14 February 2026:
Progress on this project has been slow, due to work and life commitments, but looking forward to stepping up the pace in the coming weeks and months. The seats ought to be finished up in the next day or so. In the meantime, work resumed on engine, including mounting the exhaust manifolds that were made by @NeedsWings . Rob did a fantastic job on these, but the arrival of suitable hardware took a lot longer than expected. I did not want to use regular OEM hardware on these, as experience has shown that with manifolds like these, it will back out. I wanted to use Stage8 Locking Fasteners, which much luck has been had in the past. There was a problem, of course. Mercedes in their infinite wisdom did not use a typical size or thread bolt for the exhaust manifolds on the M156. The M112/113 uses M6. Very typical size. Other engines use M8. Veery typical size. The M156? Some engineer thought M7 - a completely oddball size - ought to be used. Does Stage8 offer M7? No. Does anyone? No. Off to China we go!

Nice, gold anodized titanium bolts
After waiting for about 6 weeks, a set of 20 M7x25 titanium bolts arrived. Using Stage8's service, these were shipped to them to be modified to allow their locking system to work on it. This turned out to be very pricey, but not having the headaches of this in the future makes it worth it.

Close up of the locking fasteners
These work by slipping the teardrop shaped aluminum locking tab over the head, and then adding the locking E-clip in place to hold them. Now if the bolt tries to work itself out, it can only go so far before the locking tab will hit the manifold, stopping it from going any further. This will keep the fasteners tight, and keep the exhaust manifold gaskets from leaking. If you have ever had a car with a set of headers, then you know what blown manifold gaskets sound like. This will help with that problem tremendously.

Here's some pics of the manifolds in place:





Continued in next post: