Couldn't wait

By my read the weather this winter has been none too Seattle-like. It seems like we've had unusual amounts of sunshine, so I took it upon myself to hijack my wife's help in taking off the hardtop. As I thought, the rear post was definitely stuck on the defective latch, but I put together a makeshift tool (an allen wrench taped to a screwdriver) that would provide enough leverage to push it out of the way. Once the top was off, I went to the gas station, dumped some engine treatment into the tank and drove around the beach for a few minutes. Definitely looking forward to warmer weather!

Trouble ahead?

Following up on the windshield wiper nozzles - my cleaning technique worked like a charm - it's the first repair I've been able to do without actually having to buy replacement parts. Good times.

It turns out that a neighbor of ours got himself a 1985 380SL about two months ago. I went over to his place yesterday because he was having problems with the hardtop, similar to the stuck top issue I had last year. Truth be told, I thought I had fixed the issue (by lubricating the cable and mechanism), but it returned, so now I use a long skinny screwdriver to release the catch when I need to get the soft top down. Shame on me for being too lazy to fix the root cause of the problem. In any case, with the hard top in place, the screwdriver trick doesn't work because there isn't enough clearance. I found this out on my neighbor's car, and I'm going to bet that I'll have the same issue. This irritates me because someday soon the sun will shine continuously and I'll want to darn top off. It's probably too early to fix it now though, because it's still darn cold out.