"If You Can't Stand the Heat,.." Replace the Hood Insulation Pad on Your Mercedes

One of the things we knew would need doing straight away when buying the car was the hood insulation pad replacement. Why do you need insulation under the hood? It's not just for noise reduction as some may think - the primary reason to have it is to protect the paint on the hood from the engine heat. 

It is important to make sure that the pad is in good condition. Otherwise, it will crumble onto the engine and god knows where it will end up. When we purchased the car, this is what you saw when you opened the bonnet:

It was old, torn, crumbling and bit of it tended to just come off randomly. High time for a change!

The Mercedes dealer quoted us £150 for a new pad and glue, which felt quite steep considering you can get a pad off Ebay for something like £50-60. You will need to purchase the glue separately, but it's definitely not going to drive the total up to £150. So Ebay it was. As for the glue, everyone was raving about 3M, but it's not available here. You can get the proper insulation glue from The SL Shop, which we tried to do, but unfortunately something went wrong in the delivery process and we couldn't get it in time. So a last minute dash to Screwfix resulted in the purchase of Sticks Like Sh*t.

The pad comes rolled up, so before attaching it, it's a good idea to straighten it up on the floor and let it lie around for a while to get flat:

Now when you start to rip the old insulation pad off, make sure you have a big sheet or something similar to cover the engine bay. Plus get some pliers - if you look carefully at the first photo, you will see that apart from being glued on, it is also attached to the top of the hood by a set of round plastic clips, and you will need the pliers to get those off. This is the result of the removal:

And now to attach the new pad. What we thought we'd do is first attach it by the clips, then put the glue onto the hood and then press the hood pad onto that. Getting the plastic clips to go in properly is a pain - some were extremely tight and required lots of strength and hammering as they just absolutely refused to go in. But in the end the pad was attached to the top of the hood:

It makes sense to keep the engine bay covered by the sheet throughout the process, as the glue can drip during the smearing process, which is exactly what happened. Once the hood was covered with glue, we pressed the insulation pad tightly to the hood... and... drumroll... the result was:

No, this is not a mistake and I am not posting the same photo twice by accident. This was the result. The glue had no holding force whatsoever and the whole thing just fell off and continued to hang loosely attached by the plastic clips alone. No matter how hard we pressed, it just didn't work. Even after closing the bonnet and leaving it be overnight, not even the smallest bit was glued on.

So lesson learned? Sticks Like Sh*t does exactly what it says on the label. It doesn't stick. Have you ever tried to glue stuff together with shit? My point exactly - shit may have a lot of other characteristics such as smell and not sinking, but it's just not meant to be used as adhesive material. Otherwise we could have put all the bird poop to good use a long time ago! :)

We would have reordered the proper glue from The SL Shop and continued our attempts, but the car was due to go in for an inspection, service and transmission fluid change the next day, so we just asked the indy to attach our freedom loving insulation pad properly. So this DIY attempt is not as Y as we would have liked it to be, but at least we got this far...

Should you attempt this yourself? Absolutely. Just cover everything nicely with a sheet, purchase the proper adhesive and everything should go smoothly!

Clean Clean Clean Your Drains, Clean Them Every Day...

Ok, maybe not every day, but they are definitely in need of regular inspection and cleaning. Neglecting the drains can cause moisture ingress in the car and you may just find yourself faced with a little flood in the footwells. 

Keeping in mind how rainy this winter was, we wanted to make sure the drains in our Mercedes R129 were doing their job, so to start with, we set out to examine the drains under the hood. If your knowledge about where these are located, like mine previously, is somewhat lacking, this is where your can find them:

They are all narrow and very fiddly to get to so my recommendation would be to arm yourself with a thin stick or something similar to get the gunk out.

On close inspection, the drains looked like they hadn't been cleaned for a very long time, during which they had been busy accumulating a substantial collection of the local flora in the shape of mud and plants at various stages of decay. While the one by the windscreen wiper was too tricky to photograph, here is what the two drains on the sides looked like:

To be honest, I was surprised we didn't have a flood in the footwells.

So armed with a stick, I got my hands dirty (in the true sense of the word - in hindsight, a pair of Latex gloves would have done no harm). And this is what came out:

This is the end result that we will aim to keep:

It may not be the most pleasant or easy work because of how narrow and difficult to reach these are, but it's so much better to keep these clean than to sort out the consequences of them overflowing.

Let the Sunshine In or R129 Optional Panoramic Roof

When we began to read up and look at the R129 Mercedes SL's available, one of the desirable options frequently mentioned on forums was the panoramic roof. You can spot one because the shape of the panoramic roof is slightly more rounded from standard hardtop and it has bigger side windows as you can see:

Mercedes R129 standard hardtop (Source: Wikipedia)

vs.

Mercedes R129 panoramic hardtop

It didn't become an option straight away - various sources give different versions as to when it was introduced that vary between 1995-1997.

Pah, we thought, well that's a pointless feature. Why would anyone want a panoramic roof? Especially at such a massive extra cost (at the time of writing this, I can see some on ebay, with the lowest priced at £1250, the one in our colour being £1650). Bet it's not going to be nice either - won't make a difference when it's rainy (which it is most of the time) and will get very hot when it's sunny. Plus the panoramic hardtop is much heavier than the normal one. Pah.

And then we sat in a car with a panoramic roof... and suddenly we knew that we wouldn't settle for anything else.

Either because it's unlined and therefore thinner or due to the unrestricted view above or for both of these reasons, it felt like there was a lot more headroom in the car. This may not matter for shorter people but considering we are both significantly above average height, it makes a huge difference. Normally in low sports cars it feels like the roof is pretty much on our heads (how the hell Jeremy Clarkson manages to climb into all sorts of claustrophobic cars and make it look comfortable is beyond me).

Panoramic roof also makes it easier for us to see the traffic lights - usually it's a problem because of how curved the windscreen is, with pillars and roof cutting off a lot of the view above, but now we can simply look through the roof.

Also, the fears that it would make it uncomfortably hot when it's sunny have not been confirmed - saw no difference to the old car.


So now our attitude is more along the lines of "how could you not want to have it???"

Now You See Me... - The Side Mirror Story

When trying to adjust the side mirrors, the one on the passenger side worked well, while the driver's side mirror seemed to be doing what it felt like instead of following the directions from the switch. At first we though something was wrong with the motor, but on close inspection it became clear that the mirror simply wasn't attached as it should. Instead of a metal spring clip thingy holding it in place, it was stuck onto the motor with some double sided tape, which had begun to come off. The metal clip that was meant to be holding it in place was missing altogether.

Before figuring out a permanent solution, we considered some temporary fixes. 

1. Double sided tape - the one we had was of such appalling quality that I had to wonder if it was indeed double sided. Didn't even try using that as it was obvious it wouldn't hold.
2. Blu-tack - also a bad idea. Apart from not sticking properly, I was concerned that it may lose its hold altogether in rain/cold
3. Velcro picture hanging strips. These held and we could adjust the mirror properly, but after coming back to the car in a couple of days we could detach them very easily (probably again because of the impact of the nasty outside conditions), so it makes me think they could detach themselves very easily on the motorway, and that would be the end of the mirror then.
4. You can of course use instant glue, and that will probably keep everything in place very nicely, but then you won't be able to ever detach the glass from the motor, so any problems would mean having to replace both. 

To get some help with a permanent solution for this problem, I posted a message on www.mbclub.co.uk - a very useful forum resource and one I would highly recommend joining. One of the members had a broken mirror from his W202, which looked very similar to R129 and he was willing to send me the clip, which was extremely nice of him.

After wiring over the P&P, the clip got here very quickly and off we went to try it out. And boy is it a pain to try and make it go in. This is how the mirror casing looks:

The casing is all one whole part, so you can't take a part off to make it easier to fit the glass. What you have to do it try and get the motor to a good angle so you can reach in with some pliers and pop the clip into place - it will go around the top bit of the motor and hold it in place:

It wasn't possible to take any photos of attaching the clip as I could hardly see anything myself through the tiny gap. But it took so many attempts that we almost gave up. It's extremely fiddly and just doesn't want to both clip on and go around the motor - it kept sliding off and not being attached to anything once I clipped it into place. After attempt # 32198, I was amazed to discover that the clip had finally attached itself to something and I sure hope that this is how it's meant to be. The glass doesn't feel like it's in tight, but it's in place and it will let you move it around, so it seems to have done the trick. Here's how it looks now:

Tired Tyres - Tread Timidly

One of the things that immediately stood out when viewing this R129 was a big bulge on the passenger side front tyre that seemed to be news to the owner. Neither he, nor us for that matter, had ever seen something like that on a car tyre before, but I did get bulges on my bike when trying to conquer high kerbs, so this one probably came from hitting one of the potholes peppering the local roads.

After googling the problem, all the advice could be summed up as DANGER - REPLACE TYRE! The owner offered to have it done for us, but since we were going to have the back tyres changed anyway due to wear, we thought we would take care of it ourselves and just change all four tyres. On the drive home it felt fine, so we weren't too worried when we couldn't get a time slot for another couple of weeks.

We took our time choosing the right tyres. Our R129 came with 18'' AMG II staggered wheels, with different tyre brands in the front and rear. Ideally, we wanted to have the same brand on all four wheels. We were not after a cheap option - what we wanted was something that can be trusted and of course something deserving of our precious Merc, as surely apart from all the safety concerns it would just be plain wrong to get cheap footwear for such a thoroughbred car.

We relied on EU tyre labelling to understand the fuel efficiency, wet grip and external rolling noise. You may already familiar with this, but for us it was something completely new (have to admit with shame this is the first time ever we were having tyres changed; Cars for Dummies, this is your target audience right here):

• Fuel efficiency was the least important criterion, rated from A (best) to G (worst). Let's be honest here, if we were worried about fuel consumption, we wouldn't have bought a car with a 5-litre engine. 

• Wet grip was very important - considering the amount of rain this winter, the roads were pretty much always wet. It is also rated from A to G, with the difference in wet braking distance between A and G being 18!! metres.

• Noise level was an important feature as well. Apart from personal convenience, a thing to consider is that a new noise limit will be introduced in the next couple of years and some of the tyres sold at the moment will no longer fall under that legal limit.

For more information on the EU tyre labelling, you can have a look here. 

When it came down to choosing a particular brand and model, we had a look at some tyre tests done by car mags, but, to be honest, I always doubt the objectivity of these. The most helpful resource was a website called Tyrereviews, where you can see a great scoring system as well as comments from users.

We were also not sure where to buy and have the tyres fitted - the options looked at included Kwik Fit, Asda and Blackcircles (affiliated with Tesco). Again, a helpful source of information was a review website - Trustpilot. As Blackcircles placed 5th on their list, it was a clear winner, with getting Clubcard points an additional bonus. 

So having examined their range and compared that to the tyre reviews, we settled for Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 2. It was available for both front and back, had very good user reviews and good scores on the EU tyre labelling. All of that didn't come cheap, so the total for tyres and fitting came up to around £750. Order completed, we started to count the days till our appointment at the garage.

In the meantime, we kept driving the car, and boy did that bulge start to make a difference. Even though the tyre didn't look flat from the outside, the ride worsened a lot. When turning left at low speed it felt like you were sitting on the alloy instead of the tyre with odd noises and dodgy ride. So if you see a bulge on your tyre, my recommendation would be to get it sorted ASAP.

When it was time to finally head to the garage, we were driving on pins and needles, worried that something bad was going to happen, so it was a big relief when we made it. No complaints whatsoever about service from Blackcircles - the correct tyres were there, the work was done quickly and the ride improved instantly. As it turned out, there was also a bulge on one of the back tyres that we'd overlooked, plus the guys in the garage discovered we were missing one of the bolts securing the wheel, so that's something else on our 'to get sorted' list now.

So far, very happy with our tyre choice:

Birds of Feather Poop Together

As if the constant rain wasn't enough, another problem with parking outside is birds. For us, living in a green and leafy area, there is simply no choice - no matter where we choose to leave the car, it's going to be under a tree, and, as a result, subject to meticulous target practice by the local birds. 

Now the obvious bit is that of course having bird excrement on your car is ugly and disgusting. However, I thought little else of it until we took our lil' old supermarket car to a car wash after a couple of weeks gathering a collection of poop on the bonnet. Once the poop came off, so did the lacquer, leaving horrendous spots all over the bonnet. Now that I think of it, should have taken some photos to show how big the damage is, but too late now.

Since then, I have googled and googled again trying to find a miracle bird poop repellent protector, but no such luck. There are several explanations for the damage, with some saying that it's the chemicals in the poop that etch into the lacquer, while others claim that it's the way the lacquer expands in the warmth and contracts in the cold that does the damage. Either way, the result can be heart-wrenching to look at if you don't act quickly. 

I do feel better now that the car has been waxed, but still a new part of my daily routine now includes examining the car for any sign of bird excrement (and believe you me, not a day passes by without at least one new 'decoration') and frantically wiping it off. 

To Wax or Not to Wax - That Is the Question

Unfortunately, we don't have a garage and the car gets to stand outside all the time, making it vital to try and protect the bodywork as best we can. When it rained for the first time we saw that the car hadn't been waxed for ages, so one of the first purchases for our now vast car care kit was Armor All Shield. Why the choice? Well, it just seemed too good to pass up and the guy at the shop said it did wonders. Very easy and quick to apply, with a long lasting protection for another 10 washes - what else do you need?

It is indeed very easy to apply. You can't apply it in the rain, which is fair enough, so we drove to the nearest undercover parking lot and applied it there. You just put some on a small area and then wipe it off. Simple as that. I wasn't 100% convinced by the look after the application as it was kind of streaky in places, but then again it did say to apply it to a cold surface, while our bonnet was warm from driving, so maybe that's the reason. 

When the product really came to shine was in the rain after the application. The beading was very beady. :) And it has indeed lasted through several washes and almost daily rain. However, what you don't consider beforehand is what happens to those beads when it stops raining. Before applying the wax, after the rain the car simply looked exactly as it did before the rain, whereas now the beads sit around and then dry out leaving ugly water stains all over the car. I have tried to take a photo to show you just how ugly, but we must have a terribly photogenic car, as the stains just don't show up on camera and it looks nice and shiny! Here's what I managed:

We do wonder what the benefits of beading are apart from telling you you need to wax your car again if you don't see beads appear. First, they take ages to dry. Yes, everyone says that the beads will fly off the car when going at 30 miler per hour. But what if the car is stationary? And what if you don't remember the last time you could do 30 miles per hour due to always being stuck in an endless traffic jam? We can't imagine it being very good for the paint to get the sun shining on it through the water drops... And surely it would be more beneficial to have a protective layer that would cause the water to flow down uninterruptedly instead. So far no luck with that, but if we find one, we'll definitely review it here.

Why an SL?

Having had enough of the 'pleasures' of owning an ageing supermarket car that has depreciated to a point where simple maintenance is pretty much worth more than the whole car, we decided it was time for something more exciting. 

The goal we set ourselves was to find a luxury car that has fully or almost fully depreciated and has the potential of becoming a classic. We wanted something fun and impractical and something that would really give you the pride of ownership feeling and the desire to wash and polish it all day long.

I have grown up coveting a) hardtop convertibles and b) Mercedes. So the SL was instantly a candidate. But in a bid to be at least somewhat sensible we thought we should go for a coupe, making it a bit less likely to be leaky, and the options we considered included Jaguar XJS, Jaguar XK, Porsche 928 and BMW 8. The latter became the main candidate, but something went wrong every time we tried to view one. So we thought fate must be trying to tell us something and decided to view some SLs.

R129 was chosen over the next generation as various reviews and comments proclaimed it to be a more robust car born before the loss of high standards under American influence. R107 is of course gorgeous as well, but it has already begun to appreciate plus even though we are both absolutely smitten by its looks, we're not sure we would be able to live with the lack of modern conveniences in the interior. 

Hence, after reading a lot of online content and a few unsuccessful viewings, we finally found The One - a car we wanted to get no matter what. It's a great car, but it's not perfect, so we thought it would be a good idea to write this blog detailing the imperfections and the steps taken to rectify them as well as share the general stories of what it's like to own an R129 SL500.