Working on the 310D

The world didn’t change much since I stopped working in Oldenburg. Instead of doing long hours over there I started to do long hours over here in the workshop. It’s weird how long stuff takes to be done. When I look at the photos I think it’s a couple of hours but it actually took a couple of days. But I didn’t take pictures of everything and especially gathering parts is quite time consuming.

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The disassembled gear lever assembly. The gearbox has three levers which go back and forth to switch gears and this box translates this in the classic H scheme (or dogleg in this case) on your shift stick.

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You can’t just push the plastic thing inside…

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… because it is springloaded from the bottom…

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After some pressing and cursing I finally took a piece of pipe and hammered it in.

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“special tool”

You can’t just push in the new plastic seats by hand so the easiest way is to “build” a special tool to press them in. From left to right: Head of a bolt, washer, plastic seat which should be pushed inside, gear lever with hole, socket with larger diameter than hole, washer, nut. Fasten nut until the plastic seat sits inside the hole. Watch out that you can remove the bolt afterwards because the of the hole gets smaller. I had to cut one bold to get it out after pressing…

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The anti roll bar mounts, old and new. If you can remove the rubber-metal joints by hand they are definitely worth replacing…

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pushing out old ones…

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Thanks mister Mercedes! The new brackets for the anti roll bar are 5mm shorter than the old ones. Exactly these 5mm are needed to press together the rubber….

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Just apply some brute force and than you can screw on the nuts…

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One of the worst smells available in an automotive workshop: old gearbox / differential oil.

The change of the gearbox and differential oil did not show any unusual signs of metal wear and tear. The gearbox had too much oil in it, the differential was missing at least a cm of oil level. Let’s hope that was the reason for the high pitched noise it makes in 5th gear. I’ll find out today…

The next big step will be taking care of the leave springs.

 

 

 

 

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Stuff I haven’t seen before #1

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This is a piece of a catalytic converter (KAT in German) of an Mazda RX8. It wasn’t starting probably so fuel got into the exhaust system and the hot engine which wouldn’t start acted like a blast furnace producing the 1000+ degrees Celsius to actually melt the ceramics. It was really spewing out big chunks of this stuff from the exhaust system. Luckily nobody got hurt…

Goodbye Oldenburg

It’s done. I’ve finished work. I’ll certainly miss some folks and I’m looking forward to visit them again. I didn’t go to Hamburg but stayed in Oldenburg for two days of celebration which was quite some fun.

But all in all I’m quite glad that I’ve finished this episode. The feeling of beeing free still hasn’t arrived yet. There’s quite some stuff I ignored on the last couple of weeks which needs to be taken care of before I can leave for travelling. The van needs work. The internet access at my flat is broken. The list goes on and on…

1 1/32…

Exhausted. One working day left. I still can’t decide whether to go to hamburg tomorrow morning or to finish work. My friends in Hamburg are either out of town or pretty occupied. Maybe I should finish work tomorrow, make a stopover at hamburg and collect my stuff later.

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Tweelbäker See again. Nice spot for an after work tea

Yeah. I think I really need that wicked feeling to have finished work. Be over with it. The beginning of a new adventure. Not the feeling of “i have to be back at work on Tuesday”. It’s a shame because I’m really curious what the robot workshop will be about. It looks like they have an old full size industrial robot. But probably somebody will tell me. Since the model looks almost exactly like the kuka we had at the university I already programmed it. But I’m really curious what artists do with it.

2.34375…

What happened? I put in some extra hours to get it over with, hence the fraction. I’m planning on finishing this week. Maybe not the best decision because there’s something nice “happening” in Hamburg: http://faehrstieg.net/butendiek

Quite some interesting workshops and decent people (I guess, they are friends of friends…). So sweat away the last work days and start the work on the van or take the van, go to hamburg, go back to oldenburg, work one day + fetch my stuff and go back to hannover? Not the best choice for the environment but most certainly fun. Well. I think I’ll decide tomorrow.