older sl? you might think of replacing struts & shocks, be careful
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From: heaven on earth, the s. Oregon coast
older sl? you might think of replacing struts & shocks, be careful
at 100K I replaced the standard struts and rear shocks.very nice once installed properly. be careful. the bilstein instructions cover a bunch of different types of mountings not really relative to the R129. should buy with a part # starting with 129, especially for the rear.. There is a sleeve around the threaded rod that's attached to a plate at the top of the shock dust cover, the sleeve is a spacer, remember that one... put the larger of the rubber dampers on first then put it up through the hole. and of course mount the bottom of the shock nice and tight. Now this is the important part. when you lower the car down with wheels in normal position and when you put on the smaller damper and then large washer. you must tighten the washer down tight against that metal sleeve, not just when the dampers are starting to bulge. otherwise you'll get an annoying knock from that sleeve hitting against the washer as you hit any bump in the road. I learned the hard way, a local so called service company put shocks on for a 124 the first time, I didn't tighten down the new 129 shocks properly the second and third times.
Last edited by brookings; May 31, 2015 at 02:33 AM.
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Senior Member
Joined: Jun 2007
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From: heaven on earth, the s. Oregon coast
RE: older sl? you might think of replacing struts & shocks, be careful
btw check or just go ahead and change out the front strut bump stops while you're doin' it, only adds about 40 bucks in parts.
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Joined: Sep 2007
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From: Manatee County, Florida- Sarasota mailing address
I recently had my front struts replaced on a 96 SL 500. Beside the fact that I chose Moe and Shimp for the job it went well. I also had a new spring bumpers installed in front. Luckily I negotiated a price for that as it took substantially longer than I could have imagined. Anyway, the car feels great, the headlights shine where they should. The reason this was done was the strut towers were (in the vernacular of Wheeler Dealers) perished. They had slight splits viewed from the top. They were torn all the way around when viewed from the bottom and off the car. 19 years is too long to wait as my tires were destroyed on the inside.
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