Yes, Jan's car is an (now antique 1981) Mercedes 240D. The vacuum door locks failed years ago, now only one door can be locked with a key. We had to get a new lock for the trunk too.
The vacuum system does lots of things with the engine and even the transmission. Had to have the vacuum pump rebuilt recently for $450. The transmission was very rough shifting and the engine would not shut off normally without good vacuum. The head lamp switch, an amazingly complicated unit, failed. I replaced it with a simple SPST toggle switch. The alternator has a nifty leadscrew to tighten up the v-belt, but I had to cut off about 3/4" of the leadscrew to make it possible to remove the alternator for replacement. It took four trips to the dealer to get the correct vacuum line for the brakes. I could go on... German engineering is good, but not as good as many people believe. Norm S/V Bandersnatch Lying Gloucester MA > German engineering can be great but for some reason, they tried to reinvent the wheel on the 2 Audis I had. Badly designed connectors on the tail-light assemblies and horrible vacuum pump driven door locks. _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://liveaboardonline.com/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardonline.com/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
