers, were just held up by some sticky goo that was coming loose.  Underneath is the original MB leather!  Confirmed by feeling about that the original leather seems to be on all the seats too.  Hard to say what kind of shape it's in though there's, though it feels pretty flattened unlike my MB-Tex seats which have plump pleats.

The leather in the pictures is in very good shape, and I imagine it could be installed better so as to actually fit the seats (probably it's not intended to be stretched over existing covering).  It's for sale if anybody's looking for a parchment leather interior, and includes all seat skins, 4 head rest skins, and an armrest skin.

If your interior matches this picture, you want to talk to me!:


I definitely enjoy the feel of the leather more than any other MB interior I have (MB-Tex and cloth), but I am not very into the parchment color and as all the door/pillar trim is damaged will be trying to replace the whole interior with green if I can find it.

I see it has the rare rear seat heater option.

The seat heaters are one of the reasons I bought the car.  Another was because I wanted a long-wheelbase chassis.

I'm not sure about the chassis...there's some rust, evidence of being improperly jacked up on both sides (bent up rocker panels in the front, just like on my 450SE), and a glued-closed sunroof with rust all around it.  I'm hoping it can be made as new again - in the spring sometime I'll take it in to a body shop and see what they say they can do and for how much...

[Casey]

You made a good purchase!

Yeah, I think so.  It's going to take rather a lot of work to get to where I want it, but at least I've got a LWB chassis with a pretty small amount of rust to start with, and some neat options.

One of these days I'm going to learn to stop assuming the best and actually look closely at cars instead of buying them sight unseen.

Yesterday I gave up on my soldering attempts, and fixed the radiator spout for the hose to the reservoir with JB Weld.  Seems to have worked nicely.

Today I pulled out a whole bunch of hacky non-OEM junk in efforts to get the seat heaters and radio working, starting from underneath the center console.  I didn't manage to get anything working, but it's nice to have the junk removed:



I did find a broken weld on one of the seat heater switches but it didn't make any difference to cross it.  So I put off fixing it until later - I had enough other projects going already.  I also noticed when pulling some wires that they were painted to the floorboard.  Upon closer look, the floorboards appeared to have been rusty and painted over with a black rust inhibiting paint.  There is also rust bubbling around some of the jack points (but I *have* used all of them successfully) and other sill areas. 

I removed the new layer of upholstery (which turns out to be vinyl, not leather!) from the back seat and head rests today, and what was underneath is depressing indeed:





The pictures make it look a lot better than it really is.  It's absolutely atrocious in person.  The seat frames are very rusty and will need entirely replaced.  There are a few pieces of disintegrated horsehair but also a replacement aftermarket cushioning layer.  It does the job but is quite lousy.  There is basically nothing at all worth salvaging from the rear seats at all.  Actually the armrest is okay.  The rear window seal is rock-hard and the rear window needs replaced as it's badly delaminated.

Decided to try removing the leather from the shrunken rear headrest.  The only tool used was my fingers.  The outcome was rather surprising, but I think this gives you some idea of the condition of the leather in general.  In addition, the pad underneath is permanently deformed and some of it stuck to the leather being peeled off, so it'll need replaced as well:



Prior to the reupholstering, the leather had been re-painted in the past, which just made it worse.  Some spots are worse than others:



The installation of the reupholstery was as bad as everything else, absolute crap.  I am amazed at how poorly it was stitched and stapled together.  It looks as though it were manufactured by a pretty nice company, and then the owner decided he didn't need no damn professional, so even though he'd never done anything similar in his entire life, he decided he'd have a go at getting it done in a couple hours.  There was also a huge amount of 3 different kinds of glues used, one that never dried and makes a mess of everything, another that I think must have been made for installing wood floors, and a third that is white but seems rubbery/silicone-like.  A bunch of places had holes drilled and plastic inserts stuck in that were impossible to remove without cutting them in half, and in other places a huge amount of staples were used instead (of which every single one was rusty).

I was going to finish the job and do the front seats too, but I encountered Robertson head screws holding the bolsers on, and I don't have drivers for those yet.

I hope somebody wants to buy this, as it's been rather a pain to remove.  Since it's vinyl, I guess I'll be happy to sell it pretty cheap.  I do think that installed properly, it could look quite lovely, and I think that since it was stretched over existing leather, the crappy installation didn't actually affect any areas that would be seen or even used when installing correctly as the fit would be tighter.  I just really don't like the color.  If parchment's your thing and you need new seat skins, let me know...

I still need to wash them and get all the glue and smudges off, but it is actually in very good condition:



I had my hopes up before, but now I'm seriously wondering whether this chassis is even worth saving.  I think it is, it's just going to be a lot more work than I'd hoped.  But both the 450's and my W123's just remind me how awesome it is to have a W116 in very good overall condition from many years of garaging.  The more I work on other cars the more it convinces me that the 300SD is worth repairing.

On the bright side I randomly drove to a salvage yard in West Virginia today, and asked if they had any old Mercedes - they pointed me to two W123's that were pretty stripped already.  But one was a coupe, so I a pretty good passenger door (minor dent)  that I've been needing for a long time, and a new trunk lid for the 200D (it has hail damage plus I wanted a lid with the holes for mounting the "Diesel" lettering.  Also got chrome (plastic actually, not perfect either) cowl pieces, a good corner light, and an aluminum body ACC servo! (it's balanced on top of the air hose in the second picture, I forgot to photograph it closer):