Hello, i'd just like to introduce myself,i'm new to this board and hope someone here can give me some advice,i purchased a 1968 280S this week as a restoration project,minor rust on the usual spots,some major sheet metal rust on a few places,but having many friends that do body work i wasnt scared off,besides i got it for literally a song,so my question is to all those vintage owners of the 280 series,being a complete virgin to mercedes vehicles,having worked on and drivin BMW's,Vintage Volkswagens,and a few Porsches, i am not in any way an amatuer,but would like to get advice from someone thats dealt with these cars for awhile,this particular 280s has the dual Zeniths and is very tight,i really havnt had time to look it over since i am in the process of arranging transport to my house,but everything works,except!,when you move the gear shift from either Park or Neutral the car lurches in the direction of the gear Forward for 4th and Rearward for Reverse etc...,and comes to a quick stall,it only moves the wheels maybe a few inches until the engine gets under load and it stalls,now other than the obvious out of tune problems that could cause this,what are other common/uncommon problems with the early 280 automatic that would cause the aforementioned result? Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.


,RJ Berry

 

hey, this is somewhat off topic...but I have a 68 250S with the dual carb...I hate this thing, and it's only good for parts at this point....would you be interested?

 

I have a 280s 1979 so my response may be unhelpful. Anyway these cars were assembled here in South Africa and standard carb ' is Solex 4A.
These are fine carb's but extremely sensitive to warpage from overtightening the 4 corner hold-down bolts. This meant scrapping and new Solex carbs are abortively expensive --but a few rare and skilled technicians devised ways of removing the warpage and fitting a central set screw wich forced the flanges back to a flat profile.

Quite apart from that a simple conversion to a Weber 4 barrel carb came out with full conversion kit extras at 1/3 the cost of a new Solex. This reportedly works acceptably and has been fitted to hundreds of cars.

I am running on the Solex and can help with info'.

Ed