This afternoon I had some fiddle time.
First stop was a poke around under the hood as I haven't had a chance to properly look here yet. It's very clean under here and the access is phenomenal compared to many moderns
It looks at the front of the engine as if they designed enough room to fit a viscous fan. I guess the V8 would occupy a bit more room and tighten this area up a fair bit.
Had a quick look for the thermostat. Mega easy to get to here. I don't think I'll even need to remove the auxiliary water pump or belt.
Quick look at the coolant colour brings up red (G12 by the looks of it). I believe this should be green (G13) and possibly it's been changed for the wrong stuff. I'll probably flush it out and put the right stuff in due course but I have red on the shelf if I do the thermostat.
Like a lot of German stuff, the air filters are in the engine cover. This is the dirty intake side. Certainly not worth even considering changing these!
Plugs are a bit tight. I pulled the front left top as it's the easiest to get to. Each cylinder has two plugs. So twelve in total.
This one is a NGK platinum. Good for 100k apparently. I don't believe NGK is OEM for Mercedes so it's almost certainly been changed at least once. While grubby these look perfectly useable and don't need changing. Not least twelve platinum plugs isn't cheap and no point replacing something with plenty of life left.
Plug gap seems to be about 1.0mm. I believe it should be 1.1mm so near damn enough correct.
MAF is down the back. With the top off you can just twist it and it'll come out. Must be one of the easiest MAFs I've ever had access to.
This also looks damn clean inside. I can't believe this is original and doesn't look used at all. Again absolutely no reason from this visual check to justify even cleaning this, let alone changing it.
A quick look at the SBC pump shows a hardware design date of 2005. I believe the date code is stamped in the top of the unit but I didn't know when I was looking. I'll have to look again to get the actual manufacture date. However hardware design date of 2005 is obviously after 2003. So it's almost certainly been replaced at least once.
See this rubber pipe to the left of the torch that goes to the SBC pump? This feeds brake fluid to the unit. There is a TSB if people complained when new of putting a noise damper in this hose. Looks like it was never fitted on this car as presumably the first owner didn't complain about the noise.
It also explains why some cars have noticeably noise SBC pumps and some are near silent. Basically depends if the first owner complained when under warranty and the Merc dealer retrofitted a noise damper unit in the hose.
This damper can still be had but is £280 from what I can see on eBay. For that I'll leave this noisy. Tbh like an SU fuel pump on a British classic car, it's reassuring to hear the pump working away as you know it's all okay then.
While I'm fiddling I thought I'd have a quite poke at the rear air suspension relay. These can stick closed and burn out the pump. Usually from over use.
It's the green relay at the back.
Contacts on the bottom look fine and likewise the contacts inside look great too. No burn or arcing on the inside of the relay either. Right now I can't justify changing this as it looks perfect.
Next up was on the right side. This box is the pollen filter and isn't mounted quite correctly.
Filter isn't a carbon activated unit so I may change this. It's clean and usable though.
A quick check of the auxiliary battery voltage shows a high level. I presume this is always topped up by the main car battery.
Finally I cleaned and lubed the bonnet latch as this was sticking a bit.
I need to get a new machine gun sight as it bugs me that it's missing. There are some on eBay for £13 delivered, so I might give one of them a go.
