[CJay]

I love my grey interior, but man, that cream colored interior is a real beauty!

 

[kodiakj2]

Beautiful SEC you have there. I do like the interior color. Have fun with it!

 

[bondavi]

Congrats on a classy looking SEC!

Sounds like you have the 10:1 420 engine rated at either 165/170kW in RuF or KAT configs. The ezl dial should not be in the engine compartment but just one dial located in the pass. footwell. You should also have a 8-pin EZL and knock sensors as well.

:thumbsup:

 

[420 SE]

Ian, it looks stunning. I am jealous. A 420 shorty in coupe, what could be better?

 

[ianrandom]

Well i managed to get a set of the 15 hole wheels for only £60. The tyres are junk but i'll sort that out soon. Just wanted to see what they looked like as i really started to hate those 8 hole rims. Oddly i found they look nice on my blue spares car, so perhaps they are generally better on saloons, or they suit blue better.

Anyways i much prefer the look of these, which are what it was meant to have. I will probably get them refurbed at some point, although they are passable for now. Pics attached. Its got another set of wheels in the boot so its a bit lower at the back than usual.

Also got my side rear windows working much better, they no longer need help! While the seats were out it was a good opportunity to get them cleaner and feed them a little, and clean the interior side panels up too. Looks nicer in the back now. The windows just needed lots and lots of lubrication as they had got really stiff. Didnt go down or up without help really so until now i havent been able to sample the pillarless thing properly.
Love how easy it was to do this stuff. Bit of a fiddly access hatch to get to the window mech in the rear but otherwise nice and easy.

Still have a seatbelt presenter to sort out but another day, its dark and foggy now. Been doing lots of thing to this car in the dark with a torch in my mouth. yay, winter...

 

[alabbasi]

Looking good Ian.

 

[Grumpy560]

Nice job getting things sorted out Ian, Very nice SEC. What is the orange marker light on the lower fender for out of curiosity?

 

[ianrandom]

Nice job getting things sorted out Ian, Very nice SEC. What is the orange marker light on the lower fender for out of curiosity?

They all have that here, its a side repeater, connected to the indicator.

 

[KRH]

Ian i didn't realise you had purchased an SEC late last year? (i must have been away at the time)
Well done and its a nice 420 as well which a pretty rare now.
Any updates

 

[ianrandom]

Lots of little things, its been fantastic as a project, most stuff worked fine anyway, but still enough for me to get my head stuck right into.
Did my first long trip in it at Xmas, 600 miles. I'm pretty sold now, love it. It was only meant to be a brief distraction but now I've got three cars I dont want to sell any of!

Just stuck a new radiator in it, chasing silly coolant leaks and trying to overheat in traffic jams. I've by-passed the aux fan sensor so I can run it when I want form a switch in the cabin.
Undersealed it, just in time where that original hardy finish in the wheel-wells was just starting to peel. especially behind the supports in the front wheel wells where the drain pipes come out. One we should all be careful of cos its a stealthy rust area.
The back shelf is rotten but for now all i can do is contain it with underseal anti-rust stuff.
The rest has all just been little things, tweaking and adjusting and small fixes, back side windows work nice now, seatbelt presenters, blower fan, stereo and stuff like that. The suspension is much better now but there is still a kind of loose knocking from the front somewhere I cant identify. Handles nicely though.
And lots of cleaning! Currently deep cleaning the boot linings but missing the mat for the boot floor in cream.
Cant get to the bottom of a randomly high idle, its better than it was though. And my valve seals will need doing at some point. For now I have noo money to spend on it so I'm just going to ignore that.

What really surprised me was how different it is to drive from my SE. I've often heard SE's and SEC's are likely to have similar driving characteristics. Not at all. The steering is way different, the cornering totally different, the gears hold on for longer, seating position so much lower. I love my SE too but in a different way now. The SE is awesome but something else really special about the coupes isn't there.

Some of my friends are less than impressed at another car obsession...

 

[Aussiemerc]

You lucky bastard Ian! Great looking car.Most of the SEC's available here are high mileage- as are the SEL's.

 

[ianrandom]

Got the air con re-charged today. The guy said it had worked before, and having been sat for a year on his driveway without moving, it made sense it would have seeped out. But we all know how often we hear 'it just needs a recharge..'

But, pleasantly surprised, my mobile air con guy has pronounced it okay and filled it up. Hasn't been converted, but he had managed to get hold of a blended gas which works like (or contains some?) R12. Cant remember what that was called , R324 maybe. R12 is just plain unobtainable here it seems.

Gets to about 4 degrees celcius at the vents.
So, pleasantly surprised. As long as its not all leaked out by tomorrow.! Hopefully much like the rest of the car its just needed poking back into life, pretty cool how much stuff on this one has worked or not needed much fiddling with.

 

[Chadahar]

isn't that wonderful when things you think will be broken or non operable turn out to work. A/C on Rose works and is R12 and gets cold!. Clock works, etc.
Mosby the new 500SEC the clock works as do the windows and seats and the ACC blower works. Will be looking for other "workings" as I get the drive shaft and trans in. Flex discs and tranny mtg. look good and maybe be recent.

 

[HeirKranz]

Not sure how I missed this but just read through the whole thing and here is to an awesome ECE find! I'm still trying to hunt one down stateside for myself. That would top off my collection and may be the one to put the most $$$ into. Keep us all posted on the efforts, keeps me motivated to finish mine quicker!

 

[alabbasi]

I've been quite lucky in this sense. We in the US can still get R12 and in many cases, all i've had to do is pull a vac and charge in order to get a/c's working. I'll let you know how it works out with the new 560SEC in a couple of months

 

[ianrandom]

Lol yeah the clock working is always a bit of a surprise too. Has done on both of mine.

 

[ianrandom]

Coming back to this with a high idle fix. It would coast up and down, as high as 1100rpm, but sometimes at 650, only not steady, always on the move. I thought I'd fixed it after noticing a loose vacuum hose on the egr valve. (Which shouldn't have made a difference but coincidentally it stopped idling so high around that time..)
It started doing it again recently, so again I did everything I could think of, cleaned all connections in the engine bay, checked all vacuum connections, cleaned and lubed throttle linkage, swapped idle valve and relay.

Turned out to be only the OVP - but no ABS light on to indicate faulty OVP relay. I was actually going to change the cold start injector today, suspecting it was leaking or something as when you started the car it seemed to have the cold start on for ages too.

But swapped the OVP relay not expecting that to work, and beautiful creamy smooth idle now. Thought this might be useful for somebody, as I'd always expect an faulty OVP to make the ABS light go on.

 

[RichardAl]

What a nice adventure Ian. I am about to begin my journey into finding a W126 SEC as well. I currently have a W140 320L. I used to only drive beemers, but now I am sold to the charms of Mercedes, especially the older SEC or SL variants.

I have found a 500SEC, but apparently the previous owner downgraded it to a 300, so that was a bit discouraging. Another one I found is a 380SEC 1985. Not many W126 SEC around here in my Country, so it can be tough finding one.

By the way, what is the ECE? Sorry for noob questions, I am still pretty new to Mercs.

 

[ianrandom]

Wow, they put a 3 litre in their SEC? Never heard of that before. ECE is a higher compression option that gives a bit more power.
Good luck hunting then