450SLC major service and poor quality engine mounts

This week my 450SLC has been in the workshop having a major service.    This was the first time since the big trip to Adelaide last year.    There were a few things to sort out, but one of the major ones was having new engine mounts fitted.

These were noted as collapsed when I had the car checked over before the trip to Adelaide.  There wasn’t time to replace them, so I ordered a new pair and they were finally installed this week.   I was pretty disappointed as it wasn’t all that long since I replaced them and I had used genuine mounts.   The genuine mounts were quite expensive, but I couldn’t find any from a brand I would use.   The Lemforder mounts for the W126 are excellent and inexpensive, but I could only find the Meyle  mounts that have a reputation of collapsing after 6 months.

I went back through the service history and I had the mounts fitted in September of 2019.   Given they were already collapsed in March of 2022, that was less than three years of life.   The last genuine set I used went over ten years.  The picture below shows the old engine mounts removed.   They were in a pretty bad way.     I hope I just got a bad batch, as I’ve put another genuine set in.    Not only did they last less than three years, but also only 5,000km.

With the new engine mounts fitted, the car is so much smoother.  There is another downside though, the engine is up high enough now that the exhaust touches one of the heat shields under hard acceleration.   The engine mounts were only a year old when it was fitted, so I guess they had already collapsed a bit after a year.   My mechanic thinks they will settle a bit and it will be fine, but its quite an annoying vibration.

While the car was there, I discussed with my mechanic doing the valve stem seals next year.   I wanted to get his view if it made sense to do the timing chain at the same time.   We agreed that it would make sense.   The chain was last done over twenty years ago, and while its only done about 60-70,000km, the guides are now over twenty years old, as is the tensioner.

The service also highlighted that the seal in #1 is worse than most of the others.  I hope it is just the seal and not excessive wear in the guide, as the plug was pretty badly fouled up.    My mechanic told me that should be able to tell by looking at the condition of the seal and the guide from the top of we can just replace seals, or if the head will need to come off to replace the guides.  Some of the other plugs were a bit fouled, but not like #1.

My car hardly makes any visible smoke.   There are a few of these cars at club events that produce quite a lot of smoke at takeoff. I would hate to see the condition of their plugs.   These cars don’t like sitting around, and bad valve seals is a common issue on cars that don’t get driven a lot.   At the same time as changing the chain, tensioner and seals, we’ll also change the sprockets, camshaft oiler tube fittings etc.     Other than the vibration on hard acceleration, the car is driving extremely well.

Looking at the car on the hoist, it is still very dirty from the Adelaide trip.   At some point I’ll have to give the underside a good clean.