W126 drag link and alignment

I’m planning to drive my 560SEC down to Melbourne in a few weeks.   I’m going see the Mercedes Benz Club of Victoria concours and attend a tech day on electrical troubleshooting.

A drive like this meant attending to a few things I had on my to do list for the car.   One of them was to replace the W126 drag link.   It was supposed to be replaced at the same time as the tie rods and idler bushing were done.  Unfortunately, I had bought the wrong part.   I should have realized but the left hand drive part is different to the right hand drive part.    The part number for the RHD drag link is 126 460 09 05.

The other thing I wanted to do was check the balance of my front wheels, as I had a wobble on the way down to Canberra for the ACT concours.     I figured it made sense to do the drag link first, then send the car in for an alignment and to check the wheel balance.

The drag link is quite an easy job to do with a hoist and the tool to pop off the ball joints.

As it turns out, this would be the last job I would do on the hoist for now.   Once I finished it, I started putting the 300TE and noticed a growing puddle of hydraulic fluid on the ground.   I quickly got the car down.   I’ll need to get the hoist serviced.

With the new W126 drag link in, the groaning/vibration I was getting from the steering at low speed was almost completely gone.   The old drag link looked like it had been on for a long time.   Certainly the tie rods were probably from the car’s time in the UK, as the bolts were rusty.

I took the car to the alignment shop.  They found it was quite badly out of alignment, and that the front wheels didn’t have enough weight on them.   I haven’t been onto a motorway since, but a short burst of speed made the car feel a lot better.

The other thing I di while I was working on the car was fit a BM2 Battery Monitor.   I’ve got these on a few other cars.  It allows me to monitor the health of the battery from bluetooth.