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Brian77 · #24 08-27-2010, 03:00 PM

I can speak from experience. I've owned a '77 240D (stick), an '83 300D Turbo and an '83 240D (automatic). I currently own an '85 300SD. My father owned a '77 240D (automatic). I live in the Northeast in an mixed area of hills and flat land.

The '77 stick was my first car. The performance was not bad but the car always required winding the engine and extreme downshifing on hills. I don't know if I believe tales about chirping tires on these things; after all, we are talking about 60 or so hp in a 3,000+ lb car. The old York compressor barely worked, sucked every last crumb of performance from the car and made the car violently shake when on. AC was clearly an afterthought back then, as was any type of rustproofing. The car rotted just looking at it. Vacuum locks didn't work.

My dad's '77 automatic was much worse. At low speeds, I think it would have been faster to get out and push it down the road than relying on the engine to get it moving. It bordered on dangerous for highway merging. It had wind up windows and vacuum locks. The vacuum locks rarely, if ever, worked right. The mechanic ended up just plugging the vacuum line to the doors. The AC compressor blew little cold air and was noisy. You always had to turn it off when merging onto a highway. Both '77's had the broken driver's seat spring and horsehair padding that crumbled, leaving an ugly brown mess on the carpets. My dad also had bodywork done on it twice while he owned it.

The '83 automatic 240D had power windows and power sunroof but manual AC. Compared to modern cars, it was almost dangerous to merge on the highway with it. The extra 5 hp in the post 1980 ones didn't seem to help perhaps due to the weight from the extra added comforts. The AC compressor, a GM unit, which was as old as the car, had long packed up and called it quits. Rustproofing had improved, especially with the fenders and quarter panels. The car wasn't perfect but much better than the '77's. Also, I think MB was in its heyday of trying to convert the world to the wonders of vacuum power with this one. The 77’s automatic transmission appeared to rely more heavily on cable control versus vacuum for shifting. The ‘83’s Vacuum didn’t work well: I found that my transmission shifted mediocre at best and the switches often leaked vacuum. I’m sure that more than one person was sold a transmission rebuild with one of them when the problem was merely a $50 switch.

My '83 300D was much peppier and, in my opinion, safer for highway driving. The ACC also used the GM unit. It never worked right and I never tried to get it to work. Oh, the vacuum locks had a slow leak. Again, the body was not perfect but much better than the '77's.

If I bought another 240, it would be a stick shift. In addition to sapping what little power you have, the automatic gives more trouble than the manual gearboxes. My '85 SD had its gearbox rebuit at 160K.

My '85 SD, which I am picking up today after a new paint job and bodywork, has a similar ACC system to the 300D and the same engine. I finally got the ACC system to work by replacing the GM AC compressor. However, this system uses 5 or 6 vacuum-controlled actuators in the dashboard to control the direction of air flow in the car. Replacing some of them requires tearing apart the dashboard. I replaced all of them recently and it took me a couple of days to do the job.

The simplicity a manual 240 makes it the one to choose hands-down for durability: if I wanted to flog a car hundreds of miles across Death Valley with no oil or coolant, the 240 would be the one. However, as cars overall have increased in performance and their 0-60 times, I wonder how much longer the 240 will remain safe for driving on major roads.

Brian