These pictures will be very helpful. This is pretty much exactly what I am going to be doing. It looks like you have been doing some very nice work.

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http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/l...aman/Fleet.jpg

Peach Parts W124.128 User Group.

80 280SL
85 300SD
87 300TD
92 300D 2.5 Turbo
92 300TE 4Matic

nice picts and work indeed.

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1986 300SDL, 211K,Dealership serviced its whole life
1991 190E 2.6(120k)
1983 300D(300k)
1977 300D(211k)

This car looked beautiful outside.

What is underneath brings fear to the owner.

Posted for "monomer", (Colonel Blitz).

W115 1976 300d pictures

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I just got back from a trip to walgreens, printed quite a few pics. I'm having a chat with the dealer we got it from tomorrow.



It's a completely unsafe car...

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-1983 VW Rabbit LS Diesel (5speed, VNT/Giles build)

As you said, "What lies beneath...."

If you're going to overpay, buy a southern car for a reasonable price and have it shipped. How many people up there only drive their cars in the summer? Really??

Here in the Sunbelt, we drive them year 'round, just like I imagine everyone else does (and always has), and all we get is sun scald on the paint! We wear out drivetrains while you guys in the Rustbelt have the chassis rot out from under you. Sounds like a match made in Mercedes heaven....

Sunny

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Anthracite 1980 300D -- 64k original miles with a new engine, on the road again!
Silver 300D -- second owner, Sunny's old baby, Ilse, 210 miles,
Having to thin the herd….
Silver 1983 300SD -- second owner, 325k miles
Gold 1981 300D -- well-traveled, solid little car
Beige 1984 300D -- 292k miles, grease machine, parting out
Seafoam green 1981 300SD -- 250k, windshield frame damage
too many assorted w123 & w126 cars, parts cars, and extras

That pretty much is like the '75 300D that I owned many years ago. I bought replacement fenders and painted them myself it was so bad. The vacuum lines were showing in the rear quarters. The last straw was when I got drenched inside the car driving through heavy rain with all the water spraying up through the floorboards.

And the car was only about 12 years old then!

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Michael LaFleur

'05 E320 CDI - 86,000 miles
'86 300SDL - 360,000 miles
'85 300SD - 150,000 miles (sold)
'89 190D - 120,000 miles (sold)
'85 300SD - 317,000 miles (sold)
'98 ML320 - 270,000 miles (sold)
'75 300D - 170,000 miles (sold)
'83 Harley Davidson FLTC (Broken again) :-(
'61 Plymouth Valiant - 60k mikes
2004 Papillon (Oliver)
2005 Tzitzu (Griffon)
2009 Welsh Corgi (Buba)

No time to fly/drive south and inspect before she hands money over.




This was a "garage kept" car with under 100k miles.

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-1983 VW Rabbit LS Diesel (5speed, VNT/Giles build)

You make my point well -- there was no time to inspect, even around the corner. I guess it's about whether you can trust the seller, and whether you get enough pictures of the important bits. Wrenching is one thing -- we can fix most things, and we have good indies for things we can't, even to the point of being able to borrow a lift when we need to. The body/chassis is one thing I don't know how to fix, and I really don't want to learn.

Between 2004 and 2007, we bought three cars from total strangers in distant locations (south Texas, New Mexico, and Georgia -- nothing from the "rust belt!"), and we've been happy with every one of them. I drove two of them home (300 miles and 800 miles) and had the Georgia car shipped 'cause I didn't have time to go pick it up. But I took it off the trailer and immediately drove it 80 miles home with no problems.

If we didn't already have more lovely Mercedes Benzes than we can say grace over, we wouldn't hesitate to do it again, though shipping costs have surely skyrocketed. And if we lived where the undercarriage and structural members of the car is subject to actual winter weather AND the salt and other chemicals that go with it, we'd do it in a heartbeat.

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Anthracite 1980 300D -- 64k original miles with a new engine, on the road again!
Silver 300D -- second owner, Sunny's old baby, Ilse, 210 miles,
Having to thin the herd….
Silver 1983 300SD -- second owner, 325k miles
Gold 1981 300D -- well-traveled, solid little car
Beige 1984 300D -- 292k miles, grease machine, parting out
Seafoam green 1981 300SD -- 250k, windshield frame damage
too many assorted w123 & w126 cars, parts cars, and extras

I painted this all over with POR15, then glued some metal sheets down with Gorilla glue (and more glue) to try to keep the water out. I recall fondly somewhere somebody suggesting roofing cement! I may try that too!

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marshall

1982 300TD (220,000 mi.)

Lemme tell you a little story. True too.

A long time ago an old diesel tech' I worked with who used to lived in the south western part of the UK in the 50's, had an old pre WWII Hillman Minx.

This is what he told me......

The floor was so bad he had to do something drastic. In fact the seats sat on an old bed spring frame.

One Friday night he pulled all the seats out and chipped off the loose rust, which turned out to be most of the car from the door handles down!

Bright and early Saturday morning he went to the builders yard and got 6 bags of cement and sand ( 112lbs a piece.) he wheeled them one at a time home on the handlebars of his bike.

He knocked up the cement in his wheel barrow and before he poured it into the car, he prepared it by cutting a piece of plywood to fit under the car and blocked it up until it formed a floor.

He laid in the old bedstead and a few scraps of re bar and plugged the big gaps with paper.

Poured the concrete and before it started to set, put in the front seats and wriggled them around until they were where he needed them.

Sunday, he said, he pulled out the plywood and let down the car.
He said he knew something was wrong 'cos he had to pump up the tyres.

Monday morning he cranked her up ( Starting handle...remember them ? )
and drove out on to the road. He said it drove 'boat like' but real smooth.

He had to drive up Porlock Hill to get to work. Arriving at the bottom of the hill he said he grabbed 2nd and started up....about 100yards on he grabbed first......a few yards later the clutch started slipping.

He rolled back down the hill nearly running out of brakes because the old drums don't work so good backwards.

Turned the car around and backed up the hill in reverse.

After a week of this he sold the car. Apparently it got about 9 mpg !
He said the last straw was a copper on a bike keeping up with him on one of the smaller hills.

I kid you not. His name was Mr Furzer and worked with me in 1973 to 1976 at Eddison Plant Hire Depot in Ipswich Suffolk. I guess he'd be dead by now.

Shucks... I just realized I miss the old boy now.

.


.

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[http://languageandgrammar.com/2008/01/14/youve-got-problems-not-issues/ ]

"A liberal is someone who feels they owe a great debt to their fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money."

PM me

twr

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2000 430 ML
2005 S500
87 300 D
61 300 restoring

Looks like I am not alone. I purchased this car 4 months ago and found all sorts of horrors....so i decided to practice my novice welding skills to repair it.

Came out OK in the end...now its time to sell.

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This was a concours winning car until it was backed into the tide .


but what if you want to repair a rusty car? How far do you go ?

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I( drove this W116 just long enough to know that is was far too rusty and the fact it was powered with a 350 Chev caused the rusted out shell to twist when I did a burn out.....,this made the throttle jam open full.


Thats right,No inner rocker or chassis structure and the stainless peice was put in the car so it wouldn't get bent ...until it fell through the floor.

This's the sway bar floating in the breeze..

The throttle was the only thing holding the floor together,the chassis rail has gone long ago.

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'85 300D rust carnage. I was warned by a forum member to check that seatbelt mount after posting a pic of the rusty door sill.

I have since repaired it. I bent up and welded in some 16G steel which is welded to a captive nut. I sanwiched that to a piece bolted and welded to the floorboard and welded to the exterior rocker panel. I then filled the hollow rocker section with expanding structural polyeurethane foam (think gorilla glue by the gallon) and then fixed the rusted out sections of the rocker that let the water in in the first place. Not the best repair, I really wanted to replace the floorpan and rocker, but effective and fast nonetheless. All of this seems to have happenned because the PO left a plastic plug out of the back of the rocker panel in the rear fender well and let water splash in. The rocker and floorpan on the other side was intact.

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1985 300D