450SE after road trip repairs

I had a great roadtrip in my 450SE, covering 4,350km.   However there were a few things I wanted to address now the car was home.   I was able to address some of them but there are a few that will take longer.

Moisture from AC Ducts

After running the AC for a while, I would get drops of moisture from the AC ducts.  My assumption was that since the car spent years sitting, the evaporator was dusty and after heavy use I had clogged up the drains with mud.

The first thing to do was to get under the car and take a look.  Sure enough, once I pushed a cleaning brush up into the drains, my arm was covered with a deluge of cold muddy water.  After giving them a good clean, I was now getting steady dripping on the ground under the car when running the AC.

A few days later I returned and checked again, and it looked like it had clogged up again.  Getting back under I got more mud out, and noticed a third drain I had missed and cleaned that too.  Not sure what that is for, maybe the heater box?  In any case, after going back a day or so later and testing it, I was getting clean water through the drains, so at least for now this problem seems fixed.

Vibration from Brake pedal

Throughout the trip, I had some minor vibration from my brake pedal under hard braking.  This was much worse on the last day.  I removed all four wheels and checked the discs and pads, and they all looked good.  The inside of the wheels were quite dirty, so I cleaned them up.  While there, I took the opportunity to rotate the tyres.

While I didn’t do a very long downhill section, testing the brakes locally didn’t have any vibration, so I’m optimistic.  I didn’t actually do anything here, but perhaps there was so much dirt it was affecting wheel balance?

Cleaning the underside of the car

The underside of my car was all muddy and there were dead crickets everywhere.  Even the steering linkages and lower suspension arms were covered with dead bugs.  While I wasn’t trying to clean the car for a show, I managed to get a lot of crud from under the car, and gave the inside of the wheel arches a quick clean while I was there.

SLS control rod

While I was under the car, I noticed that the SLS control rod had broken from one end.  This probably happened on those big dips around Silverton.  Since I have a few cars with SLS I had a spare one on hand.  The old rod seemed very long, so I did the procedure of locking the valve into the neutral position with a drill bit and then installing the new rod with the car on the ground.

Future jobs

There were a few things that I didn’t get to.  The speedometer cable needs to be replaced.  This is part A1165420307 and is 1570mm for right hand drive cars, as opposed to the much shorter one for LHD.  I have a few options for this.  It is NLA, so while a NOS one is possible, it is probably unlikely.  I can therefore either remove mine and get a speedo shop to rebuild it, or I can find a good second hand cable.

I want to take the car for a longer drive and make sure I have actually solved that brake vibration issue.  I’ve also not yet properly diagnosed the occasional non-start issue either.

Finally, I had a stone chip on one of the headlight lenses last year.  Since I knew I was going to do this road trip, I haven’t installed the NOS lens cover I bought for it.  This is on my list.