Life gets curiouser and curiouser

[WGB]

My 450 SEL has sat gathering dust in it's primer coat for some five years and gradually plugs have fouled and power steering has stopped powering and I have twice purchased the paint but never got going on the top coat.

Now that my 6.9 is as good as I will probably get it my thoughts were turning to the long neglected 450 as either a repeat test of fortitude or an ebay project.

It was a pretty good runner when I decided to de-rust and repaint but parked in a shed doesn't do these cars many favours.

It turns out my daughter has a new fella and is turning into a prospective son-in-law. It also turns out that he is a spray painter and is obviously trying to impress his prospective new father-in-law.

So out rolled the car in primer - some new plugs restored it to an 8 cylinder - some power steering fluid and a lot of gurgling restored the power steer and out came the sandpaper.

The paint (purchased twice as the first tin went hard) was still quite usable as well so I hope to have a silbergrun code 861 to go with my silver 6.9 in a couple of weeks.

Bill

 

[Tony66_au]

Nice work Bill!

I have 3 daughters and by the time they get to the fiancée stage im sure there should be one that has a job and/or trade skills lol

BTW Piccies would be very much appreciated and being slightly biased I think a nice 450 is a wondrous thing to drive (I took mine out for a few hundred km last week).

Kudos to you and your new minion!

 

[WGB]

it will be interesting as I always preferred my 450 to drive as well as the relative simplicity of the chassis compared to a 6.9 for maintenance.

It might be that the underpinnings get the same treatment as the 6.9 when it is mobile again and as I have kept it registered all the time (to the chagrin of my wife) it doesn't have to go over the pits unless I get stopped by a member of the constabulary.

Bill

 

[Tony66_au]

Not having spent much time in a 6.9 I have little to go on but I find that the 450's seem to be a surprisingly well rounded car.

Given their size, weight and girth they can be sporty without wallowing and with a bit of timing advance get considerably more sprightly.

They are also virtually silent and free from roadnoise and yet as the driver you are not insulated from road feel, the switch gear and other controls are intuitively placed so even if you are not familiar with the layout it is an easy car to drive and operate even in the dark as I found out when i drove my 450SE hundreds of km back from Western Victoria and it is obvious what the switches do even by feel.

Most of my trip was on very ordinary roads and single lane dual carriageway so some overtaking was required and even though the SE was on LPG she was surprisingly spritely when manually stirring the transmission and over enthusiastic loud pedal application brought me to well over the limit and on a few occasions well into the imperial ton range lol.

The seats were collapsed on the SE and although id driven 300 odd km I still felt fine when I finally got home.

The SEL I later acquired from AAB007 (Alex) I thought would be a tad more barge like but it was even better than the SE as its condition was superior in a few ways and the few hundred km trip home illustrated that the SEL was a force of nature when it came to corners and crappy Gippsland roads making light work of what is a very ordinary road.

I have driven a lot of Cars, Trucks and buses in the 30 years I've had a license and some unusual exotica as an enthusiast and Chauffeur and my bum is fairly well tuned to the good and bad in the auto arena and it reliably informs me that these 116 Benz's are almost as good as it gets so I make the exception with them and i will overcapitalise to keep them alive.

And my Bum never lies when it comes to good cars.

Tony

 

[WGB]

I actually prefer the feel of a sorted 450 spring and steering setup but they do not have the instant wall of torque that a 6.9 has.

Bill

 

[motec 6.9]

Hi Bill photo's when done please and i may have some work in the new year for your future prospect

 

[Tony66_au]

I actually prefer the feel of a sorted 450 spring and steering setup but they do not have the instant wall of torque that a 6.9 has.

Bill

True, I dont doubt it for a second as there is no replacement for Displacement

have a play with the ignition advance though, It has brought the torque way down in the rev range on my D jet car and it is now far more lively off the line and even more so i suspect for k jet cars as a common pollution emissions trick was to delay the timing advance until the car was higher in the rev range and as the 450's have a vacuum push pull advance/retard small changes will make a big difference.

if it starts to pop and crackle when you coast then you need to stop advancing or retard a smidge but this IS based on D jet, Older engines benefit from more advance too generally speaking.

Helmet might be the bloke to quizz on this BTW.

Tony

 

[WGB]

My 450 is a K-jet euro and it will detonate very easily on a hot day in the hills when set in advance of TDC - as per standard specs.

I have tried advancing it but then the engine temperature seems to rise above it's normal level quickly.

Remember I am talking greater than 40 degrees celcius ambient and travelling through the hills.

I always use 98 octane in both cars as well as they are both high compression euro's.

Bill

 

[Tony66_au]

Hmmm curious, maybe something inline to slow the vac advance?

The trick is to advance the timing at idle a few degrees at a time till you have the desired result, id say that your car is asking for a heap more advance under load than is good for it.

Im wondering if there is a way to restrict the vac advance on the dizzy, an adjustable stop perhaps?

Im going to eventually take the SEL D jet car to someone with a Chassis dyno and book it for a few hours to have a play (Under load) but all im doing now is a crude form of recurving the advance curve so it kicks in early and then holds till the car runs out of breath or fuel or obviously redline.

My test hill is a fair 5 km climb BTW but the ambient was 20 ish celcius