I bought picrel for very chep from an old car enthusiast, since his son can't drive it and the clutch cylinder died.
I want to repair it, but I need good advice on every tool I need.
I need good jacks to work under the car, probably an air compressor and its relative tools, good torque wrench and sockets, pliers etc...
Can you tell me which brands/tools y'all use?
I live in Italy, so I use the metric system
I have a 1985 mercedes 300d sitting in my junk vehicle lineup. Kinda want to diesel swap a cj5 or 80's ford ranger with the engine...
When the 1.8 fails, I want to om605/om606 swap it 🙂
>I live in Italy, so I use the metric system
Literally any tool set will work for you. Looks like a w124 so post 1986 MYs. These cars use vacuum to control a lot of things. Thankfully after 1986 they separated the door locking system from the engine vacuum so a leak in the door lock system won't keep the engine going. Buy a vac gauge and hand pump for testing.
Benzworld.com and peachparts.com are my old haunts. Everything you need to fix your ride will be there. Get a copy of the FSM for these cars. They're available on the pirate bay.
1985 uses the om617.
Thank you
Mine is W201 1.8
Im a newbie that started on my first car resto project a couple months ago. A W123 240D, so far it is going pretty good, having lots of fun, some roadblocks here and there obviously. My biggest problem so far was actually the cancerous homosexuals of the car inspection, they were VERY severe on welding fixes (unibody) and I suspect them of tipping the police to fine me for driving with a erroneous number plate (it was legal but the police homosexuals cannot know that at first sight).
I would say dont dont go ham on buying expensive stuff, very often second hand or cheap stuff works just as good. For example you can loosen bolts with a breakerbar or large ratchet and then get the bolt out with a drill, no need for a fancy bouloneuse.
Also realize any plastic/rubber part that is hard to find can potentially be 3d printed. So far i saved quite a bit of money by 3d printing.
My favorite tool(s) so far are picrel, they replace many specialty tools like the hook on a handle or the plastic plug remover and are much better then your fingers in many occasions.
the best and most enjoyable yt channel i found up till now is "michael the mercedes guy", there is also "mercedes source" but find he is often full of shit and just wants to sell stuff
also i pity you if you need to crawl under the car, i have the good luck of having a "square garage hole" available, dont know how to call it in english, if you dont have it, maybe ask around family/friends if someone has it ?
Idk if you are the same guy, but THANK YOU SO MUCH.
Really, you spent so much time writing all of this for an anonymous person on PrepHole, I'll be forever grateful 🙂
not same guy, but here is my tool tips
dont focus too much on brand and quality at first, it just cost more and eventually you end up not affording it. well, the tool you could afford and therefore have will always be better than the tool you cant afford and thus dont have.
there is probably some go-to cheap parts and hardware store in italy as well, here up north its the swedish based biltema that fills this role. everything they sell is just rebranded chinkshit but does its job for the diy guy (and i think i have half of their catalogue....) i looked at some of the foreign stores and its the exact same stuff they sell.
Also of all the chems i have been using, most of it is pretty obvious (paint, hardened putty, polyester fibreglass, occasional cheap polymer caulk). But there are some products that I found a little less obvious: Foerch is a very good price/quality rust convertor, I also bought a can of bison "liguid rubber" to restore old rubber and waterseal certain areas. Quite happy whith that. Also I read that silicon spray grease is better for rubber then just wd40 or whatver. That helps alot with installing dificult rubber seals.
another thing that i am very happy about that is also very cheap for what you get is picrel, the angle grinder brushes in the other shapes i found are either too crappy or to expensive, these are just right
also some guy on youtube shills lanolin oil as the best thing ever, i did buy me some of that to smear on the inside of cavities (hollow closed off areas of the unibody) whenever i get access to them, i am of course not 100% certain of its effectivnes but in theory it should work great for that
btw if you find that weird, it is because i had some extensive water damage (rust) in the cavaties because the utter morons that owned the car before me left a massive water drain hole open that lead water into the hollow cavities
dont know about the drainage setup of your body type, but on the w123 it is a known weak point
Replace master and slave cylinder, both should be pretty cheap and from my experience one dies after other. Rather easy to replace, bleeding might be harder.
1/2" and 1/4" socket set, basic combination wrenches, pliers, hammer should be enough for basic repairs.
As for swap m111 kompressor is best option IMO, easy to squeeze more ponies.
Good luck with rust, biggest issue of any mercedes.
also another thing i learned is you need two (types of) ratchets:
1. a small hand palm sized 1/4" ratchet -> it being hand palm size makes it very easy to handle + easy to get in tight spaces + lightwight which means if you hit your car with it, less damage
2. a large "flex head" style 1/2" ratchet -> the point of the flex head is to be able to reach bolts that cannot be reached with a regular 90 degree ratchet but the flex head has another nice advantage: you can bent the handle all the way down so that ratchet head stands on a 90 degree angle on the handle, then you can unscrew bolts as if you had a "crank handle"
also after a couple broken (parts of) regular ratchets with the cheater pipe, i bought myself a large breaker bar, so the cheater pipe is not used very often anymore
oh and another little trick that i found, ussually you will use duck tape for temporary fastening and "paper" tape (not sure how it is called in english) to protect areas from paint, but there are situations where tape doesnt cut it for some reason, in this case hot glue from a hot glue gun is a very handy temporary fastener/sealer as it is very easily pealed off when dry
if you dont need to remove the wheels while working under it you can make wheel blocks yourself from thick'n sturdy wood screwed together to the desired height.
>Can you tell me which brands/tools y'all use?
I own a large Craftsman tool set i got int he 90's that was US made and i have abused it for years without breaking anything other than ratchets.
But now that Craftsman is rebadged made in China garbage i have been buying Japanese tools off Amazon. KTC, Asahi, Koken, TONE is what i have been buying lately. I am happy with all of them they seem well made and way better than the Chinese stuff.
Just keep in mind that Taiwan has the patent on ratcheting wrenches. So pretty much any name brand ratcheting wrench is going to be made in Taiwan. There are some exclusions to this like Snap-On but they use their own ratcheting mechanism and bulky af.
>brands/tools
Hazet, but their tools ain't cheap
from the cheaper, you can get Gedore red (their budget serries made in china an india, but still Gedore)
for even cheaper, Suki, Force, etc.
I'm basically you right now (with a beat up Renault Megane 2 as project car) and got Hazet torque wrenches and engine support beam from some unknown brand made in Poland
Watch this guy - he's the biggest tool expert on the planet.
honestly if you have no tools just buy cheap stuff as you need it, there's very little difference until you get to the true professional stuff for 10x the price. later on when you upgrade, the cheap stuff makes a good spare or lender set (i have a chink 3/8" socket set i just use for oil changes and other dirty jobs). picrel and some proper circlip pliers are the only other things i'd recommend. oh, and get a proper wooden mallet (don't use a hammer). if you need a benz special tool check aliexpress first
I started working on my car when I bought my last car.
I had a decent socket set, but I still had to buy some extensions and a torque wrench and weird pliers and misc stuff.
I have not needed an air compressor.
Youtube tutorials were incredibly helpful. If you want to replace a part, a lot of the time you can find a tutorial for your specific model of car, or at least something very close to it.
When you buy torque wrenches, and you really want to enjoy working with them, buy used "Stahlwille Manoskop" like pic related.
They come in different torque ranges. Personally, I have everything from 4Nm to 400Nm. The big advantage is that you can quickly set the torque valie with a little slider next to the handle, no need to turn some kind of thread for a long time. also you do not need to "de-tension" them after work, as the unique mechanism is only loaded during work.
There are not many things to be proud of nowadays as a german, but these magnificent tools are.
I will second what most i here have said already. Don't buy the super expensive stuff to start with. Hell the harbor freight 301 piece mechanics tool set is a great place to start with a ton of sockets and specialty bits. Upgrade the combination wrenches off the bat and the ratchets with gearwrench as they start to piss you off. One place to not skimp is line wrenches. Get some good brand first time. Fricking inverted flare tubing nuts can suck my balls....
Flare nut wrenches. Yup.
OP, just buy an assorted “mechanic’s set” with all the sockets and wrenches and then get an affordable 5pc pliers set plus a hammer. It’s a frickin rabbit hole once you get into all the tools that make automotive jobs a lot easier, flex head ratchets and flexi box end sets and all sorts of pry bars and pullers and picks.
I think the Yuros, either go whatever cheap stuff, generally Taiwan made is more mid range and plenty good for weekenders. Bahco is straight if there’s any sets from them, Gedore is a nice German mechanic brand, they have the pro Blue stuff and more affordable Gedore Red tools. Facom is good too, and then I think Stahlwille is more of the professional mechanic line. Don’t fall for the Wera social media campaigns, not worth the money for goofy mediocre shit.
Balkangay here. I work on a merc scrapyard, you dont need most of those tools, buy yourself a decent socket set with wrenches and stuff, proxxon is decent but cheap china sets should do well. If youre a beginner and plan only on working on that merc you wont need anything more than that. If youre lookin into getting into projects than a good 18v makita torque pistol set will do real nice work and make it much easier for you. In my opinion you dont really need a tourqe wrench unless you plan to do engine work and such. Remember thease cars were designed and still are operated in shithole 3rd world countries with minimal maintenance. And my suggestion if you ever get into engine swapping it, try and m111k 2.3l with a supercharger, its a straightforward swap with much of the data out there on the internet, om606 is too big for the engine bay and would reguire extensive bodywork mods which most car shops are incapable of doing. OM605 turbo would also be possible but that m111k is much easier if its already a petrol 190e.
Thank you
tools in the auto mechanic world is a endless rabbit hole. gear wrench is a great brand to buy from and they are not super expensive like snap on. do you have harbor fright in italy? i would say go there too. they sell great mechanic starter kits. project farm is a great youtuber when it comes to torture testing tools. being that you are working on benz i wonder if their older cars use a lot of TORX fastners like their modern cars do. and if you ever work on VW/Audi you will find your self buying a lot of HEX & TRIPLE SQUARE. american and japanese use the more common 6 point fastners. i worked as a professional mechanic for six years and have spend thousands of dollars in tools and i still find myself spending money on tools to fix my own stuff. i dont work as a mechanic no more. its a great skill to know but the industry treats mechanics like shit
Thanks for the tips, for now I'll be stuck fixing my benz, but will start working on more cars if I get good at it.
Sadly we don't have harbor fright and gearwrench tools are too expensive here, compared to other, more known brands.
Mechanics here usually stick to BETA or USAG tools, the older the tools, the better.
I bought a new old stock USAG 1/2 socket wrench set, and luckily I found many old tools in my dad's garage that SHOULD do the job aswell.
I should be in the same spot as buying a mechanic starter kit, but with higher quality socket wrench set.
I also bought 4x 3 ton jacks and an hydraulic jack.
The problem here is that many of the brands y'all mentioned were impossible for me to get or impossible to find used...
The only two thing missing now are "brake" wrenches and Stahlwille torque wrench (one of the only brands I found used)
i dont think the wrench set is the expensive part
i think like you said, those very specific tools for very specific tasks are the sinkhole sucking on your wallet
timing sets that are basically a bunch of bolts of specific length that cost like 50€, or flywheel blocker that's also 50€, shit like this
torque wrenches (the good ones) are crazy expensive, but at least those are multipurpose tools
on the good side, if you can spand some money from time to time, at some point you will have the right tool for every task (literally never going to happen, but it's what keeps me sane, so shut up)