Give Me a Brake
Give Me a Brake
Give Me a Brake
Not a lot of car time this weekend, with it being a holiday weekend for many, so I got what I could done with the time available. In this case, it was replacing a leaking rear wheel brake cylinder. It’s been leaking since I got the car, probably due to the outer seals pretty well disappearing into dust due to age. In a lot of cases things like this don’t appear until the car gets back into regular use, and this was probably a case of the same.
I was all ready to do this on Wednesday, as I had been waiting for the new wheel cylinder to come in from Germany. Prior to this I was soaking the fittings with Kroil to be sure they would come loose. Wednesday rolled around as did the new wheel cylinder, but upon inspection it was noted that the wheel cylinder I got was not the right one. Darn! However, it did allow me to get all the fittings cracked, and they all came loose without a problem. Nice.
Got the wrong wheel cylinder returned and found that Mercedes had none of the correct one in stock, but the OEM part was readily available in the aftermarket, so I got one that way.
I had an hour or two of time this afternoon, so I figured I would have at it. So here are the brakes with the old wheel cylinder removed (I got a bit ahead of myself with pictures...)
And the leaky old wheel cylinder and the remains of the seals.
Yeah, they were in bad shape. Of course the cups were probably leaking, and the seals just wouldn’t hold the hydraulic fluid in since they had deteriorated so badly. I’ll keep this as a spare and possibly rebuild it should the left side need a replacement.
All cleaned up and ready for the new wheel cylinder. You can see the remains of the brake cleaner that hasn’t flashed off at the bottom. I’m not going to disturb anything else here for now.
And the new wheel cylinder ready for installation.
And the new wheel cylinder installed with pins fitted, awaiting the installation of the cleaned drum rinsed free of brake fluid.
The drum installed, bleeder fitting wrench in view at 12 o’clock. Vacuum bleeder put into service and in a minute or two I had the cylinder bled of air and a nice firm brake pedal. Now it’s ready for the wheel to be put in place and the lug bolts torqued to spec.
One other thing I’ve been chasing down - the chrome exhaust tip for the new muffler. Now I could go down to FLAPS and pick something up for $8-$10 that would pop right on and look fine, but it wouldn’t be the Mercedes exhaust tip. Purists would spot this like a sore thumb, as would I. But - the original chrome tip became unavailable last year. Probably a good thing as when you could get one the price was nearly $1,000!!!
With a fair amount of research I was able to find a later model (W123) chrome exhaust tip that was correct but a bit small in diameter. I got one this week from my awesome dealer, Mercedes-Benz of Tampa, and brought it home. As it was the same diameter as the exhaust pipe coming out of the muffler, something had to be done. That was the use of a tailpipe expanding tool and my impact wrench. I was able to open up the exhaust pipe slightly so the chrome tip would fit. Because of the limited amount of overlap I couldn’t use a muffler pipe clamp, so I drilled a small hole and used a stainless steel self drilling screw to secure the exhaust tip. I’m pleased with how it turned out.
I’m not sure what, if anything, I’ll do tomorrow. However, I do have a list that’s still pretty long, so I’m thinking of taking some vacation days soon and maybe knocking a bunch of major work out....
Saturday, April 20, 2019