Today is notable in that I spent almost all of it pulling the carbs off the Mercedes and rebuilding one of them.
I spent an awfully long time scratching my head trying to figure out how to get the carbs off the car in the first place. The nuts that hold everything together are on the bottom of the intake manifold flange. This is a problem because there really isn't much room between the carburetors, the intake manifold, and the valve cover to fit hands and wrenches. Even Layla took a shot and couldn't get the carbs detached.
I figured instead of trying to work these little nuts off the ends of the carb studs, I'd remove the intake manifold instead...which worked really well right up until I realized that two impossibly-stuck nuts keep the whole mess together. Bonus.
In the end, I pulled the valve cover off (three bolts—about 2 minutes of work) and removed the carbs within another 10. Compare this with the two-hour-long escapade trying to work the nuts off with the valve cover on, and attempting to remove the intake manifold.
In any event, I got the first carb rebuilt before nearly passing out from fuel fumes. More (exciting) news tomorrow, when I rebuild the other carb and put them both back on the car.
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