Author Topic: Restoration Difficulty Level (Read 896675 times)

GGR · « **Reply #1425 on:** January 31, 2015, 09:29:29 »

The type of oil can you need to bleed the clutch is this one:

I hade the same issue with the rear brakes when I first got my Pagoda. No fluid was reaching the calipers when I was trying to bleed them. Culprit was the proportioning valve. I took it apart, cleaned it and everything went back to normal.

andyburns · « **Reply #1426 on:** January 31, 2015, 17:47:19 »

Thanks GGR. Have the car show today. Will check out the price of a new oil can or buy the bleeded kit.

Not sure if the 230 has a proportion valve. It has a brass fitting at the rear of the car but I thought it was just a distribution block.

Have the morning off. Taking my boy a car show.

GGR · « **Reply #1427 on:** January 31, 2015, 21:12:14 »

I don't know if drum brake Pagodas have that proportioning valve. My wife's fintail has a residual pressure valve in the master cylinder for the rear brakes line. I guess you car has the same. It may be the culprit. To know for sure you may undo the rear brakes line from the master cylinder. If you do not have any fluid coming out when you press on the pedal then there must be something wrong with that valve. You can get it out by undoing the bigger bolt in which the rear brakes line bolts itself.

andyburns · « **Reply #1428 on:** February 01, 2015, 07:12:29 »

GGR, I need to do a bit more research but your suggestions are great. Will check the valve next time I am able. My back took a hammering lying on the floor the other day so I am taking a bit of a break until it recovers.

I spent this morning with my young chap at the galaxy of cars. Regional car show here put on to raise money for charity. The Mercedes club here get involved every year. Usually a huge turn out. This year the rain pelted down on us and the turn out wasn't as good as previous years.

Still a few interesting car including three or four pagodas. drmb also had his lovely silver coupe fresh from a major refurbishment. Exquisite piece of machinery in every respect. Would love one along side the pagoda in the garage.

andyburns · « **Reply #1429 on:** February 01, 2015, 07:16:31 »

Got home and decided to have a crack at finishing off the map pockets and arm rests. Am really sick of them and want the job in the rear vision mirror. Think I have a few more days yet on the door cards. The leather on the pockets turned out to be quite hard to get right. Lots of angles. All bolted back up with the pocket now and ready to put back on.

66andBlue · « **Reply #1430 on:** February 02, 2015, 01:46:38 »

Quote from: mbzse on January 14, 2015, 12:10:14

...
An important detail when it comes to the Pagoda doors interior are the plastic sheets that must be in place. Often missing. These sheets protect the door cards from moisture.
See attached picture. Spray glue may be used to fit the plastic sheet, however I use a malleable gumlike black material from car glass repair shops.
/Hans in Sweden

Hans,
I have also used butyl tape to fix the plastic to the door frame. To separate the plastic it helps to use a hair dryer to warm up the seal.
Most modern cars use this tape for this purpose. It is good for several removals and resealing.

andyburns · « **Reply #1431 on:** February 03, 2015, 06:53:10 »

Last night I moved on to gluing up the door card leather. The key to success here is getting the sewn in panel taught and straight and in the right position on the panel. Harder than it sounds and really a job for two people.

The door card leather has a very fine material sewn into it along the 60mm panel. These are used to secure this critical element to the door card and keep it from moving. If you get it wrong the panel would just look wrong.

Came up with a plan, be it right or wrong, on how to get it looking half decent.

Got both the panels look good with the panels both ready to just secure off the leather. None of the leather is actually glued. The 60mm panel is glued in place via the sewn in material and then the leather is simply pulled taught and stapled around the back of the panel using 2mm staples.

I dont have any 2mm staples and spent good part of the morning trying to secure some. Finally phoned up a local trimmer who offer to give me some. Took the boards out to show him and he offered to finish them off for me while I waited. Had to get home to pick up the kids so I left them with him. Nice to have some professional help. I kind of wanted to finish them off myself but at this point with my dicky back am happy for any help at all. Graciously accepted the offer.

I had all the pocket and arm rest assemblies with me and he complemented on the job done. Always a real buzz when a professional gives praise.

Hopefully will pick up the finished cards in the next couple of days and put everything back in the car to finish off the interior.

andyburns · « **Reply #1432 on:** February 03, 2015, 07:01:54 »

Moved on to the inner guards panels this arvo. The new rubber seal arrived from Buds (thanks David) this week. I am wondering if the factory used any other sealing strips on this panel other than this strip. It would be easy to wack on a few 2mm closed cell strips on all the other mating surfaces.

Also just working through the securing screws. It seems that over the years some of the body holes have been over sized. I missed this detail when doing the body work. I would have otherwise welded shut the holes and started fresh to ensure all the fasteners are identical. Missed that boat and will have a slight variation which will no doubt cost me at least a couple of hours of sleep.

Scottcorvette · « **Reply #1433 on:** February 03, 2015, 07:19:12 »

Andy

Mine had a thick body caulk on those areas that you have the additional seal. They had never been removed before so definitely original.

Scott

andyburns · « **Reply #1434 on:** February 03, 2015, 07:25:37 »

Thanks Scott. Dont really like the caulking concept. If you drop the panels you stuff the seal. Interesting knowing what the factory did. If you have some pics I would love to see them.

Scottcorvette · « **Reply #1435 on:** February 03, 2015, 07:34:20 »

No I don't. I'll use caulking again on mine. I can't imagine having to take the splash guard out again.

The rate it's going, I can't imagine ever refitting it either.

andyburns · « **Reply #1436 on:** February 03, 2015, 07:56:47 »

Fair call Scott. I need mine out again at some point as I need to install baffling on the out panels as the audio I have installed is reverberating through all three panels.

andyburns · « **Reply #1437 on:** February 06, 2015, 05:17:44 »

Yesterday I repaired the card that tucks up on the right hand side of the boot. The original looked fairly manky. Horrible attempt by previous owner to tart it up with some cheap and nasty paint. Also had a bad tear up the top left corner. Even though its not visible unless you happen to have been abducted and thrown facing up in the boot with a flash light strapped to your head you would never know. In any event I decided it would be easier and better to retain the original.

I repaired the tear using epoxy gel and a very thin coat of fiberglass on the rear side of the card. Also glued up 6mm foam on the rear which prevent vibrations and gives a bit of anti drumming ability to the long rear panel.

Now I just have to figure out the petrol breather and associated pipes and clips. Anyone have a photo handy of the setup.

andyburns · « **Reply #1438 on:** February 06, 2015, 05:31:10 »

Picked up the door cards from the upholsterer yesterday. Made a few adjustments to them. Was a bit dissapointed as the only reason I took it to them was that I didn't have a staple gun capable of pushing 2-4mm staples. The backs were crudely glued down. They charged me 180 dollars which was more than I thought it would have been even with the staples.

Trimmed up the leather hanging loose on the rear and cleaned off all the excess glue that had been sprayed everywhere. Then fitted up my arm rests and hard pocket. All went in quite smoothly. I was very very very careful about cutting holes. Used a pin initially to mark the leather with tiny holes where the door cards from buds had their holes drilled. Just in case. When I was sure everything was in the right position I used a fine scalpel to part the leather. Nerve wracking.

andyburns · « **Reply #1439 on:** February 06, 2015, 05:53:55 »

Moved on today with finishing up the door so I can put the door card back on. I am in half a mind as to leave it off until the soft top is back on. I know that to set up the door properly I need the hard top first but this is so far off I think I will just try and get the soft top back in the next couple of weeks and then put the card back on.

In the mean time I started looking at all the control rods for the door opener and locking mech. When I pulled them I knew I had a bit of a mare on my hands as all the rubber circular plugs that the control cables ran through were either missing or disintegrated in my hands when I pulled them out. At the time I made esquires with buds and they were NLA. I think they told me that they may be able to rustle up a second hand set but wanted 10US each. Fair enough given how rare they are. Probably should have taken them up on the offer but it just got forgotten amongst all the other huge tasks that I had on the boil at that point in time.

They are unique in that the plug portion of it is designed to go though the 5mm thick ali door frame. I had several sets of good W108 ones that I had looked at a year ago. They only have to seat into 1-2mm thick steel panels so the profile was completely different and I quickly gave up on the idea.

I had a second look at them today and decided to give it go re-profiling them to suit. Used my dremel with a very fine cutting wheel to carefully extend the channel to around that 4-5mm mark. Just enough meat on them to do at and it means that the rod runs 2mm closer to the door panel.

Fitted it all up and it worked a treat. Everything cleared an more importantly the plugs hold very very well.

andyburns · « **Reply #1440 on:** February 06, 2015, 05:59:07 »

Some questions about the doors for you guys. See photos ...

andyburns · « **Reply #1441 on:** February 06, 2015, 06:09:33 »

I had fitted up the soft top hatch rubber a couple of days ago and then very quickly I had the hatch lid on and adjusted beautifully. Then today I decided to pop the hatch to retrieve a screw driver I had left in the top cavity. No response. The passenger side undid but the drivers side stayed latched. I could tell immediately by the feel of the handle that the cable had either pulled out or broken. Flash light on the job to confirm the latter. Took me a good hour to free the other side. Ended up going in with a thin piece of custom shaped metal and sliding it down the face of the latch.

Did a quick internet check and Buds are listing a new cable for 300USD. SLS dont have it available. Pretty down in the dumps about it as I dont have the cash and its going to prevent me from driving the car. Suppose I could just lock it again but dont want to go through the manual release process again. Risks damaging the paint etc.

Its only the inner cable thats damaged so I am thinking I might try and find another similar control cable and somehow splice them together. Any one tackled this before?

66andBlue · « **Reply #1442 on:** February 06, 2015, 06:27:35 »

Andy,
same thing happened to me. Fortunately a member here ("Memmo") sells a new wire with a connector for 25 Euro plus shipping.
Send him a PM, or through his web site: http://www.pagode-markt.de/
Click on "Nachfertigungen", then click on "Lasche Verdeckverriegelung" and you can see product.

Tomnistuff · « **Reply #1443 on:** February 06, 2015, 17:47:06 »

Hi Andy,

In your photos of post 1432, everywhere you have your red arrows, I used exactly the same black butyl tape on the (Partition Panels, in the EPC), (splash shields, in the US auto industry) that Alfred and Hans used for the plastic door sheets. Note, however, that my car is painted dunkelblau 332 (I call it midnight blue) so the black butyl tape doesn't really show after cleanup with a tiny wooden homemade spatula, although after a few days or weeks, it keeps squeezing out of the joint and has to be re-scraped away. You might prefer to use another type of waterproof sealant (thinner, like caulking, previously mentioned, or tape to make cleanup a one-time job), but if I were you, I would definitely seal the "partition panels" to the inner fender and footwell floor pan in the wheel well.

I suppose you (and everyone else who's done it) have noticed how difficult the outer partition panel seal is to get in the proper position against the inner fender wall. Fun isn't it. I used a homemade metal hook to get behind the rubber lip and pull it out like a cord pulls out the rubber lip of a windshield seal.

Tom Kizer

Iconic · « **Reply #1444 on:** February 06, 2015, 18:47:11 »

For Post 1440: Yes Andy, door pull only on the passenger side.

Jowe · « **Reply #1445 on:** February 06, 2015, 18:53:16 »

And for question 1 i believe it is for the door armrest.

andyburns · « **Reply #1446 on:** February 07, 2015, 07:32:18 »

Big thanks for all your responses. Steered me back on course again. Have decided to slow down again and concentrate on a few of these niggly prothems rather than charge ahead just to see a bit of road time before the end of summer. There is always next summer.

I have taken a big step back from the door cards and decided to resarch them much more thouroughly before the final fit. Lots more detail to get them right than i had thought. the new cards dont match up perfectly which is of major concern.

have also decided to get the hatch mechanism working perfectly. Will get a new cable first up. Also looking at another issue that worried me on day one. The hatch release lever slots into an arm. The end of the lever shaft has had the two sides of the round machined flat. The arm has the opposite machining.

i am assuming the two mating surfaces should be a very tight fit with no slop. Mine has about 20 degees of slop in one diection and about 5 in the other. I am worried that this wear is excessive and that at some point the shaft will loose all tolerance/interference with the arm and spin.

The wear all appears to be on the arm. The levers are available but the arm seem to be impossible to source.

i am thinking i could weld the arm shut and get my cnc mate to refrofile it for me.

As always i am interested in everyones thoughts

andyburns · « **Reply #1447 on:** February 08, 2015, 01:08:31 »

Day off today. Took the young boy to the 42nd Intermarque Concours d'Elegance, New Zealand foremost car show. Yesterday they held several runs all around Auckland, all meeting centrally along the waterfront in a huge grassed car park. Quite an awesome day which I really really really tried hard to get mine ready for. Was a huge disappointment for me no making it. Hopefully I will be able to attend next year.

Today was the actual Concours. I have been eagerly awaiting the day as Lloyd, or drmb as you guys know him, has finally after many years of toil managed to get number 25 of 27 aluminum gull-wing ready for display. This particular car has very special provenance having been owned by Sterling Moss from new. I think they made the aluminum versions to satisfy homogenization rules in the day to be able to compete at Le Mans and the like. Very unique very very beautiful finished in its unusual but original factory color.

Very very privileged to see one of these in this condition down here in New Zealand. Rare sight indeed.

It a massive credit to Lloyd and his team and a wonderful showcase for his world class restoration abilities. Amazing degree of NZ restoration talent on show. Made me feel very proud to be a Kiwi. I didn't stay around for the judging but undoubtedly it will do well (if not clean up). Am sure this one, like his last 300sl roadster, is bound to set the worldwide 300sl communities tongues wagging!

Stunning stunning stunning! Came home and looked at my work and felt quite depressed. $:-\$

andyburns · « **Reply #1448 on:** February 08, 2015, 01:09:34 »

a few more

andyburns · « **Reply #1449 on:** February 08, 2015, 01:11:41 »

a few more

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Author Topic: Restoration Difficulty Level (Read 896675 times)