Today in my 'shop

[Andy.M]

Off sick

 

[Andy.M]

"Today in my 'shop" should be a pinned thread for all you indies to show us the highs and lows of servicing MB's !

 

[Steve@Avantgarde]

I'm really enjoying Alex's occasional series of pictures from his workshop. I don't generally do this sort of thing, as I'm rubbish with a camera and rarely get the time. I thought though that you might like to see what I have mostly been doing today...

Another little garage local to me had recently replaced the torque converter on a 2010 E350cdi. W212 shape. I've done a few of these myself, they occasionally develop a judder while changing gear usually on cars above 150,000 miles. Anyway, said garage had replaced the converter and about 50 miles later the car stopped with a bang and complete loss of drive. The car was recovered to the repairer who diagnosed a complete failure of the gearbox and asked me for a second opinion. In fact my diagnosis over the phone from seven miles away ended up being spot on. They had not engaged the dog on the torque converter correctly into the oil pump in the gearbox, and the two little drive pegs had sheared off. At this point the mechanic on the phone began sobbing. A few hours later the car was delivered to my place, and now my workbench resembles a plane crash...

The oil pump is located in the bell housing, but it is bolted in from the inside. That involves quite a strip to get to the bolts. That's why the other garage chickened out. New pump with intact drive dog is on the blue vice, but there's a bit of cleaning to do first and a new gasket and some O rings coming tomorrow. Ideally I'd pull the clutches and inspect them at this level of tear down, but the brief on this job is just to fix it.

Thats because most people install the TC when its led down on its install position. If you take the box off its stand, stand it upright on the prop coupling and drop the tc onto the shaft, gravity will do its job in making sure the tc is home properly. A struggle if you are a one man band mind you as it takes one of you to hold it whilst the other hits it, so to speak.

 

[Uncle Benz]

Only way to do it is vertically in my experience. I have a couple of old caterham rear tyres - 205/55/13's which stood one on top of the other make a perfect vertical "stand" for the thing.
722.9 torque converter is a bugger of a thing to hold. Heavy for a start, then 3 mounting lugs so you can't hold them nicely, and so close to the bellhousing inner fat fingers get pinched if you hold the outside.

 

[Uncle Benz]

Ta da!

Was collected this evening. The White B class arrived this afternoon. Guess what! Gearbox fault. Lol! I hate the transverse ones. I think I'll get Mike at Hailsham Automatics to do it for me.

 

[Jim2]

nice write up/pics. auto boxes are not that much of a mystery, except perhaps ,these days, the electronics that run them , i always thought they were like a best kept secret . i have done a considerable number ,mostly earth moving machinery, in my experience the biggest drama is getting hold of or making the tooling that each manufacturer dream s up for dismantling them and getting hold of the tech specs for individual components so one can be sure of whats still serviceable. as for this case had the garage guy been a little more careful he would have "felt " when the pump dogs were engaged, but experience helps a lot. here brute force/ignorance has caused considerable extra drama/expense. doubt this guy will make the same mistake again !

But there had to be a 1st one ajlsl600, and where did you begin? The company I worked for did a lot of repairs for a local self drive firm, who had a lot of automatics in their fleet. We had 1 mechanic who did all the work on them, he had his own "Private " room within the general workshop, and you would need an invitation to see what was going on there, never mind actually giving a helping hand...
Like I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread..Automatic Transmissions are in a league all of their own ( or as you mentioned, kept like a secret LOL ) For me personally, I would like understand them a lot more, and that would entail working on them full time. This would take minimum 1 year. And even then, I guess, no matter how many repairs you do on them, you will always be learning something new. Plus, they are being continually updated / improved (??? ) etc.

 

[Botus]

He must have struggled to get the box to line back up, or forced it.

I'm with you Alex usually its impossible to achieve this,

an easy way to know its all together correctly.... the TC should rotate in relation to the flexplate when the bell housing is all done up without force, before you bolt them together (note flexplate is a light weight eqiv of the flywheel on manual)…

the guy shouldn't be allowed to work on cars if he did as later posts suggest.... sounds more like he's a diesel mech