SL/R129: 2000 SL600
2000 SL600 Triple Black 43K
I was always missing one of the 2 screws holding the latch on the bottom of the leading edge of the cover. The final screw finally came out recently and released the handle from the last tambour slat. Then the slat parted from the tambour backing. The last part of the assembly is a bottom plate that sandwiches the tambour backing between the handle slat, The bottom plate is made of plastic and provides a register for the 2 screws and a small built-in cavity that allows a locking bolt to interact with to lock the drink compartment.
Can you believe this thing is so complex?
I went to a hardware store and got a half inch #4 screw to match my remaining screw and proceeded to dismantle the center console to remove the drink compartment.
The handle locates into the tambour slat via the two screw holes, but both screw holes disintegrated from the slider handle. I back filled the slider handle with marine epoxy and drilled two new screw holes. The hardest part was correctly reattaching the slider handle tambour slat to the tambour backing. I used contact cement, but it was real tricky not to get any cement on either side of the slider channel. Once the slat was affixed to the backing, I cemented the bottom latch piece to the slat which made a sandwich out of the tambour backing (just like factory).
The next part was to attach the slider handle back on the tambour slat, but there is no room to access the bottom of the slider while it is still part of the drink compartment. So I rolled the slider to it's rearmost position and used jeweler's screw drivers to fit the two screws to the slider handle. Pretty tricky, but it's now fixed.
I'm not 100 percent happy with the repair (it looks good and works). The slider handle is supposed to be painted brown and mine is worn down in places to the black plastic underneath and the original handle indexed to the tambour slat via 2 protrusions at the screw holes. I'll have to remove the handle again to paint it and use more epoxy to make the 2 index protrusions. I'll do the next part later, probably during the winter.
The single slider compartment isn't like the older 2 part slider which comes apart readily.
Does anyone know how to remove the unique to SL600's tambour slider from the compartment?
Last edited by mahunt; Oct 23, 2019 at 11:15 PM.
Are there any other repair/maintenance issues?
Disintegrating radio volume knob, visor end caps, visor mirror covers, peeling A pillars, worn driver's seat, broken arm rest slider button, etc. You know, the usual things.
$25K sounds reasonable if there are no other issues.
If the car is really issue free, BAT might be the best place to sell. A triple black 2000 even without the Sport bodywork or pano roof might do pretty well.
Let us know how it goes.
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