The boot of a Mercedes R129 SL is covered in liner from all sides, including the lid. If you want to get it off, as we did, it's not immediately obvious where to start, as you can't really see what's holding it in place from the outside. This is how the liner looks from the outside (albeit after we got it off, forgot to take the 'before' photo):
I spent a lot of time trying to google for a tutorial on how to remove the boot lid liner, but the best advice there is is to pull. So we decided to go ahead and do just that.
Before you start, remove the warning triangle and the knob that switches off the boot light. At first we though that the 2 screws located in the centre of the lid would need to be removed, but they have nothing to do with the liner, it will simply slide out from underneath.
Then carefully start to pull the lid cover towards you. We started at the bottom near the metal parts that open and close the lid. The lid is held in place by plastic poppers:
Looking at this it may seem that you should try to slide the grey bits out of the black ones, but that wasn't the case. We just pulled and the grey poppers came out of the boot lid. Be careful when you pull though, as I have read about the black holders breaking off. We were lucky, and none of ours broke, so all the poppers and black holders are intact.
This is what the boot lid cover looks like from the back, so you can see how many poppers there are and their locations:
Now if you were hoping that once you remove the boot lid liner, you would get easy access to the third brake light, think again. The boot is covered from the inside by a metal skeleton thing (don't know what's a better way of calling it) that by the looks of it cannot be removed and makes accessing the third brake light as well as the GPS receiver (if you have one) a nightmare. This is what the boot lid looks like with the liner off:
You can just only see a small part of the third brake light that's relatively easily accessible. For the rest of the light you will have to navigate a set of holes that don't give you much access at all.
Today is a wonderful sunny day, so perfect for spending some quality time with our beloved R129 Mercedes SL. London's smog and all the dust and pollen flying around in the air did their job very well, which meant that the car was demanding some attention (plus we were dying to try out a clay bar :)). The whole process took us around 4 hours:
- Sprayed the car from a pressure washer to make the dirt come off slightly,
- Then used a shampoo solution and washed the upper parts with a sheepskin mitten and the bottom parts with microfiber cloth and dried again with microfiber cloths.
- Then used special wax/polish remover to prep for claying.
- Then used the clay bar together lubricated with the shampoo solution - that pulled out some dirt let me tell you!
- Then sprayed on some more water to wash off the clay residue and wiped dry.
- Used alloy cleaner on the alloys, left for 10 minutes or so, then washed off.
- Did another round of wax/polish remover to prep for waxing.
- Finally, applied ArmorAll shield and buffed
The result was quite impressive:
Our R129 has just spent 3 weeks at an independent Mercedes specialist being serviced and checked for any issues that may need looking at. We didn't expect to come through this unscathed, and indeed one of the things that was discovered was that one of the catalytic converters was failing. Not a quick fix, as the replacement had to be ordered from Germany, hence the wait to get the car back and came with a lovely price tag of around £900 plus VAT attached (cat converter + O2 sensor which couldn't be separated from the old cat converter +labour). Now, you can probably buy some aftermarket ones faster and cheaper, but our approach is not to be stingy when it comes to replacement parts.
I can imagine that for potential buyers, spotting something broken that is so expensive to repair can be a deal breaker. There are two catalytic converters in the car as well, so if they both fail, you may have to tighten your belt for a while to get that fixed. Unfortunately, this fault is not easy to discover, unless you can raise the car up and knock on the catalytic converter. If it's broken, you will hear rattling. It doesn't seem to be a part that goes bad frequently though - our 1998 Mercedes still had its original converter, so even if you have to have one fixed, you can rest assured the new one will last you a good few years!
Apart from this, there are other things that are expensive to fix if they go wrong, and they are easier to check when buying. Of course, with it being a convertible with an automatic soft top retraction, that's an obvious things to check. The R129 soft top is operated by an electrically driven hydraulic pump, a bank of 15 hydraulic actuators, 11 solenoids controlled by microprocessors and 17 end-position switches. Complicated and not cheap to repair if things go wrong. Therefore, make sure you test the roof mechanism before buying the car.
Adaptive Damping System (ADS), a computer-controlled suspension system controlling the car's level was an optional extra (standard on SL600), which again can give you an impressive repair bill if its valve body fails.
The automatic transmission on R129 was marketed as sealed for life. Unfortunately, if you treat it as such and never change the fluid, its life is going to end up being rather shorter that you would expect. You may get told that there is no need to change the fluid, but don't believe that. Ideally you would want to change it every 40,000 miles, so check if it has been done when buying a car with a high mileage. Servicing your transmission regularly will spare you a massive bill to have it replaced if it fails. We saw no bills to prove the transmission fluid on our SL500 had been changed, but the car has only done 70,000 miles so far, so we weren't too concerned and simply had it done now.
Finally, make sure the A/C is working properly, as issues may end up being quite labour-intensive to sort out.
