This late 50's Mercedes 190SL is a very desirable car, and when working on the car it's very easy to understand why.  The owner of this car contacted me some weeks ago and whilst the car wasn't in any way running badly or giving any issues....he simply asked for me to tune the car for him so that he know everything would be absolutely perfect.

As per any tuning session carried out by AG Classic Car tuning the first task is to establish good baseline settings and health for all the key fuelling and ignition components to ensure that they function correctly and are ready to be fine tuned.

My records suggest that in the 1950's the Mercedes 190SL would have been fitted with twin Solex Side Draught carburettors, however within this vehicles life journey the Solex carbs had been replaced and upgraded to a Mikuni Side Draught carb instead (up to the 80's Mikuni could manufacture Solex designs under license). 

On arrival the car was idling quite nicely but at a slightly higher than normal 1200 rpm.  Hence after applying various baseline corrections and tuning, followed by fine tuning the Mercedes 190SL's idle speed was brought down and set to a much smoother 850rpm.  In the below video don't be fooling into thinking that the belt driven fan isn't working.....its an optical illusion which emphasises just how smooth this engine ticked over.   Beautiful engineering....

Initially the ignition timing was significantly advanced compared to spec which may have given a small sensation of increasing low end torque.  However once the carbs ad ignition were set correctly the owner soon remarked after a short drive of just how smooth the engines was now that AG's settings had been applied.