OK. Alright. This is my first time to crack an engine open for repairs. This is an '83 300D Turbo BTW. Got the sucker out of the car and ready for the stand, now I can't get the torque converter/flywheel off. WTF? There are two bolts at the top behind the flywheel but I don't see any on the bottom. The bottom 1/5 of the bolts are nestled snugly behind the teeth on the flywheel so I can't get a socket around them. I have a feeling they're not what's holding it all on anyway. I'd use a flywheel puller but the torque converter is in the way. There's nothing in the manual about getting around this, how do I get this thing off?

A little history behind the engine:
I bought the car from a stupid girl. She bought it from an elderly couple in March '06 (original owners). Between March and October she put 11,000 miles on the car (230,000 overall) AND parked the car in the yard long enough to dryrot the tires and mildew the interior. The only thing the car really has going for it is no rust or dents and all the power features work.

She "rigged" the ignition to start with a screwdriver when the tumblers rusted. The engine would start but it ran very very rough (shaking the car) until you gassed it to about 1K. Then it would run smooth(er) until it got hot, blow a cloud of white smoke out the blowby and die. The exhaust pipe was split about 1 1/2 feet from the engine. When I pulled the oil filter I got shinies. Lots of shinies. This was a Mercedes oil filter. I seriously doubt she had it put in, or even serviced at all while she owned it. We pulled the oil pan and found flakes of metal about an inch and a half long and half an inch wide. Rod bearing remnants maybe?

You may be asking yourself why I'm even attempting this.

I'm a man.

So I want to pull this thing apart and evaluate what's going on inside it. I just need to get through the flywheel and get it on the stand. Even if it's not worth repairs I'd like to see what the guts look like on these things. Any thoughts from you sages out there?

 

There should be 2 bolts each, in 3 locations around the flywheel. You need to rotate the engine to access each pair. No room for a socket, I suggest a long 6 side box wrench. Don't bung-up the bolts, or you'll be sorry.

Once the torque converter is removed (drain it first), then you can get the flywheel off.

My guess is a spun crank berring. That happened to mine before I bought it, extreme neglect. I used a crank and rods from another benz w/ over 300K miles. The crank was still within tolerance.