Dictator-mobile

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CincinnatiFiero
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Dictator-mobile

Post by CincinnatiFiero »

Well, its not a 600, but its about as close as you could get other than the 6.3. 1970 300SEL 3.5. Long wheel base, with factory four wheel air suspension. Full leather interior and factory air. Would have been the most luxurious Benz sedan short of the 600. The 6.3 was the same car as this, but with the 6.3L V8 from a 600 stuffed in. Car was in hibernation about 12 years when I picked it up. The air suspension was sitting down, but you can fill the air tank on the car with an external compressor, but it is hard to supply the pressure at the volume the system really needs, but it came up enough to safely load it on the trailer. And it has not sat down in 48 hours which is a good sign. It's not currently running, it's not getting fuel. Freed up the pump, but the flow from the tank is really slow so I am dropping the tank and having it boiled out.

Car is painted "Almandine Red" which looks gorgeous in some light, and lots hot pink in others. But I'm just happy its not Silver like 99% of W108/109s.

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Previous owner lost the 3.5 emblem and threw on a 4.5 badge. I am bidding on a 3.5 emblem on eBay to replace it.
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Original leather, shows its age, but is in good shape, a light re-dye will have it looking great
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Aaron
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Re: Dictator-mobile

Post by Aaron »

Engine pic!!
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Shaun41178(2)
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Re: Dictator-mobile

Post by Shaun41178(2) »

my friends and I say the same thing about those cars. We want to get a nice one and put foreign flags on the front qtr panels and drive around.
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Re: Dictator-mobile

Post by The Dark Side of Will »

Where's Xzibit? It totally needs a chandelier and silver service in the back seat.

Nice rolling stock.

Found any Pullmans? (Pullmen?)
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Aaron
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Re: Dictator-mobile

Post by Aaron »

Shaun41178(2) wrote:my friends and I say the same thing about those cars. We want to get a nice one and put foreign flags on the front qtr panels and drive around.
That would be AWESOME. Paint it black, tint the windows and put shades over the rear, and put like a small UAE flag on the front quarter panels. Win.
CincinnatiFiero
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Re: Dictator-mobile

Post by CincinnatiFiero »

The Dark Side of Will wrote:Where's Xzibit? It totally needs a chandelier and silver service in the back seat.

Nice rolling stock.

Found any Pullmans? (Pullmen?)

That depends, do you actually mean a Pullman, or do you just mean a 600?

This is a "Grand Mercedes" 600 "Grosser" which some people mistakenly call a pullman. They made like 2,200 of these, and they are worth $50-150k (supposedly they jumped up this year so those numbers may be outdated, my friend sold a decent one in the 70s last year). They are an incredible feat of engineering and an enormous mess to maintain. Literally anything that moves on the car is hydraulically operated, power windows included. I know of a few 600 SWB grossers, but not at numbers I want to pay.

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The word "Pullman" is applied to any large increase in wheelbase over the standard L or SEL variant at the time, usually they have 6 doors, have dividers for the driver, etc. There was a 600 Pullman, but there are S600 pullmans, there are even V124s which are sometimes called pullmen. They only made like 400, 600 Pullman's, and they bring considerably more. Beyond that they made 600 Pullman Landaulets, which had the half rear convertible top for whoever was riding in the back, Landaulets bring $1,000,000+. With a 600, 600 Pullman or 600 Landaulet, since they were ludicrously expensive in their day they were all owned by dictators, celebrities, crimilals, etc. so they all have a story. The story affects the value of the car, so its tough to put a value on them given the wide range of stories and previous owners.

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CincinnatiFiero
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Re: Dictator-mobile

Post by CincinnatiFiero »

Aaron wrote:Engine pic!!
I'll get one soon, just incredibly dirty right now.

It does have EFI which is sort of interesting, my 72 350SL has it as well. Its got electronic injectors which are fired by a second set of points in the bottom of the distributor. It does not have the K or KE jet Bosch constant injection that BMW and Mercedes adopted later.
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Re: Dictator-mobile

Post by The Dark Side of Will »

I was referring to the 6 door...
CincinnatiFiero wrote:
Aaron wrote:Engine pic!!
It does have EFI which is sort of interesting, my 72 350SL has it as well. Its got electronic injectors which are fired by a second set of points in the bottom of the distributor. It does not have the K or KE jet Bosch constant injection that BMW and Mercedes adopted later.
Cadillac in the early '70's had EFI on the 472's and 500's. It was sequential, using a reed switch on the distributor to differentiate cycles. The controller was ANALOG (!) and used a network of resistors as the fuel delivery map. There's even a guy who swaps out the resistors to "retune" them. Soldering in 50 micro pots would even make a "tune on the fly" controller. :wink:

While modern digital controls are vastly superior, some of the old school ways fancy controls were implemented are still fascinating. The Saturn V rocket launched moon missions without a digital flight computer, and it was at least the late '90's if not the early '00's before the Soyuz rocket got one.
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Re: Dictator-mobile

Post by CincinnatiFiero »

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Here is a clean M116/M117 with D-jet to tide you over until I clean my motor off. In the middle of an evaporator core project on a Buick right now so I have not touched my cars.

The D-jet actually does use a computer inside the passenger compartment, but it is the size of a laptop and no more than like 10 wires go to it. It even makes use of a TPS sensor. There are a few adjustment screws on D-jet systems to adjust the mixture, guys who fit a wideband and tune with it see decent power gains and huge fuel economy jumps over cars that are already running "well." I need to get a WB for my 350SL and this car, and give that a shot, just have not had any time.

If you are capable of looking at engineering in context (which wierdly engineering students are the worst about), this stuff is fascinating. All my friends halfway through their degree and on their internships can't comprehend why Bosch would be so stupid as to implement such an asinine system. Well when you consider GM used carburetors for nearly 35 years after this system came out... its pretty freaking incredible. Hell the 300SL gullwing is mechanically direct injected, DI didn't reappear as a mainstream occurence for another 50 years. Knowing what we know now, it all seems cumbersome and inefficient but in context, in its day, that stuff was revolutionary thought of by great engineers.
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Re: Dictator-mobile

Post by ericjon262 »

CincinnatiFiero wrote: Knowing what we know now, it all seems cumbersome and inefficient but in context, in its day, that stuff was revolutionary thought of by great engineers.

it's funny how many "innovative" "new" ideas have been done decades earlier then most people realize.
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Re: Dictator-mobile

Post by The Dark Side of Will »

GM Rochester mechanical fuel injection in the '60's was darned impressive.

A conventional Hilborn style mechanical injection setup is actually quite old. It uses a fuel pump and a "pill" which is an orifice that provides a controlled bypass around the injectors. Basically, delivery volume is proportional to RPM and nothing else. The system can run ok at WOT, but no where else on the load map.

The GM system uses a venturi like a carbeuretor. The pressure signal through this venturi is proportional to the MASS FLOW through the venturi. This is the same signal that's used to meter fuel in a carb. In the Rochester system, the venturi pressure signal operates a bleed mechanism that acts like a variable "pill" in the Hilborn system... fuel is MUCH better metered and delivery is unaffected by hysteresis and g-forces on float bowls. In addition, it had an idle air bypass which was plumbed to annular air nozzles surrounding the fuel nozzles. Idle bypass had a fairly high air velocity through it. The fuel injection had a low delivery pressure at idle, resulting in poor atomization and poor idle quality. By surrounding the injection nozzles with the idle air nozzles, the high velocity idle air provided the atomization that the system needed to run well at idle.

In its day it was brilliant and indicative of the technological leadership position that GM held in the '60's.
It was also expensive, so GM only offered it on the highest performance Corvettes and similar (not sure what it was used on besides Corvettes...)
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Re: Dictator-mobile

Post by CincinnatiFiero »

Some '57 Chevrolets were built with it, I have only ever seen it on convertibles. "Fuelly" as they call them Corvettes are exceptionally valuable, I have a friend who has one and it was an enormous deal when he got it. Corvettes continue to not do it for me, but it was cool to see something other than a 350 with a 4 barrel.
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Aaron
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Re: Dictator-mobile

Post by Aaron »

Corvettes don't do it for me either. Which is a shame, because $60k will buy you one of the fastest, most potent cars on a track today. The value for performance is unrivaled by anything out there. But since 98% of people buy them as a midlife crisis Sunday driver, that's become their image.
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Re: Dictator-mobile

Post by CincinnatiFiero »

Aaron wrote:Corvettes don't do it for me either. Which is a shame, because $60k will buy you one of the fastest, most potent cars on a track today. The value for performance is unrivaled by anything out there. But since 98% of people buy them as a midlife crisis Sunday driver, that's become their image.
Bingo.

Same friend has a factory freak of a C5Z (Imo the C5Z is a raw-er, more enteratining car than a C6 LS3 car), holy crap is that car fun, and he bought it used so it was a hell of a lot of car for the money, but the look, the feel, and build quality just don't do it for me.
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Re: Dictator-mobile

Post by The Dark Side of Will »

CincinnatiFiero wrote:Some '57 Chevrolets were built with it, I have only ever seen it on convertibles. "Fuelly" as they call them Corvettes are exceptionally valuable, I have a friend who has one and it was an enormous deal when he got it. Corvettes continue to not do it for me, but it was cool to see something other than a 350 with a 4 barrel.
GM only put the fuel injection on solid-lifter engines. My dad use the solid lifter cam with hydraulic lifters in a 327 and put the Rochester injection on top of it. He guessed GM would have rated it at 365 HP (in between the 355 solid lifter carb'd and 375 solid lifter fuel injection rating) so he called it a 327/365. He had it in the middle of a Corvair using a Crown mid-engine conversion kit, then in a Mercedes sedan (I'll ask to see if he remembers what chassis it was). He had to retire it when he couldn't get leaded gas anymore.
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Re: Dictator-mobile

Post by CincinnatiFiero »

No pictures to post, but I figured out the tank was plugged up. The tank gravity feeds into an electric pump mounted near the rear axle, I got the pump working but it wasn't getting any fuel. Took the tank out and pressure washed it out with hot water and got the varnished up fuel out of the passages. In the process of painting it before I reinstall it. The car sat on the ground in a barn, but on a concrete floor for 14 years. Its not actually rusty but there is surface rust on a lot of things, so I got some satin black rust-oleum and intend to paint brackets and things as they come off the car just to make the bottom look a little cleaner.

Got my 3.5 emblem from eBay so it will be badged correctly soon.

Trying to track down some Bosch points for it, the points are pretty crummy looking but Mercedes don't run right with anything but Bosch points. May end up just getting them from the dealer.

Just got a new tank strainer from the dealer, $13 and will be here in 2 days. Mercedes parts remains awesome.

I'm really looking forward to driving this car, but after checking out a 6.3, I think this car will be for sale in the Spring and I will begin hunting a 6.3.
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Re: Dictator-mobile

Post by CincinnatiFiero »

Got the tank put back in, currently replacing all the rubber under the car, good thing it didn't start, I'm worried had the fuel system pressurized I could have had a fire on my hands, tons of ancient rubber under the car. Got a set of points coming, as well as a new fuel filter and correct non-resistor spark plugs, hopefully it will be running next week. I've got a wedding a short trip out of town Sept. 27th, my goal is to make it to that.

Got my 3.5 emblem
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Car is jacked up that is why it looks weird, and its sitting outside so I've got the interior covered up to protect it from the sun, that's all the crap on the parcel shelf.
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Re: Dictator-mobile

Post by crzyone »

I like it. Cars back then just had more style.
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Re: Dictator-mobile

Post by CincinnatiFiero »

Got some all glass European headlights for it, buddy found them on San Diego craigslist

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