A video of my car getting a Smog test.

  Heres a picture of my car keys; just ignor the spam key. I had the blank key for about a year and still haven't gotten around to getting a spare. The green thing is the key to disconnect my battery

    Most people would think i would baby this car and wash it all the time; but the truth is I don't wash it as often as you would think. Sometimes my car doesn't get washed for more than a month at times. I should have worked on the car more before the winter rolled in.

    One night I uncovered my car to let it run. I drove it around the block and something didn't seem right, my dash lights seem dark. I thought it was just me seeing things and i took the car to Chevron about one mile away and in that mile the car started to act funny. I turned around and took the car home ASAP. Once i got home I came to the conclusion that my Alternator wasn't working. I took out my tester and my battery was dead.

    Someone mentioned that i should try getting a new Voltage Regulator. So i ordered a new one and waited for it to come in the mail.

Heres a random picture I took of my benz and its huge fender gaps. Yes the fender gaps are a huge turnoff.  The funky fender gaps make me want to remove this silly bodykit and return it to a normal 2.3-16v bodykit. Oh yeah my corner lights are not Euro lights.

    Since my head was inside my fender I could see my messed up tires. The tires on a car that hasn't been alighted since i got the car in August 2006 who knows when the last owner did it.

    I finally got my new Voltage Regulator in the mail. All i need to do is install it and hope that the alternator isn't messed up.

With the Voltage Regulator soon to be replaced I might as well try replacing the Fuses in the car also.

    I finally have the chance to buy my dream seats on Ebay.

The seats above are the Recaro C Classic Seats. Before AMG was apart of Mercedes they use to Install these seats in their cars. It was a $10,000 option in the 1980's that the buyers could pick. That made these seats super rare.

Yes i know their not the greatest pair of seats in the world. But I can live with it sitting in my room until I get them recovered in a few years. I paid a total of $750 including the shipping. Someday my seats will look as good as the one in the picture.

    Heres a picture of the Brabus Bullet. I really like the nice touch they did with the transmission tunnel. It's a nice cross patch pattern that i might put on the car in a few years.

Ok its time to stop being lazy my Voltage Regulator has been sitting in my room for two weeks collecting dust. Since my car can't run on it's own I have to use a stand alone jumper unit. Thank god we have it and I can run my car for a little bit and keep it running from time to time. The only problem is once i remove the jumper unit my car will die.

    So i had to drive my car from the side of the road and up my driveway, and into my garage with my hood open and that jumper unit inside. Not as easy as it looks.

    With the car inside the garage its time to work. So i needed to remove my fan cover to get more access, heres how you remove it.

You will need a 13MM Socket and Ratcheting wrench, a long Breaker bar or Torque Wrench, last a 27MM Socket for the big crank bolt.

    Remove the clips and put them in a safe place. Push the fan cover closer to the engine to make more space. Take your 27MM socket and breaker bar and put in on the crank shaft bolt so it can't spin around. The ground will act as a third hand. Now take your 13MM socket and wrench and turn the bolt on the  fan and you are done (yeah i had to wrestle the fan to remove it ).

    Now its time to remove the alternator. The Voltage Regulator is connected to the back of the Alternator behind a little cover. I had to remove the Poly V Belt and get it out of the way. I loosen the slack on the belt via the adjusting rod near the Distributor. I took some WD40 and sprayed it on the two alternator bolts to free up the frozen bolts so i don't snap them. I remove the two bolts  and out came the alternator. It's much easier than most people think. 

    I was going to install this newly painted bracket but I changed my mind because I didn't want to touch the water pump pulley. I figure I might mess up or strip a bolt or two.

    While I'm down near the alternator I notice my painted headers done more than 12 months ago. I didn't do that great of a job as you can see.

    Now that the Alternator is out I took the time to clean it up and make it look nice. I installed my new Voltage Regulator. The new one is on the left and the one on the right came from my car. I wanted to take my Alternator to Kragen and get it tested to see it it works. I didn't want to install an Alternator and not have it work. Once at Kragen auto parts I tested my Alternator in under one minute and it passed. I was happy and ready to go home to put everything back together.

    Since everything passed at Kragen I took my Alternator and painted it with some High-Temp paint. Year I know, Ricer! At least it looks better than it did before. After the paint dried off I reinstalled my Alternator back inside without any problems.

    I put some belt dressing on the belt to keep it from getting dry. I put my belt back on and tighten everything up. !!!POP!!!

    I snapped my adjusting rod for my belt. It seems that the rod was doing all the work for holding the tension on the belt. As you can see in the picture next to my thank God my spare adjusting rod. Now i need to remove the rod and replace it. But in order to replace it i need to remove the Power Steering pump pulley. The problem is the pulley keeps turning so i need a way to wedge something to prevent the pulley wheel from turning.

^This is my spare.

    As you can see the arrow is pointing to a bolt behind the power steering pump pulley. Once the pulley is out of the way i can remove the last bolts to get to the adjusting rod. The little black shock absorber seems dead. I figure the one in my car is in the same shape so i just order a new one.

    I ordered a new belt shock for my belt tensioner thing. I also got a new center link for my front tie rod ends. Well since i had spare parts to build a whole engine, I decided to use my spare belt tensioner unit. Since I painted my Alternator why not my belt tensioner while I'm at it.

    All i need to do is remove the PS Pulley. I found this Craftsman opener thing in the garage. It fits perfectly and the pulley came off without a problem. Once that was done i could reach the last bolt covered by the PS pulley.

    That one bolt behind the pulley is a hard one because it is a long bolt and the nut is all the way in the back. My hands or tools could not reach the spinning nut. I did manage to stick my long flat head screw driver to prevent the bolt from spinning and was able to remove it.

    Now that the last bolt was removed I took out the belt tensioner.

    Time to install my spare tensioner that i painted. The little arrow is also painted in red.

    Since the  Power Steering pulley was out i used my spare pulley and gave it a quick wet sand to get a good area to paint on. I just let it dry in the sun a few minutes before I installed it back in to the car.

    Everything is put back together and ready to start. Only thing is I need to take it back apart and put some tread locker and the belt has to much free play in it.

    Yes I know what the sound is and where it's coming from (The fan isn't tighten down fully). The smoke is coming from my painted headers (Touch ups). Sad part is car still cant run without the jumper unit still installed. I guess i need to mess around with it more on another day.

    I just got my Recaro C Classic seats in the mail today. Dang these seats are heavy. I just measured the bolt holes from my 16V seats and it came up to 31CM (room for error). WHen i messured the bolt holes on the Recaro seats it came to 33CM maybe they will bolt up fine.

Time to clean up the seats.

Before :(                                                       After :)

    The yellow you see is the foam under the leather.

    So today 11/20/08 I tried to fix the car again by moving the alternator wires to a different spot. I figure since i took out my Alternator I must have installed the wires in a different spot. I ended up giving up that day.

    Seeing how the car is stuck again I though I'd mess around with my dads C230 and take off the wheels and maybe put it on my car. The wheels on the C230 are 17inchs. Since he had bigger tires maybe this will give me a better idea of what tire size to run. Never got around to doing it.

    I asked for help online and someone sent me this picture on the left. And that one didn't work also but then again i was going off my memory of the picture.

    This is what happens when you run over something and it hits the inside wheel well. It cracked a small part of the fender. I was really pissed off at myself.

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