Galane
New Reader
3/10/17 2:03 a.m.
wawazat wrote:
Saw the strangest R class thing last Thursday afternoon on my way back to Detroit from Pittsburgh. Over the course of about an hour I saw 6 car haulers headed east on the OH turnpike each FULLY loaded with R class Mercedes minivans. Seven R's per trailer and all except one were black. No other makes or models on the trailers.
What was going on with these? Where were they going??? Why was there one lone silver R class in the herd???
That's as weird as a convoy new of semi-tractors I once saw. Each one was towing two others, with the fronts up on the trailer hitches. All of them the same make and model, all totally black, except one in hot pink.
In reply to mazdeuce:
Mazdeuce, count me as another new GRM reader (and just-now-subscriber) who was brought here by your thread (from OppositeLock).
Seriously, your wrenching and writing inspire me to tackle more projects. Thanks for the time you've put into sharing your R63 journey with us! Who knew a stupid bolt would lead to so much wrenching...on other, completely unrelated cars. 
In reply to wawazat:
Could this have something to do with R class production at AM General? New units headed for a ship to China?
mazdeuce wrote:
I love the idea that somewhere, in a land far far away, the R63 is still coveted. So much so that factory workers in Alabama are still screwing them together.
Nope... the workers in Indiana are screwing them together.. the workers that used to build the H2 Hummer. Since the R is built off the old SUV platform Mercedes decided to ship the tooling to a contract manufacturer to free up capacity in Alabama. And well, as you know the R63 was a one year deal...
Here is a real neat bit of trivia as well... during it's life in Alabama there were two versions built.. long and short wheelbase. We only got the long wheelbase. The short wheelbase was for Europe...
Short on the left... ours on the right
And while not a US model, it is still a Mercedes production model. Here is the Mercedes China website where you can configure your very own new R Class... LOL
Mercedes China R Class Page
As for the mini-van debate... that stigma was first started by the automotive press when it came out.. they also called it a Mercedes mini-van. So Mr. Deuce made a very natural association. What I find funny is it really is a reverse crossover. The R is built on the same dedicated SUV platform as the M and G, but sits lower on it's suspension with a lower body. So, instead of making a crossover from a car, they made a wagon from a SUV.. think Suburban lowered...
God I really am a nerd with this stuff....
Ian F
MegaDork
3/10/17 6:40 a.m.
JOsworth wrote:
God I really am a nerd with this stuff....
Welcome, brother. It's pretty much Car Nerds-R-Us here.
In reply to mazdeuce:
The third picture is the way it should look when "clean". I was selected to assemble our engines in front of 3 engineers for evaluation. 1 day, 1 motor and hand tools only.
@chuck with the 642. I'm sorry your 251 had a horrible experience at a dealership. Sadly there are still a few techs that don't take pride in their work. FYI the fresh air pipe does crack in that spot from time to time but you know when it happens well at least a good tech would know.
MB_tech2005 wrote:
@chuck with the 642. I'm sorry your 251 had a horrible experience at a dealership. Sadly there are still a few techs that don't take pride in their work. FYI the fresh air pipe does crack in that spot from time to time but you know when it happens well at least a good tech would know.
There are good techs at dealerships, for sure. It's like everywhere though, some people take pride in their work, some don't.
In my case, as the third owner of this thing, I'm completely stoked to have it. The fact that it perplexed as many folks as it did allowed me to pick up a very high quality vehicle for the price of a used Nissan. What does suck though is having the "lemon" stigma legally attached to the car for the rest of its' existence. It also makes the consumer dubious of the vehicle quality when in actuality, it was human error.
It's interesting though that a simple smoke test would have revealed the issue. Incidentally, I bought an E46 coupe a few years ago that people had given up on and a simple smoke test revealed a split in the intake boot. Score another one for me, I guess! (that car was a great autocrosser!)
Cheers all! Bring on the R63 reassembly.
In reply to MB_tech2005:
As always, thanks for your insight. Finding someone who has assembled one of these under a watchful eye is a rare and wonderful thing.
Ian F wrote:
JOsworth wrote:
God I really am a nerd with this stuff....
Welcome, brother. It's pretty much Car Nerds-R-Us here.
Ain't that the truth.
And thanks to everyone for nerding out. If there is a more comprehensive source of R63 information anywhere outside of MB, I don't know about it.
In reply to NotUnlessRoundIsFunny:
I'm glad you found and joined us. Spend a bit of time looking around and you'll realize that I'm is the shallow end of the pool as far as knowledge and talent go around here. An amazing group. And as always, thanks to GRM for having built this playground.
Good to see you're back at it. When do you think it will be back on the road?
It's going to be a while. Spring break starts momentarily so we have adventures to tend to. Then other stuff. And I still don't know what I'm doing about the intake manifold. None the less, pieces will start to go back on soon. Every piece closer to starting it up.
In other news, in a move that can only happen through the insane generosity that is GRM, a thread reader has a spare spare from his parts R class sitting around and he offered to send it to me. For free. 
Not one to refuse generosity, I agreed, and it arrived today! I'm going to have to check, but I 'think' the R63 originally came with a bigger spare to clear the front brakes, but this spare does comfortably clear the rear brakes which makes it infinately more useful than the missing spare I had before. Someday a future owner might decide to go all concourse correct and source the big spare, but I'm happy and grateful to stuff this one under the rear floor.
Yeah, we're heading for Six Flags San Antonio in the morning, then on to Kerrville, Carlsbad, NM, Guadalupe National Park, Carlsbad Caverns and other assorted shenanigans. Back to San Antone for Riverwalk, Missions, Alamo. Should be a fun week. What are you and your family doing?
In reply to mazdeuce:
Do you want the sealant path diagrams with thickness specs?
codrus wrote:
mazdeuce wrote:
The grooves are fine enough that the bristles on a toothbrush are too soft/coarse to get in them. Finally settled on a fine brass brush and a little elbow grease and.....success!
I wonder if a power washer would work?
I have had the pumpkin out of my RX-7 enough times that I began to treat it as an experiment in what I could get away with.
If there's no actual oil on the surfaces, you don't need to clean down to bare metal. Wiping off any marbles/dingleberries is more than good enough. New sealant will seal to old sealant just as well as it seals to bare metal. After all, if the old sealant wasn't stuck super-hard to the metal, it wouldn't be a PITA to remove.
Razor off the dingleberries, wipe it with a brake cleaner soaked paper towel, apply new sealant, slap it together. It will be Fine. As a bonus, you can give some over-toilet-trained engineer in Stuttgart an apoplectic fit. They're the same people who claim "the head bolts were fine, there was no problem", what do they know? Ignore Jobu, do this yourself.
In reply to MB_tech2005:
I would. I think it's pretty self explanatory (and STAR has widths) but more information is always better.
< threadjack >
smokindav wrote:
Yeah, we're heading for Six Flags San Antonio in the morning, then on to Kerrville, Carlsbad, NM, Guadalupe National Park, Carlsbad Caverns and other assorted shenanigans. Back to San Antone for Riverwalk, Missions, Alamo. Should be a fun week. What are you and your family doing?
Kerrville!?! I used to live out in Medina between Bandera and Kerrville (I also used to live in in San Antonio, but that's no fun)
My favorite run on the weekends was Bandera boulevard out of san antonio (from 1604) on out to Bandera. Stop at the Old Spanish Trail for some breakfast. Then on down the main drag in Bandera and through the twisties in the hill country before coming back in to town on Hwy 10. Some good times to be had 
< / threadjack >
In reply to Knurled:
I did a phone interview today about the R63 and one of the things we talked about was how absurdly public the reassembly of this motor has become. It's going to be hard to sell this to anyone who DOESN'T know exactly which R63 it is and the fact that it was put back together by some dude in his garage. Because of this I've put pressure on myself to do this as properly as I'm capable and document the crap out of it.
In reply to mazdeuce:
That's one thing I've come to like about putting my projects up here on GRM. It's a lot harder to say berk it and walk away. I even use it now to put up projects I know are two years out just to force myself to follow through. No pressure but we're all depending on you to prove that GRM is better than some German dude named Guido.
My cousins, who also live in Kingwood (where I live) have a 2nd house in Kerrville. Means we get to stay there for cheap (free) although I expect I may have to contribute to the wine cellar (closet). :)
Hungary Bill wrote:
< threadjack >
smokindav wrote:
Yeah, we're heading for Six Flags San Antonio in the morning, then on to Kerrville, Carlsbad, NM, Guadalupe National Park, Carlsbad Caverns and other assorted shenanigans. Back to San Antone for Riverwalk, Missions, Alamo. Should be a fun week. What are you and your family doing?
Kerrville!?! I used to live out in Medina between Bandera and Kerrville (I also used to live in in San Antonio, but that's no fun)
My favorite run on the weekends was Bandera boulevard out of san antonio (from 1604) on out to Bandera. Stop at the Old Spanish Trail for some breakfast. Then on down the main drag in Bandera and through the twisties in the hill country before coming back in to town on Hwy 10. Some good times to be had
< / threadjack >
In reply to MB_tech2005:
I would like a copy, if possible. Working on a way to guide by hand an air caulk gun on a template to do this.
If you are headed up 16, be sure to hit Mac and Ernie's Roadside eaterie in Tarpley (Cabrito Burg and Ancho Chile Quail) and TX 335, 336, and 337 for a great drive
In reply to mazdeuce:
Those are leak ports to keep the water and oil separate in the event of a leak. Good design!
Then I spent an hour cleaning up the mating surfaces on the timing case. Everywhere two lines of sealant get close together they mill a little ditch between them to hold the squeeze out. These need to be cleaned. I think they're important. 
This one even goes all the way through the cover. Someone spent a bunch of time thinking about this.
