GB’s Ink…

April 4, 2008

Mercedes M-Class Window Won’t Roll Up (ML-320)

Filed under: Auto Repair — barker @ 11:22 pm

I tend to try to do most of my repairs myself, whether it’s plumbing, autos, furniture, walls, electronics, etc… Some are easy, and others are a real pain! Last week my wife’s window in her ML-320 wouldn’t roll up, and if you have had a 2000 era ML, I know your thinking….the switch failed. Well, the current switch is only about 6 months, old, probably the 3rd set of switches this car has had for the windows. This time, thought, the switch was fine and the window regulator had broken. ( big metal thing inside the door ).
Close-up of UGLY weld

I drilled out the 6 rivets that held it in, studied it a bit, and decided to weld it back together. It wasn’t too hard to weld, and everything went back together well. ( You do have to find 6 replacement rivets, but a local vendor had them. ) Here’s the kicker, the angle I welded it at was just a little off, so the window stops about 1/8″ from the top. There’s no un-welding this thing, so a new one is on the way. This part costs around $100, so try to get the angle right, and the weld should be a workable fix.
ML-320 2000 Window Regulator

Python, django, and JavaScript

Filed under: Programming — barker @ 6:30 pm

I’ve started developing with Python, and it’s quickly become my language of choice for all types of stuff. I’ve written a home automation socket server that exposes several serial RS-232 and RS-485 based home automation devices to the network. I’ve also done quite a bit of data manipulation / parsing with python, massaging data and sticking it into MySQL tables.

For web development, I’ve written one website using Python via Django, just a standard html based site, and I’ve got a plugin for a high-traffic site I’m currently working on with Django that mainly uses out-of-band http transmissions for AJAX. It’s really been more JavaScript programming than Python / Django.

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