Exhausted by work on the Merc
Further to my 300SL’S disappearing gearlever, chronicled in Octane 148, I received a phone call from Gullwing specialist Kevin O’Keeffe, who pointed out that the widget that retains the gearlever was almost certainly still in position.
I’d assumed that the retaining ‘ring’ was of metal but it’s made of nylon and prone to wear. A few days later and courtesy of Kevin I was in possession of two nylon bushes and a spring washer.
Fitting them isn’t easy, as the full-length body pans have to come off, though it meant a couple of parking dings could be sorted too. With my gearlever’s erectile dysfunction temporarily fixed with the aid of a rubber sleeve, I repaired to my man Steve Miller’s workshop.
Access to the indentations would mean removing the rear silencer box, which seemed straightforward – until we discovered that some time before my ownership the longitudinal exhaust pipe had been welded to the silencer! The pipe is 2½ metres long and, undisturbed for 40-odd years, the engine end had fused itself to the downpipes from the manifold.
Next try was to undo the flanges that hold the downpipes to the six-into-two manifold, which requires the removal of an airbox that sits above and obscures the exhaust. Should come out now. Wrong. With 2½ metres of drainpipe and silencer hanging on, it proved impossible to thread the downpipes through the gap in the Mercedes’ spaceframe.
It took brutal use of a blowtorch to liberate, so Steve could reconstitute the parts. The silencer looked quite corroded but an exploratory once- over with a wire brush removed the flaky underseal to reveal an almost perfectly preserved expanse of stainless steel. About the only pleasant surprise in the exercise.
It also revealed a band of orange overspray. The Merc was originally delivered in Germany as a silver car before moving to the USA. It came here from Florida in 1967, having acquired a ‘boy racer’ colour scheme of orange with a black stripe and racing roundels. The overspray was all that remained. If any US readers can remember a not-inconspicuous orange Gullwing cruising around the States in the ’60s (or indeed in England), I’d love to hear from them.
The dents were fixed in a day but, while the Merc was off the ground, I tackled the brakes. More next time.