[W126 Coupe] UPDATE: 560SEC top-end rebuild

[Gerry Van Zandt]

Hello all,

My 1989 560SEC top-end rebuild has been progressing, and is probably now 80+% complete.

Everything has gone pretty well with only a couple of minor snags on the process. I started the project on February 28th, so about 6 weeks ago. I am about one week behind my own self-imposed schedule and this is mainly due to a week of business travel, waiting for a large shipment of replacement parts to arrive, and a few extra days that it took to get the intake manifold coating completed.

You can see the photo album at the link below. This is a full set of photos from before I started the job up until last (Sunday) night.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=167571&id=821723571&l=946f984ee3

I had the bottom half of the intake manifold ceramic coated to repel heat, the bottom side of the top-half of the intake manifold coated with same, and the top-side of the intake manifold coated with a Teflon coating to make cleanup easy and also to repel heat. The exhaust manifolds were ceramic coated to keep temps down. I had a local outfit here in the Houston area called Poly-Dyn do this work -- they are nationally known and are friendly competitors with Swain Tech, another coating company whom some of you may have heard of.

I've pretty much replaced every bit of rubber under the hood, including all intake and engine-related hoses, vacuum lines, motor mounts, fuel lines (including the two lines going to and from the fuel cooler), and so forth. Most of the rubber is very cheap, and it's ALL worth replacing.

The motor has gone back together nicely. Basically all that remains is to put the intake manifold back together and install it, plumb everything with new vacuum lines, replace the coil and fuel pump relays, assemble the throttle/throttle body/cruise control linkage, re-attach a few coolant hoses, change the oil and re-add the drained coolant, turn the motor over to prime it, and do a few other final assembly tasks, and I'm good to go.

Enjoy!

Cheers,
Gerry