Door Hinges & Pertronix

My grease gun arrived today along with some other toys, so I made a start on the hinges which were mostly stuck solid - The needle nose grease gun adaptor snapped as soon as I introduced it to the grease nipple, which was a good thing, because it was obvious that it was useless for the job in hand. I drilled out the needle stump with a pilot drill, and now have a nigh on ideal tool for greasing the hinges. I know there is a correct tool available from Mercedes, but there is something quite satisfying about making one yourself.

The grease went in fine to one of the hinges, but none of the others. Having researched the cure on various fora, I decided to cook the recalcitrant hinges over my hob [WARNING - boiling grease spits out in all directions], given that I cannot find either my electric paint stripping gun or my blowtorch in the place formerly known as my sitting-room.

Having grease-gunned the barbecued hinges whilst still hot [WARNING - boiling grease now squirts out in all directions], the hinges are completely freed up and ready to go back on, once I have finished cleaning them and assuming they don't seize up again overnight. The rear door hinges which are welded to the B posts are going to need the attentions of a blowtorch which I will either find or replace.

Other jobs I did today were reconnecting the fuel tank, cleaning the plugs and the distributor cap and borrowing my neighbour's compressor to see if Hercules rises off its haunches tomorrow.

Hinges



As I was doing the plugs, I thought I would take a couple of pictures of the Pertronix 1864A I installed about 4 years ago on the 220 - the installation was very straightforward, the only nerve-wracking job being grinding off a bit of the vacuum advance pivot arm to clear the magnetic collar which sits over the spindle and underneath the rotor arm. At the same time as installing the Ignitor, I changed the coil for a 40,000 Volt Flamethrower from the same company, doing away with the ballast resistor connection as per the instructions. The only visual difference is that there are two wires going from distributor to the coil instead of one, and of course none to the resistor. I think I might enclose the two wires in some black heat-shrink sleaving once the engine bay is finished, for the sake of originality.

As to performance and reliability, I have to say that it's been brilliant. I kept the points just in case, but it has never let me down since I installed it, and the car goes like a rocket (speed limits permitting, naturally).

Pertronix Ignitor 1864A