Monday, December 10, 2012

The 240D - removing old patch panels


Work continues on the project... though not much of it. I've had two weekends now where I barely got to touch the car. I did get out to the garage last Saturday for a little under an hour to finish pulling up the floor insulation from the passenger side.





I also finally broke out my angle grinder and zipped through some of the rivets holding on the previous owner's patch panels:





I had an idea how big the hole was from the size of the patch panel, but now I can see garage floor:




I had to call it a night at that point and deal with the sudden failure of the fuel pump in my wife's car. This also meant I had to chauffeur her on Sunday, leaving the diesel untouched until this weekend. But, I couldn't get to it right away. Saturday morning I had to deal with a blown water heater (got the plumber out here first thing in the morning and had a new one in before lunch). While that was going on, I finally installed the new fuel pump in my wife's car. She'd rented a car to get through the week.

After dealing with the fuel pump, I called it an (early) day and got back to work on Sunday. But... I didn't get to the Mercedes right away. First, I had to put my Legacy up on ramps to try and fix a coolant leak (seems like it was nothing more than a too-loose hose clamp). Then, I made a few adjustments to try and solve a cold stalling issue on the Vanagon. I think I was successful.

Then, finally... I got to work on the Mercedes for a while. I continued with removing the old patch panels, and finally got them off the passenger side of the car.





With the panels removed, I found an oily, tarlike substance. My next task is to see whether or not I can clean it up. At this point, I'm guessing that my repairs will be a combination of welding and riveting.

The old repairs were physically solid, but the previous owner had done nothing to remove or treat the rust. It was all there under the patchwork. I removed the old patches to correct this. Once I have this cleaned up, I'm going to start repairs to this side of the car.



4 comments:

  1. just curious, how come she rented a car if you have 2 working cars. does she not know how to drive a stick shift?

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    1. She can, but has never solo-ed. She has the basics down, though, but is a bit out of practice. Given the long commute, the rental was the safest option. Perfecting her manual transmission skills is on our short term to-do list.

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    2. yeah it always takes a while to master that. I learned in about 20 minutes and have driven solo on a couple occasions but I'm no expert at it either.

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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