Crank, no start....

[bobins]

Open the box.
No, take the money

I appear to have bought a large cardboard box for Helga. Contents to be revealed in due course

A large box earlier today - own work

[CitroJim]

Ohh, the suspense!!!

[bobins]

The contents of the mystery box....?

A brand spanking new, untouched, factory original, genuine Mercedes driver's door for Helga It cropped up on ebay and was for sale for about 5 minutes before I bought it .....at a hugely reduced price, but I did have to go to Bristol to collect it
The original door on the car had been hit twice during its lifetime - first time it had been straightened up and resprayed (questionably ), second time it hadn't been fixed and there was an ugly dent right in the middle of it. I'd reduced the size of the dent with a bit of percussive maintenance, and (badly) covered up the missing paint with a £20 rattle can job to tide me over. I presume the dents may have been caused by a cyclist/door interface, or something similar.
I got the door resprayed locally at a good price and a brilliant colour match - I'm well happy with that

Old door still fitted, new door leaning against wing - own work

Stripping the old door - own work

New door being refitted - own work

Finished article, not me in the car ! - own work

I visited a couple of mates over the weekend, the first thing one of them did was jump in the car and drive off to 'test' it. His only complaint - the horn sounds a bit weak

[mickthemaverick]

Nice job Robin, there's always a good feeling when you get rid of a niggle that wasn't really causing any grief but winds you up knowing about it!!

[bobins]

That was exactly my problem, Mick. The door absolutely let it all down - even though I couldn't see it from my seat I'd been umm-ing and ahhh-ing over what to do - get a used door (£100-£300), get the paint blasted off and see what was left that needed sorting, get it filled and finished, rust treated and finally painted.... that all looked like a bit of a ballache. Get the existing door fixed ? Well it looked like it was a bit bent (banana'd) along its length, and that would also mean a doorless car for a good few weeks whilst everything was done
I think the gods were looking down on me when this new door cropped up on ebay
BTW, I've just looked it up - list price for a brand new bare door in need of paint...... around £2.5k

[CitroJim]

Excellent

[bobins]

There has been a little progress

Mainly just pottering about - I've started refurbing part of the roadwheels on Helga. Most of the wheel is painted silver, but the rims are polished to a near mirror finish.... or at least they were when they left the factory In its previous life I don't think Helga had had much maintenance over and above the sheduled servicing (which consisted of main dealer servicing even when she'd only done a few thousand miles each year !) The wheels had deteriorated around the rims and were looking grim

Grim rim - own work

That's not just brake dust, that's embedded grime and corrosion that won't wipe off.

I got some very mild abrasive bits from ebay and used them to good effect to start to remove the corrosion and grime.

Better rim - own work

After that I used a drill mounted polishing wheel and some polishing soap to get back the shine.

Nearly there - own work

Sorry for the crap photo. The wheel rim is coming up nicely with the polishing wheel, but it's a slow process and I've only managed to work on two wheels so far.


Another job on the 'To Do' list - put the hardtop back on for the winter. There were two types of hardtop for these SLs - the 'ordinary' one, which weighs quite a bit, and the panoramic glass one that I've got.... which is sodding heavy When I took it off earlier in the year it was a struggle for myself and a mate to remove it - heavy and awkward. So.... technology to the rescue
It's possible to get a 'T' frame that clips on the top of the roof and allows you to use a pulley to lift the roof up. I favour automation though I had an old small 12V winch sitting in my garage waiting to come in useful one day and today was its day
After a bit of modification and an £11 remote control unit bought on ebay, I transformed the winch into the 'Roof-o-lift 5000'

Roof-o-lift 5000 - own work

And in place, hanging from the rafters in the garage that I've got the car stored in. Sorry for crap photo...

Roof-o-lift 5000 in situ - own work

And the panoramic roof hanging from the winch. This was in no way a 'ring twitcher' of an experience.

Hanging hardtop - own work

And nicely in place with no drama

Hardtop on the car - own work

I may get to drive her one more time before the end of the month, but then I think I'll SORN her for the winter

[mickthemaverick]

Nice job Robin, good wheels and windows make any car look better let alone shiny and new!!

[CitroJim]

Excellent winching!

[moizeau]

A quick one on the polishing. Use a fine wet and dry in soapy water to clean the places to be polished, then a sisel mop, then a stitch cotton finishing with an unstitched cotton.
I've done quite a bit of this on various bikes.This is my Kwak Zephyr 1100 at various stages.

This was done using a bench 1/2 hp bench grinder with mop attachments but I used to do it with a drill and smaller mops. Don't bother with the small Dremel stuff. Get 2 different soaps for the mops.
Belgum Alu is excellant for keeping them shiny.

[bobins]

A little diversion from the usual.......
As mentioned elsewhere on the forum - today I've been overhauling a compressor cylinder head that'd been in distress.
This is part of an installation of two compressors used to fill an 8 foot tall receiver tank. Both compressors had suffered from extreme damp and both had stopped pumping. They're twin cylinder single stage BroomWade B30 installations.

One of the compressors minus the cylinder head.

Topless compressor in situ - own work

The (very) offending article.

Rusty pump head - own work

Pump head - own work

The brass gubbins to the right of the head in the above photos are (part of the) the unloader valves - these connect through to the inlet valve side of the head and allow a manual opening of the valves to prevent air pressure being made - for pump / motor testing purposes etc. Imagine holding open an inlet valve on a car engine - you wouldn't be able to raise any compression in the engine's cylinder. The unloader valves are also plumbed in through to the receiver tank and will allow - via a solenoid valve and air pressure - an automatic opening of the inlet valve if there's already pressure in the tank so the motor can spin up and stabilise without the pump being under load. After about 10 seconds of the motor running, the solenoid closes which allows the valve to close and the pump will start making pressure.

Here's why the pump needed an overhaul. The unloader valves were both rusted into position holding the valve open and so pressure couldn't be made.

Unloader valve - own work

And after a bit of cleaning......

Clean unloader valve - own work

Clean inlet valves on the left, not so clean outlet valves on the right.....

Inlet and exhaust valves - own work

Nearly all back together - just awaiting some very large copper washers that seal the dome caps on the outlet side.

Nearly good as new. Almost. Possibly. - own work

[CitroJim]

That's a proper job And Broomwade is a good old well-respected purveyor of such devices...

That'll now be good for another 50 or so years now

[moizeau]

Love it when 'old junk', which is normally well made if it's old enough, comes back to life

[bobins]

As far as I know, these compressors have been there at least 40+ years. One (the previous photos) is duty, the other (this one) standby. The standy one cleaned up astonishingly well - I'd given the pistons a wipe over in the photo below, but hadn't done much to the block face yet. The honing marks were still very present on the bores. They don't make them like that anymore

You could eat your food off of that, possibly - own work

[bobins]

There's summat missin'

I see no bonnets - own work