A few small victories!

Its been a long while since we've made any progress - but not after a busy period for both of us, we have finally started making progress again.

GavGav has been having trouble with his primary vehicle - an old german gas guzzler. Due to his fiscal conservatism (he's cheap), he decided not to purchase an original Mercedes replacement return pipe for the water cooling system that runs along the engine - but instead wanted to attempt to fabricate a replacement using copper pipe.

Using the same ethos as we have been so far with the Morris Minor, we thought we'd have a go - whats the worst that could happen?

Unfortunately a little too much force and not enough heat resulted in us snapping the piping during the last bend :(

Attempting to fabricate a new pipe for GavGav's Merc

As mentioned in an earlier post, we managed to remove the gearbox and gave it a much needed cleaning. We have made the decision not to crack the gearbox open for the time being, due to the complexity of the procedure, and the extra equipment we'd need to put it all back together again.

Instead we're pushing to get some short-term wins - and just get the car moving.

Things we have yet to do:

• finishing the brakes
• re-installing the gearbox
• installing the new exhaust
• completing the repairs on the thermostat

Earlier this week we got the whole team round (Joel's bro and dad) and between the four of us managed align the clutch and reinstall the shiny clean gearbox. A few days later we replaced the prop-shaft and bolted it in with our lovely new bolts from England.

GavGav bolts the prop-shaft to the diff

We've now turned our attention back to the brakes, and after a kitchen-table session of cleaning and preparing the master and slave cylinders we have re-assembled them and installed the 4 front slave cylinders as well as putting in our new brake shoes.

We're really enjoying completing these small milestones and can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel (as far as getting her driving).

Next we'll get the rear brakes done followed by the relatively mammoth job of installing the master cylinder and the re-assembly of the front suspension and torsion bar. We'll also have another go at drilling and re-threading that pesky thermostat housing bolt!


We attempt to tap a new thread into the engine block.
We need to drill more!