UPDATE:
Me and my dad went out to look over the rest of the 300CD and try to get it started, we're night owl's so we only had about 3 hours of daylight between tonight and Thursday night.
The bad:
I noticed the air cleaner was loose thursday night. Didn't think too much of it. Went to pull the air filter and have a look and the whole entire air cleaner was loose, it wasn't even sealed to the turbo compressor
Took the air cleaner assembly off and found that the rubber standoffs were all broken or melted from oil seepange. The air cleaner had chaffed a mark into the top of the intake manifold which tells me that this has been like this for a while. Im really concerned that the engine has been breathing dirty air for however long it was, so im prepared to do a top end rebuild when the day comes if I buy it. Can't wait to get it started to see how it runs, I really don't like that air cleaner being like that at all. Another thing was the oil return line (I think that's what it is) that goes from the oil separator in the air cleaner to wherever it goes was completely loose, what does it do, where does it go?
On the plus side, amiss the mud and completely saturated crap we were working in, I dove under the car to check out the transmission. Nothing concerning, no drippyness or signs of major leaks. COVERED in motor oil. I checked the driveshaft for play, nothing. Checked both flex disks and they looked pretty good, just filthy. Transmission cooler lines looked good, seals were good on the radiator and transmission (two places with no motor oil covering them oddly enough). OK so im thinking internal transmission failure is probably what happened
Read on.
Oh and it's got a straight pipe where the front muffler was
Pretty cool that I won't have to do that down the road.
Moved along back where there was about an inch of standing water on the ground.. it was worth the swim. I checked out both axels and gave them a good jiggle at the flexx boots, no play to be concerned about. I gave the drivers side axel a good yank outboard, and it came out about 2 inches
Moved to the passenger side, again pulled out from differential.
Would this tell me that the differential has failed in the worst sort of way? My dad seemed to think so, but I want to hear from you guys.
This brings a bunch of questions. What would cause the differential to die so suddenly? The seller says his stepson went to the post office, shut it off, came back out and presto - no movement. Does that sort of failure indicate that the driveline and ultimately, the transmission, were abused (neutral dropping, burnouts)? And the big-ticket-selling-point question: Would my 240D rear end bolt up and work in the 300CD? (1980 240D [automatic], 1983 300CD [automatic]) I know that the ratios have to be different, im not worried about that because I'll find the right one and install it in the future.
What do you guys think?