Doing up my G Wagon
Hi Everyone I am finally spending some cash on bringing my silver short wheel base 1993 Mercedes 300gd manual up to scratch. I need some advice on getting hold of a mid section exhaust and also on some leaks I have linked to maybe sunroof or front door seals. Water getting into the footwell. I don't know where drainage holes are but any advice would be appreciated.
Hi Andrew,
I too have a 1993 silver SWB 300 but mine's the petrol version.
The sunroof drain holes - open the sunroof and the drainholes are in the two front corners. Slide the seats all the way back and stand in the footwell to see them. I used heavy duty strimmer wire to poke down the holes and flushed with hottish soapy water. The water should drain down into the wheel arches. I also replaced the seal that goes around the sunroof - bit of a pain that job.
Another definite candidate is water getting down the outside of the windows past the seals and inside the doors.. I have a step by step guide on this fix but don't know how to attach it to this post and can't see how to attach it to an email via this site. If you let me know your email addfress, I can send it to you (it's a PDF document). I also replaced the seals (or they might be called window scrapers) and the door seals. The drain holes for the doors are pretty obvious but worth checking they are draining properly.
Before you do any of that, take out the carpet and the very thick padding below - that took nearly a week near the boiler for mine to dry out properly. If you line the footwell with several layers of dry newspaper it helps locate where the water is getting in.
Don't despair - the drivers side footwell on mine was swimming in water when I bought it but have now had five years of perfectly dry carpets.
Is it both footwells or just one side? Another possible culprit is the air intake centre bulkhead under the bonnet. Is that draining?
Or the windscreen wiper spindles - what's the condition of the bodywork where they go through from outside to inside? Check the plastic caps that go over the spindles - years of hot sunshine causes them to crack.
Mark
A couple of additional things to check, just in case:
a) Windscreen surround - known for rusting out along the bottom
b) Bulkhead - every single place where anything goes through it. Mine had a leak that turned out to be water dripping into the engine bay onto a cable, along and through a split grommet into the footwell.
Good luck with your search :-)
OE68
Leaks from the window wiper mechanisms are a common fault too
You can get the middle section made up by a Stainless franchise like Longlife, much of the system can be junked though as its too long and cutting the big exhaust on the right side makes little differnce to noise.
If your exhaust original type , best going through MB fit it with stainless steel bolts makes replacing sections must easier, last time I bought/ enquired the middle box that sits across the axle was about £100, the other sections £200plus, each, so if you are buying everything makes sense to fit stainless, tho some say noisy? You can buy bits on German ebay for a patern exhaust worth a look
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Thanks for the comments. We are making good progress. Need to find out how I get a new middle section of the exhaust? I'll put some photos on here later