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I was out of town for a month and when I returned I just noticed that the liner above the passenger side door had buckled and is leaking fluid. It’s smells like hydraulic fluid to me. When I reached my hand up in there I can feel a plastic line. Does anyone what the fluid and line belongs to? How do I go about replacing the line?
That's almost certainly a leak from the hydraulic cylinder at the front of the folding top that locks the roof to the windshield frame. It's a common problem. The cylinder internal seals become worn from use, then hydraulic fluid starts leaking and collecting in the headliner until it finally overflows.
You can buy a DIY seal kit for the cylinder, or get a rebuilt cylinder from cabriolethydraulics.com - my choice would be the one that's professionally rebuilt. The cylinder is not really designed to be easily rebuilt so I'd go with a pro for this job. But people have successfully DIY'd these.
Your headliner's going to have a fair bit of hydraulic fluid still puddled in it, so you'll want to lay out plenty of towels to collect what's going to spill out when you disassemble things.
That's almost certainly a leak from the hydraulic cylinder at the front of the folding top that locks the roof to the windshield frame. It's a common problem. The cylinder internal seals become worn from use, then hydraulic fluid starts leaking and collecting in the headliner until it finally overflows.
You can buy a DIY seal kit for the cylinder, or get a rebuilt cylinder from cabriolethydraulics.com - my choice would be the one that's professionally rebuilt. The cylinder is not really designed to be easily rebuilt so I'd go with a pro for this job. But people have successfully DIY'd these.
Your headliner's going to have a fair bit of hydraulic fluid still puddled in it, so you'll want to lay out plenty of towels to collect what's going to spill out when you disassemble things.
Thanks. That sounds exactly what it is. I’ll take your advice and purchase the rebuilt cylinder. Overall is this a fairly easy job? I’m handy, but definitely not a pro. How do I get the headliner off? Is there a thread somewhere that steps you through that? I’m going to assume that I shouldn’t use the top until this is fixed?
You can’t use the top because it probably won’t work and will squirt fluid everywhere. You may have to do the oring repair, I read somewhere that the convertible line connectors for this issue are not in stock. Make sure you get all of that oil off of the upper windo seals or they will expand and it will br bad, you will have to replace those as well.
Just repaired mine a couple of months ago by sending my cylinder to Cabrio Hydraulics for a rebuild kit with splice connectors. Service was excellent and the price was great. By using the splices I did not have to remove a lot of interior parts to route hoses all the way to the trunk and the job only took couple of hours.
As a bonus, all my headliner connectors had failed and required refastening but the noise from the roof area went away !!
Just repaired mine a couple of months ago by sending my cylinder to Cabrio Hydraulics for a rebuild kit with splice connectors. Service was excellent and the price was great. By using the splices I did not have to remove a lot of interior parts to route hoses all the way to the trunk and the job only took couple of hours.
As a bonus, all my headliner connectors had failed and required refastening but the noise from the roof area went away !!
I’m going to give it a try. I was more worried about removing the headliner and breaking off the clips. If it’s easy to fix them, I’ll give it a go. I haven’t been able to find a video on how to remove the headliner on a R230 SL550. Plenty for other models, but I’ll keep looking. I spoke to Cabrio yesterday and I should be all set on the removal and replacement of the cylinder.
2005 R 230 SL350 (M112 3.7). Sold the 1966 W113 230SL recently
You just have to unscrew the four(?) hex bolts at the front of the head liner. You'll need to fixate the roof halfway open for that. There's info on the forums about keeping up the roof safely. It won't jolt open or closed but once it starts 'falling'. it'll be hard to stop manually. Play safe.
You just have to unscrew the four(?) hex bolts at the front of the head liner. You'll need to fixate the roof halfway open for that. There's info on the forums about keeping up the roof safely. It won't jolt open or closed but once it starts 'falling'. it'll be hard to stop manually. Play safe.
Thanks for this helpful info. This sounds like it’s within my capabilities. Looking forward to driving top down again.
Thanks. That sounds exactly what it is. I’ll take your advice and purchase the rebuilt cylinder. Overall is this a fairly easy job? I’m handy, but definitely not a pro. How do I get the headliner off? Is there a thread somewhere that steps you through that? I’m going to assume that I shouldn’t use the top until this is fixed?
I would not operate the top, except to carry out this repair. See post #3 for a DIY walkthrough.
08-26-2022, 01:53 PM
