I picked up a set of door pins off of ebay for $5 shipped. These pins where made for a chevy shoebox. I picked these because they where cheap and they looked like little pistons. As you can see they fit perfect even in the lock position.

Another upgrade I got where these license plate led lights. I had them for about a month before I installed them. Turns out the wires can't carry enough power to light up both bulbs. So i end up with one light working and the other one not working.

My new set of SL R129 Wheels. Evolution1 Style wheels. Thanks Nate

I have a car meet coming up Oct. 17th. The car needs new front sway bar bushings as mine are old and falling apart. I already have new sawy bar bushings.

On my list to  change before the car meet is:

I need to send my Camber plates back to get fixed. Thanks Kevin aka Newbenz2.

I want to test fit my dads C230 wheels on my car to get a feel on what tire size i will need. I want to change the front tire to a bigger one to fill in the gaps. Maybe toss in a spacer for the front.

One of my concerns is the rear spacer. It looks ok but it needs just a little more. As you can see in the picture (right above) its fine but a little bit more and it would look good. My only concern is putting all of the pressure on the bearing. So i don't know yet. Either way I'm going to need a change the spacer soon. Maybe a 1.5 inch spacer. While it doesn't look big enough I do have rubbing issues in the rear when people sit in the back. I'm thinking about getting the one below from a trusted company here in California.

Lately my car has been acting funny. Well more like shaking while driving on the freeway. It's scary because you don't know what will happen. Chances are my Motor mounts are messed up. They look fine I don't see any leaking marks from fluid inside.

I'm starting to believe that my wheels arn't balanced correctly. I will feel the car shake at higher speeds and as soon as i press on the brake it will go away.

^Scrape                If you look hard enough you see that the Mercedes plates say "2cute4heart"(love)

Time to stop messing around and get some work finished. The time is 4pm Sunday. The flex disk, drive shaft bearing, and Speedo cable are going to get changed.

I made sure to read everything on the Haynes repair book before starting. It calls for a 41mm wrench to remove the center bolt. Come on who has a 41mm wrench on hand. As you can see the bolts require a allan wrench style thing to remove it. Here's me checking for fitment.

^Here's the size of the hex thing. I picked up the set of hex keys at Kragen for $2. ^Alright no turning back now. Remove one of the center support brackets and fuel pump cover for clearance. It was annoying to remove the bolt and get out from under the car and release the hand brake. Go back under the car and turn the drive shaft. Then pull the hand brake again to lock it in place

I really need to get a matching set of jacket stands as you can see the front and rear don't match. Start with the rear side first. Slide the drive shaft forward to the front of the car until you can drop it. You can see I used some books to support the back end of the drive shaft. Now I need to remove the transmission sub frame support. I used a Honda jack to support the tranny so it wont tilt and damage my motor mounts. It's not as bad as it looks to remove the transmission support, it was only 6 easy to reach/turn bolts. This is a good time to check the condition of the transmission mount. You can use your fingers and pinch it and even turn it. Mine was fine.

Using some liquid wrench I sprayed the bolts so they would come off easier. Time for a soda brake. Now you can see the position of my wrench and socket wrench. My biggest concern is striping the bolts. Because I can't turn back and I don't have any equipment to cut anything.

Now that it was removed it's time to remove the speedo cable. You can see the long cable attached via the green screw to the top left hand corner of the transmission. It was blocked by the flex disk. It's pretty easy to remove and get it out of the way. Just remember once you remove the cable it will leak a little bit of ATF fluid. Ok now that the back section of the drive shaft is out its time to replace the flex disk and center bearing. The time is 9pm a total time of 5 hours because i took my sweet time being careful.

Hears the new bearing. Turns out my 3 claw jaw puller is to small. ^ The one in the bottom dosen't work also. I guess I have to pass on changing it. It's not hard to remove the drive shaft so i can do it next time around.

As you can see the transmission mount wont come off now matter how hard i try. It also dosen't help that my exhaust is one solid pipe with no sections i could unbolt. Well I could unbolt it from the headers inside the engine bay but I have no way to support the exhaust and put it back in if i drop it. So now i have to leave the front section in car. You can see the marks I was making wrestling with it. Thank god i didn't snap the O2 sensor.

Here's a picture of the new flex disk side by side with the old one. They look the same. I didn't see anything wrong with the old one, no rips or tears. The one small thing i see is if you look close at the old flex disk you will see the metal part slightly raised/pushed out from the surface of the rubber. Either way i felt no movement even when i put a tool in the hole and tried to move it.

^Old flex disk next to the other old flex disk.

As you can see my drive shaft dampener is kind of messed up. I can move the rubber around. I can even push the little metal selves. Since i can't get the front section of the drive shaft out there's nothing I can do other than just leaving it until next time.

I have small hands so i can stick my hand inside the dash from the bottom and unscrew the cable and yank it out. So the cable on the left is the old one. The new one is on the right. The gold thing in the middle is the screw on part that comes lose over time. You can't see it on the right because the rubber thing is covering it up. The screw on part it held in place by the metal part being clammed down to the hose. So what i did was use some heavy duty tape used to patch up water leaks and wrapped it around the metal part and the hose itself. This gives it strength and protection making sure i won't need to change it again in 20 years.

^Now you see the end product.  ^On a side note the rubber cover seen above protecting the screw on part prevents your fingers from screwing it back on to the back side of the cluster. I had to cut it off just to get clearance. I also did this to the bottom part that's not pictured. I also covered the bottom part with a cover so when i run the cable inside the engine compartment I wont bend it. Running the cable was really tricky through 2 firewalls. I spent 2 hours trying to get it right. The time is 11pm and the drive shaft isn't even installed yet. Fast forward to 4:30am and now I'm finished. Only god will know if my work will hold up. All in all I could have done this faster but I just took my time to be safe.

Friday night the day before the meet.

This is the issue i have with such a low splitter. I scrape all the time.

Lets see the weight of these wheels. Wow talk about heavy! 50 pounds with tires.

My sway bar bushing is bad I guess i should replace it. It was a pain in the butt to install new bushings even on the end links. It would be imposable to install the inner bushings.

Car on top me on the bottom. Old bushing vs new one.

My carb thing to prove that it's meets California emissions. ^ As you can see I thought i was ok using the Royal Purple Synthetic oil without any issues. Turns out I'm wrong, it dose seep just a tiny bit but not enough to change the level on the dip stick. I think I will downgrade to a Synthetic blend.

My car at the Mercedes Meet. I got lost on the way and ended up driving around for an hour. 62 miles in total. My car took it like a champ; no clunking what so ever. While driving down the freeway to the meet I heard something fly out from under my car and hit the underside. Not sure if it was a rock or some small bolt. I need to check it out.

Next on the list to change is the rear subframe bushings. The video will show the problem. I will get this squared away before the next car meet in March 2010.

I really think that this subframe movement is causing the bang when i go in to gear hard. We have to wait and see