I feel like overhauling my ABC plumbing

[Conor]

Before I forget ..

After renewing the hoses and fittings, I proceeded to paint everything. Yes.. I should have done the paint before taking to the hydraulic shop, but here we are.

This was my coating of choice, again..good, bad or useless, here we are. I actually ran out of this quickly enough, so some of the fittings have been hit with etch primer and then simoniz black aerosol.. again. We are all victims of the choices we make in life. Hopefully with regular coating of spray wax these fittings should last quite a long time..



spraying was a tad time consuming.. I would arrange them like this and then remove the hoses.. paint the fittings, then refit the hoses. I am scared sh1tless of mixing up the hoses, but to be fair, they should all be fairly when I go to fit back in car.. I hope....



Let the spraying commence...

Since I have the space, I should really set up some kind of spray wall / rack for spraying parts and use some proper paint with hardener for an overall better finish.. this rattle can stuff is expensive and sub par... laziness prevails..



A finished item..



A freshly painted part can't be beat cannit..?



Here is the right angle connector that replaced the one from earlier. The left hand side of this goes to strut and the other side is the hard line back to valve block.





Complete hose/pipe assembly going from OSF strut to valve block on NSF. Towards the bottom of the pic you will see a joiner joining two pieces of steel pipe. This is where I accidentally cut the line, before I decided to gull full tilt and remove the strut inc. line.

 

[Conor]

Some of the fittings I didn't paint under the flare nut.. (and some I did)..

In any case, these will be getting hit with some stiff wax type spray when re-applied.. and hopefully will make its way in around the fitting.



Just found another pic of spraying..


Another before pic.. sorry the ordering is a bit messed up. To be honest.. I think these ones are part of the batch that I ran out of time to paint before returning to UK, so these are still outstanding..



And here is a nice shot of the fittings that I restored.. here is a before shot of one of them. That is, before it was cleaned with dish soap (step 1) and vinegar (step 2) in the ultrasonic cleaner. They came out really well. Let's see how good this galv spray is.....



And that brings us up to date ..

And before I leave you with this...can I ask you to sit down. Here is what the new hoses and fittings cost in EURO, at my local Pirtek. No labour charged.. I assume it's built into the price. I thought they would set me back about 300 Euro, and was mildly shocked when I saw the bill for €517.

He mentioned there was a lot of work and made rumblings about not charging labour....so I need to make enquires before going again or that price could probably double. That said, I know the names of all the fittings now, so should be able to price up fittings elsewhere and then find somebody with a crimp..

With that said though, I do feel the guy did a good job as he was very particular in ensuring the measurements were exact. Seems very expensive though, and I do recall somebody saying that Pirtek was eyewatering...

FWIW - I made some kind of estimate that if I was to order similar from MB it would have cost about €1500-2000 .. but that would have included steel fittings. So who knows what the right move is/was. I do know however that I pay a lot on rent for my workshop and buy a lot of tooling.. so I kind of am obligated to put in labour on repairs when warranted..otherwise i'm kind of just wasting money. Part of the fun for me is getting my hands dirty..

 

[Conor]

... Oh, I forgot to give an outline of what's next.

For the ABC overhaul, the following items remain:
* Renew struts - tidy up, rust / paint where needed and renew ball joints, which bought in the states at a decent price (family member courier!)
* Flush out all the lines. Still unsure as to how I will achieve this. Will blasting brake cleaner (or similar) through the line, or do I need to make some vessel where I can pressurise fluid through them..
* Rebuild the valve block (kit in hand).
* ** Decide on whether I remove the rear lines and do the same with them, over the winter or focus on front first. I feel like I will do the rears also.
* After fitting pipes, I need to fill the system and go through the bleeding / priming process with the use of STAR. Thankfully my replacement cable from PRC Express works with my STAR.

Along side all of this work.. I need to do a not insignificant amount of corrosion repairs on the underside of body. I'll probably start another thread for that as it will likely be of interest to some people.. And will be nice to show off what a 20 year old R230 looks like with its body panels removed..

I'll be back in Ireland on September 20th for a weekend.. so likely won't see any updates on here until late September / October some point...

 

[s5tuart]

I don’t think that is too bad when you look at the individual parts prices. The quantity puts the price up!

 

[Blobcat]

I paid Pirtek ~£600 for one hose replacement on my forklift recently - came to site, made it up and fitted it. Not cheap but good

 

[Conor]

I don’t think that is too bad when you look at the individual parts prices. The quantity puts the price up!

Yea to be fair, I was thinking that too.. I'll likely go back to the same guy as the service was top notch. I don't want to pay labour the second time around though.. if it comes to it, i'll let him do the job over a number of weeks so it doesn't eat into other work..

 

[00slk]

Did you find the sailboat in the boot of the R230 (@00slk )...

Leprafish, if the cars in Ireland, Russ

 

[Conor]

Alright everybody.. just a quick interim update on this.

I was home a couple of weekends ago and only had a few hours to manage on the SL. In that time, I took a slight detour from the ABC and took of the rear bumper and side skirts. I had noticed a bit of rust on the spare wheel well (attached below) and said to myself while I was at it, i'd just whip off everything and perform a full corrosion assessment. There was also the odd bit of rust/failing seam sealer etc up front so I just wanted to be sure.

I was pretty bad at taking pics at the weekend so I'll just give a bit of a run through of what I discovered, among a few other bits also.

* Left/Right of the exhaust / propshaft were in great condition, as was under the skirts. Under rear bumper was also in good order.
* What is amazing though is that when I pulled the rear bumper in 2020 all the bolts came off super easy. Not this time, as two of the bolts that are held in with speednuts were spinning. It goes to show what an Irish winter can do to a car sat outside. I had to use my B+D power file/finger sander to remove the top of the screw and tap it through/pry the bumper with a trim tool. Pic below.
* Some of the heatshield mount points are corroded through, and from memory of last driving there was a bit of a rattle. As much as this SL deserves new shields, budget isn't there if I can "bodge it" using coke can etc for another few years.
* The rear arches are corroding again, yeap!!! I had them done at considering expense in July 2020. And the guy looked me in the eye and said they won't rust again. Oh well. To be fair, the rust started on the lip where two skins meet which would be easily chipped. My plan for that is to clean it all up and run some wax or whatever over it and inside some rubber "U Channel" and place that over it. Should give it a nice stay of execution before things get really gnarly. Thankfully there isn't really much bubbling and nothing can be seen from the outside. Still annoying though.
* Some of the rust around the spare wheel well is covered by the exhaust, so that will probably come out. I also noted that the exhaust mounts are gone a bit hard and crackly.. do they make a difference, is it worth replacing these also?

* I installed new struts on the boot, so at least that stays up now - cheapo brand from autodoc. Only a few quid, so will be interesting to see how long they last.
* Some other items worth considering too. I may or may not get to depending on whether it's a "while I am in there" type job, or can be easily done in isolation. Probably won't do any unnecessarily costly jobs as I want to prime myself up and start buying parts for either my 911 Turbo repairs or E Class engine overhaul.

* Guibo / Propshaft couplers will need replacing
* Exhaust hangers probably could do with renewing.
* The auxiliary water pump needs renewing - current one is leaking and i've had the spare nearly as long as the car - only issue is the connections are different so I need to remedy that.
* There is an oil leak. I am hoping guessing it's a rocker cover, so will probably get to that before this goes back on the road.

On the ABC front.

* With regard to the rears. I don't think I'm going to do too much to the hoses or pipes this time tbh. They do really look to be in reasonable order and I have a lot of expense on right now and also coming up to get another car back in order. That said, I do have a rebuild kit for the valve block and will do that, at least. I would like to get to the rear pipes and hoses another time though as the car deserves to get them done really.

* I need to purchase some heat shield wrap for one of the lines which sails close to the engine / exhaust. I have measured up and will probably buy this stuff. The diameter of my current stuff is 40mm, but the options are 35 / 50mm. What would you go for? I am thinking 50mm, and a couple of steel ties.



* Something else that needs addressing is these two connections in the following pic. I think the connection on the left is fine as I have a nut and olive for it. I'm not too sure about what I can do on the right hand one though as a nut/olive won't fit/compress. I feel like this is a low pressure return line so the connection might need to be as secure? Any ideas on this are welcome.

 

[Conor]

I also forgot to mention the following.

Is that an ABC height sensor, assuming so as there is one on both sides, and it's not the self levelling sensor for lights?

Anyway, you can see I snapped the lower one when removing. Upper will likely snap too... how to resolve this?

It's a bolt that is fixed the to the chassis and then a nut that goes on over it.

Do I:

* Weld on a piece of threaded bar?
* Drill and tap a whole for a regular bolt (Or threaded bar?)
* ... something I haven't thought of?

..And no, I don't fancy just leaving it alone. Something about me just likes refreshing rusty stuff when I come across them. I enjoy it and it gives me experiences and I learn..

P.S. If I remove the sensor how do I set it correctly later? is that a process in STAR where I measure the height of the car etc?

 

[00slk]

I also forgot to mention the following.

Is that an ABC height sensor, assuming so as there is one on both sides, and it's not the self levelling sensor for lights?

Anyway, you can see I snapped the lower one when removing. Upper will likely snap too... how to resolve this?

It's a bolt that is fixed the to the chassis and then a nut that goes on over it.

Do I:

* Weld on a piece of threaded bar?
* Drill and tap a whole for a regular bolt (Or threaded bar?)
* ... something I haven't thought of?

..And no, I don't fancy just leaving it alone. Something about me just likes refreshing rusty stuff when I come across them. I enjoy it and it gives me experiences and I learn..

P.S. If I remove the sensor how do I set it correctly later? is that a process in STAR where I measure the height of the car etc?

View attachment 86561

Those sensors don't need setting, I changed all 4 on my SL from a used set. Just plug and play.

 

[ajlsl600]

Ah ug n play, those were the days!!!!

 

[Conor]

Hello all...

just a quick update. I will provide more photos and installation log again in the coming days.. but for now I need to share some serious frustration and disappointment after discovering a serious issue with a lot of the hoses gone into the rebuilt by pirtek.

Basically a bunch of the hoses used by the Pirtek guy are just trivial low pressure hoses with a rating of about about 15 Bar, and not 200 for the ABC system.

This evening what installing a fixing up a few bits I thought it was strange that some of the high pressure lines to the struts were "floppy" and thus low pressure lines.. It didn't sit right.

After reviewing my photos I can confirm that at least the high pressure hoses to the front struts have inferior ratings. But I am fairly sure there are a bunch of others throughout the system... including the nasty line that runs from the pump to the dampener across the engine bay between engine and subframe. I only installed that the other day and it is was super annoying. That will need to come out.

This is seriously draining for me now... because unless the Pirtek guy accepts my complaint on work done 11.5 months ago.. i'm going to be seriously out of pocket.. at a time when funds are running fairly light and I haven't been working.. I mean I will be happy to pay the difference on the uprated hoses but I don't feel like paying for the ferrules/swage fittings etc, which all add up. Honestly, given the scale of this monumental f*** up.. I feel like he should just waive any extra cost to put the job right... I know that's what I would do anyway. -- I say monumental scale f*** up... because Pirtek are a self proclaimed "nationwide force of hydraulic hose experts".

For the record.. on day one when I went into him, I told him I needed to match what I was handing him and for him to be aware that the system reached 200 Bar.. all he had to do was just make new hoses like-for-like, based on what was in front of him..

Look at the following photo for example, which is a subset of the hoses made up as I received them back. For people unfamiliar with hydraulic hoses (like me when I went to Pirtek).. Look at the long hoses on the bottom left part of the photo... See how the old hoses are straight and rigid looking... there are no bends because these are wire reinforced to support a ~250 Bar rating. Note the ones they have been replaced with .. bendy at each end.. this is because they are not rigid due to lack of wire reinforcement.

In fact, even the low pressure hose used is only rated for like 20 Bar .. I don't even know if that's suitable for the low pressure side of ABC, I now need to check that because my confidence in this job is shattered.

This is just absolutely brutal.. and I am just shattered from it.. I'm so wound up now I can't sleep and had to just provide a rant here.

My lord... somebody asked me today what I was doing for the weekend. I didn't realise it would involve spending countless hours of work undoing countless hours of work over the last couple of weeks and examining the work of so called experts to figure out what needs to be re-done. Just insane.

This has been a very trying and intensive project for me.. but i've enjoyed it for the most part, but this has just floored me. I hope I am overreacting and I have it all wrong. I'll stop writing now.

EDIT: In looking at this and other photos again I notice how one composite length of pipe & hose contains some 20 Bar hose and then 250 Bar hose. That makes zero sense. Thats like dropping in some short lengths of bell wire into the starter circuit in the car.. this is blowing my mind. I don't even know how the guy could make this mistake ... he said he did the work, and he is the actual franchise owner. Insane. Ok, definitely stopping now.

 

[Richard Moakes]

EDIT: In looking at this and other photos again I notice how one composite length of pipe & hose contains some 20 Bar hose and then 250 Bar hose. That makes zero sense. Thats like dropping in some short lengths of bell wire into the starter circuit in the car.. this is blowing my mind. I don't even know how the guy could make this mistake ... he said he did the work, and he is the actual franchise owner. Insane. Ok, definitely stopping now.

That’s your smoking gun that proves he made a mistake, I know right now you are furious, but just go and calmly ask that he rectifies the mistake on that and all other hoses.

For the sake of your health, don’t get angry unless he denies etc. as for the rework, that sucks, but it will go much faster the 2nd time around.