| A couple of years ago, MB Spares & Service closed their spare parts division to focus on their restoration and servicing business. At that time, I was able to buy a very nice rear screen for a C107 SLC. The car that it came out of was very rusty, but surprisingly not around the rear screen. My screen is quite delaminated from previous rust around the screen area. As you can see from the picture below, the new screen is really good. After having that screen sitting in the garage for the last couple of years, I figured it […] Back in March, I discovered how wet the passengers floor was in my 450SLC. Over the time water was getting on the floor, it had started some surface rust. It appears that at least some of it was coming from the A/C drains. I still need to test a hose on the windscreen and cowl drains to make sure water is not getting in from there too. Obviously the most important thing is to fix the source of the water. I also felt it was important to fix the surface rust on the floor. It still wasn’t too bad, so […] I’ve had a problem with wet feet in my 450SLC for years. Generally this manifests itself with water dripping onto both the drivers and passengers feet when the A/C is running. This is particularly prevalent when going around a corner. I had always assumed that this was caused by blocked A/C drains. I tried to clean them a couple of years back but the problem never went away. A couple of weeks ago I took the car on an extended drive and had a lot of water covering my feet, but especially in the passengers side. I figured it was […] I’ve used my 450SLC on a few spirited drives lately. With the new injectors its been running really nicely. However, on the way back from the most recent night drive, the pedal became really spongey on the way home. Luckily it was late at night with few cars on the road so I was able to drive it home gently. The next day I had a quick look under the car. I noticed there was a lot of brake fluid on the drives side rear tyre. Looks like I had a rear brake fluid leak on my 450SLC. I […] This week I replaced the CIS injectors and the spark plugs in my 450SLC and the car is running much better for it. I’ve been thinking about swapping the fuel injectors in the SLC for a while now. When cold, the car wouldn’t run that well at first and you would need to blip the throttle a few times to get the idle to settle down. This can be a sign that some of the injectors are not atomizing the fuel properly. The car is less sensitive to this as it warms up, but proper atomization is important for smooth […] I had not driven my 450SLC since early march due to the COVID19 lockdown. When I first started the car the battery seemed quite weak. After a drive, I put the car on my Ctek charger. The charger showed an error where the battery will would not hold a charge. This was confirmed by my Solar battery tester. The recondition mode helped a bit, but ultimately the battery is almost 8 years old. I probably would have tried a bit harder with the reconditioning if it wasn’t for a 30% off sale on DIN batteries at Supercheap auto. It seemed […] In part 2, I had been struggling with my new SLC rear Calipers. As outlined in that section, the new calipers I had on hand are for models not equipped with the anti-squat rear suspension. This was because USA models were not so equipped. The hard lines were too short to fit properly and fouled on the suspension bump stops. I dropped the car off earlier in the week to have new hard lines made up that fit, and to change the flexible hoses. I have since found out that I made a pretty stupid mistake. Instead of checking the […] A couple of weeks ago I started investigating the dragging brakes on my SLC. I found both of my rear calipers had been overheated and were in poor condition. I ordered a set of rear calipers, and decided to change the rotors too. Mine were still in spec, but on the lower end. The hoses I had purchased last time were also not right. I needed hoses with two female ends but the other hoses were male/female. The first thing I found was that it was quite hard to remove the old rotors. Not only were the rotors rusted […] For the last couple of years I have noticed a noise from the rear of the 450SLC while driving. At first I thought it might be a wheel bearing or some kind of bushing. I mentioned it to my mechanic and he took and look and it wasn’t any of those things. Last time I took the car on a longer drive, the noise was getting worse, and I noticed after I returned the rear wheels were hot to the touch. Too hot to touch. I realized that my noise had been dragging rear brakes all along. Both sides were […] This evening I took my 450SLC for a drive up the old Pacific Highway. I wanted to check the impact of re-connecting the vacuum advance on the distributor. I had discovered the line was broken when doing some maintenance. With the advance enabled, mid throttle response seems a lot better. I do get a little pinging when cruising on the motorway, so I am going to try 98 instead of 95. During the drive, the SLC reached a big milestone: That’s right, the SLC has finally reached 300,000km. I purchased the car in 2003 with 262,000km showing. As there […] | |
