Hey guys,

I normally hang out on some other Mercedes forums, I don't have time for all of them. I gather a lot of useful information from this forum, so I figured I would start posting here a little more and inform you guys of my current project.

Day 1:

I got bored so I decided to try a spot of paint, I don't think I'd be able to sleep otherwise.

Before:



After: (Don't mind the "digital tape" lol. I started to take the tape off on accident. Also, there is still dust from the polishing. This is just a quick n' dirty)



Day 2:

Day 3 (Today 11/30)

The rest will be current! Enjoy guys!!

 

Well here is what I got done today:

I went to the junk yard looking for a bunch of misc. stuff. I got a new trunk light switch/holder thing as mine was missing/broken.

Picked up a new air box top, as mine was pitted. Its in the process of being polished to perfection. Found an air box from a late 560SL which had a large driver side air intake. Also picked up a new passenger side intake for my box.

As AMG did in the 80's, I began adding the driver side intake to my remaining air box to have a dual intake setup.

Here are the pictures (Thanks to my friend for letting me borrow his because I am an idiot and forgot mine!):

Two culprits:


Began cutting the inlet attachment part out of the SL's airbox:


...And then we got impatient:


Cut out:
v

Flattened:


Clamps are your friend:


Traced:


Cut and bent.


Riveted on along with passenger side unit:


And there you have it!:


I'll clean it up and post pictures installed later! Enjoy guys!

 

Here is a test fit of the airbox:



The entire engine bay still needs to be thoroughly cleaned and polished/detailed. That is one of this weeks projects.

Tomorrow I will clean and polish this intake and get it all installed back in the car. my K&N air filter should be here tomorrow as well.

 

Very nice looking car for a 1984. Reminds me of my 84 500 SEC and 88 560 SEC. (Both sold with very high mileages) It must be nice to work on your car, outside during the winter...

 

Yeah no kidding! It looks rather chilly in your Avatar, haha.

 

Here is an update:

Here is the engine bay before the cleaning. During and after pictures will follow tomorrow. Nice and clean, huh! :



Also, received the wheels I'll be using on this car for a while. They are AMG Aero 1's. (17" ET11). When I paint the car (if I still have these wheels then) I will be getting them all refinished black with a polished lip:



Here is a picture of whats to come in the next few weeks, can you spot all of the differences?:



Enjoy guys! Look for another update shortly!

 

Very sweet. I have a 88 560SEC in signal red. My designated winter project is to work on the engine. The body is in excellent condition.

 

Those AMG's compliment the W126 beautifully. Even if you paint the car, I would still keep them as-is. Silver wheels blend with charcoal paint very well. The image of a well-kept SEC is one of class. Blacked out wheels divert from this to a more modern, sporty attempt. Tint looks great as well!

 

Yeah for sure. I would get them done to silver first for sure. If I didn't like it I could then try black.

That's not for another month or two though.

 

Looks great. Are you on florida german by chance?

 

Yeah, names RPM Photography. I started the website with TheDarkSide.

 

Hey everyone,

The latest piece of the puzzle arrived today. It was black, but I took care of that.

 

Very nice! Fantastic color combo, and the Aero I's just complete the classic AMG look

 

Here is the update for today.

My main goal was to "Defederalize" the front and rear bumpers. Basically when a lot of these cars were imported, in order to keep the Euro bumpers a piece of metal was attached to the stock bumper beams. All of the ones I have seen, including mine, look like something I made in my backyard. They are poorly constructed, and I don't believe serve any other purpose other than adding 20lbs to each bumper.

Front end disassembled:


Here are a few pictures of the QUALITY engineering that went into them:

Nice cuts!


Great welds!


And excellent rust prevention!


While I was under the car, I ripped out the remains of the backyard emissions testing work-around.


The rear bumper was easy, its very easy to remove, and the supports were only held on with bolts.

The front, however, was less cooperative (Big thanks to my friend for cutting it out for me!):


While I had the front bumper apart, I decided I was going to "refurbish" the lights. I decided to start with the Fog Lights.

One Fog Disassembled:


Eventually I was going to run HID's in the Fog Lights, and being that HID bulbs are much longer (see below picture) than standard H3 bulbs, I had to do some modifications.


I had some old busted 190e headlights laying around, so I decided to steal some parts off it. I took the bulb "cover" off and hacked it up. On a headlight, it has prongs that extend outwards, I just trimmed them and bent them to shape. The result was a slight longer bulb "cover" which would work perfect for HIDs later:


One fog light done. I cleaned the glass, resprayed the inside of the surround. Polished the chrome reflector, and repainted the lens clips. The difference is minimal, but it will be all of the little things coming together which will make this car great. I am not leaving out any details. The result is a much brighter, more clear, newer looking fog light.

"Refurbished" Right


"Refurbished" Bottom


I'll finish up the other fog light tomorrow, and get the bumper back on and start with the headlights and corner lights. Until then, ENJOY!

 

Despite spending a lot of the day on this, I don't have too many pictures. Basically today I gave the headlights the same treatment as the fog lights. Completely disassemble and clean/polish/paint/etc the various pieces. Its just one of the many little things that will eventually make this car something to really be proud of.

Here is one of the headlights before:


And here is one of them after:


It was a rather rainy and dreary day, so I didn't any pictures of it back together. I will for sure have some tomorrow. I will also be installing some 6000K headlights and re-aiming both the headlights and fog lights. I will make tomorrows work a bit of a DIY for those who want to know. ENJOY!

 

Here is a little dinner time update.

Been working on getting the HID's in the headlights.

Spent a while trying to decide where to mount the ballasts.

I stole some brackets from my 2.6:


I cut and bent them until I had the right size and shape:


Repainted:


Installation location will be using the second screw which holds the fender on. It is a great place to mount them on these cars. Don't mind the gross engine bay in these two next shots:


With the ballast installed:


How it looks color wise. The bulbs it had in it when I purchased it were a very nice pair of H4s, and I thought they looked good and were pretty white, but they really don't look nice next to the HIDs.


Here's what the cutoff looks like, wont be doing any blinding of other drivers :


I just need to get the wires from the ballast into the housings next, I can't find my drill battery to make a hole in the backing for the rubber gasket. I'll find it soon enough though, haha.

From there its onto the fogs! Look for an update later!

 

Here is your mid afternoon update!

I started the day off cleaning up the HID wiring in the headlights. A few people have asked for me to be fairly detailed about this, so here it goes.

First off, I buy all of my HID kits from www.813motoring.com. NEVERMIND, as I just found out...I guess they are either going out of business, or changing their name. Now I am mad!

Well moving on from that, most HID kits are the same these days. Though they might be sold under a hundred different names and companies, there are only a small handful of actual manufacturers and they are all still very similar. Today, smaller ballasts are becoming popular. These are called "slim" ballasts usually. I would venture to say they will all be "slim" within a year.

Every HID kit I have seen has a small rubber grommet which the wires pass through. This is so the ballast can be mounted outside of the headlight housing, which is necessary. All of the grommets I have seen are the same size.

A 15/16 spade bit does the job extremely well.


Result:


You will likely need to use a 1/8th inch or similar drill bit to make a small notch in the hole to allow one of the connectors to pass through while still having a super tight fit with the grommet.


Here is the connector. This is the piece that connects the HID bulb to the ballast. The HID bulb is large, so the only way to pass it through is to remove the little clip on it. It just snaps on.

With clip:


Without clip:


Here you can see the need for the 1/8 "notch" in the hole as well as the removal of the clip. It barely passes through!


You can now pass through the Ballast power wires, and reattach the clip on the bulb wire. Then just pull the grommet through until it sits in the grove of the plastic:


Then you can connect the power wires. The ballast's power wires plus in to the connector where the old H4 light bulb used to plug in. The ground wire from the ballast (black) will plug into the ground on the connector, which is ground and the power wire from the ballast (blue) will plug into the power wire on the connector, which is yellow.


You may now clip the headlight backing back on, and hide the wires whichever way you choose to. The result is an HID installation that is not only very functional, but very stealthy as well:




Hope you guys enjoyed it, if you have any more questions feel free to ask!

Onto the fog lights!

 

Here is your evening update:

Got the fog light wiring all sorted out.

This is where I chose to mount the HID ballast:


I had a hard time finding a good place. I wasn't sure if I wanted to drill any holes anywhere in the car, so I decided to use a preexisting place. I chose to mount it to an unused hole on the bottom of the headlight:


I used factory Mercedes mounting hardware I had laying around. I just slid the clip on the lip on the bottom of the light, and put the screw into there. No modifications needed. It is a good, secure, out of the way to place the ballast.


Once the ballast is mounted, you will need to drill holes in the same method described before for the headlights.

Inner cover:


On the outer cover as well:


The power wire from the HID ballast (blue wire) plugs right in to the existing power wire (which is mounted on the plastic bracket)


For the ground wire, you will need to do a little modification. The ground for a regular H3 bulbs come from the metal base in which it sits. The ground wire has a round plug in which it connects to the metal base. You'll need to remove the round plug, and install the flat style connector as shown:


Then its as simple as pulling the wires and the grommet through the cover as described before with the headlights.


Pull the wires through the outside cover as well. I tucked some of the wires and connectors within the outer cover. The end result is a very clean installation for HID headlights!


Hope you guys enjoyed! I'll have some more pictures later!

 

Last update for the night: Here are a few pictures of what they look light at night. I was going to post some pictures of what it looks like while driving, but I got caught up with some other things, it will have to wait until tomorrow. I will also get some daytime photos tomorrow.

Headlights Only:


Headlight Cutoff:


Fog Light Only:


Slightly longer exposure (brighter) picture:


Fog Light Cutoff:


Headlights and Fog Lights:


Headlights and Fog Light Cutoffs:


Enjoy! Look for more updated tomorrow!

 

Outstanding info and good pictures. Thanks for the blog and your effort at keeping it up. Car is looking good!

 

Thanks for the support! I am really enjoying this project!

Sadly there hasn't been too much to report on recently. I have been extremely busy with the '86 2.3-16 getting it prepped and ready to go for paint. Been eating up all of my time.

I did start this project yesterday:



Should have both of them on tomorrow along with some new gaskets!

 

AWESOME!!!

 

Very nice. I am also currently in the procecss of restoring an older w126, but not a 500SEC. Mine is a 300 sd Turbo Diesel. It is actually looking pretty good right now, but not a lot of time to work on it right now. It is painted and has euro lights of a 500 SEL imported and looks awesome. I keep saying that I need to get some pics up, but haven't had the time. My biggest problem is the interior. I think I am to the point of just re-upholstering the whole car. Also, my RPMs are pretty high at 80mph, about 3000 or so and I want to upgrade my rear differential. Any ideas on that?

 

Sorry for the lack of updates, Christmas time has had me really busy!

I got the freshly painted valve covers on, as well as some new valve cover gaskets. Just waiting on new Air Box Standoffs (forgot to pick them up at the dealer yesterday, DOH.)

I also got new plugs, wires, cap, and rotor:



This is much more like it!



All back together. The engine bay is almost looking somewhat presentable, haha.



I managed to run into a stockpile of European tail lights which were removed by the dealerships when grey market cars were imported back in the 80's. I picked up what they had. I paid a small fortune for them, but man do they look good! I will be putting a few sets on eBay as well.



Here is a picture showing the downfall of this SEC. The car had been repainted at one point, and poorly prepped. You can see to the left of where the license plate would be the paint is about ready to jump off of the car. Also, I was walking through my garage, and my pants caught the chrome corner piece and ripped it right off the car, lol. Oh well...Also, the rear window trim was taken off by the previous owner to replace the seal, and the job was never completed. I shall fix that soon enough.

Oh...at least the tail lights look good! :p



They flow SO much nicer with the euro spec front corner lights:


Enjoy!

 

The car looks great man! I love the hid headlights and fogs