The door strike plate on the driver's side has been worn down - the little plastic clip underneath has been broken - I've tried repairing it with JBWeld twice, to no avail - so I purchased a new door strike for it. In my previous trials I saw first hand how difficult it is to properly align the door strike to match the door perfectly. The door lock element on the door itself must meet the door strike plastic piece perfectly for the door to close with a classic whoompf.

Is there a trick to aligning it perfectly - for some reason I can see much better how the rear door meets the door strike.... not so on the front door - the trim or the rubber gasket seems to obstruct the view - what's the secret of getting it aligned perfectly?!

Thanks -

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1987 Mercedes 300SDL; SOLD
1985 Mercedes 300D; SOLD
2006 Honda Pilot - wife's ride; 122K;
1995 Toyota Land Cruiser - 3X locked; 182K

when I replaced mine on my w123 I traced the original bracket with a grease pen and installed.. no alignment needed.

now all you can do is play with it until its correct. put a dab of turtle wax on the door end and see where it ends up and adjust.

Wish I had done that.... will do trial and error and hope I don't destroy the new piece trying.

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1987 Mercedes 300SDL; SOLD
1985 Mercedes 300D; SOLD
2006 Honda Pilot - wife's ride; 122K;
1995 Toyota Land Cruiser - 3X locked; 182K

Don't slam the door and you should run no risk of damage while aligning it.

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Adam Lumsden
(83) 300D
Vice-President of the MBCA International Stars Section

Unless you've cleaned and waxed the door frame when it was off, you'll probably see a faint outline of where the old striker was. I just replaced mine and put it back where the lines were. I also had two shims behind the striker on the old one that I reinstalled - now it closes well with the whoomph.

I've never attempted to realign one of my doors, though I'm contemplating doing so on my 300CE. I see in the FSM that Mercedes has several specialty tools for door aligning, perhaps one of those could help you. There is one which looks sort of like a tuning fork which seems designed to match up the lock on both sides.

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I never go far without a little Big Star

1994 E500 199/Gray 82k
84 300D (Salty) Orient Red/Palomino 141k
88 300CE (Ersatzhammer) 904/Java 163k -- Turbo Technics twin turbo kit, AMG Gen I body kit, Sportline steering box and steering wheel, Sportline/Eibach /Bilstein Sport/500E suspension, Quaife LSD in 210 mm diff case, Silver Arrow brakes.
88 300CE Brabus 3.6 199 on Black 44k

That would be nice to have... since I didn't have one I opted for a much more primitive though pretty effective technique - I used playdough...

I just aligned it as best as you could on the old marks that faintly appeared on the door frame and then I fixed the door strike in place with two screws - at opposite corners. I then placed a small ball made of playdough into the door strike and gently closed the door until the door made an imprint in the strike/playdough. That way I could see how they fit together and adjust accordingly. I got it pretty darn close this way.

I still could not judge the proper 'depth' placement using this method, so it took some trial and error until it closed properly with just a gentle push, but the door works fine now.

Attached Thumbnails

 

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1987 Mercedes 300SDL; SOLD
1985 Mercedes 300D; SOLD
2006 Honda Pilot - wife's ride; 122K;
1995 Toyota Land Cruiser - 3X locked; 182K

Excellent! We have loads of playdough around. I'll make sure to use that method one of these days.

__________________
I never go far without a little Big Star

1994 E500 199/Gray 82k
84 300D (Salty) Orient Red/Palomino 141k
88 300CE (Ersatzhammer) 904/Java 163k -- Turbo Technics twin turbo kit, AMG Gen I body kit, Sportline steering box and steering wheel, Sportline/Eibach /Bilstein Sport/500E suspension, Quaife LSD in 210 mm diff case, Silver Arrow brakes.
88 300CE Brabus 3.6 199 on Black 44k

I ended up having to make my own shims. My cousin's expert eye (and some seamstress's rulers) we decided that since my D/S front door was NOT the original. AND we found the evidence of previous body repair (good but still there.) I put in new hinges, better but still had to slam it. We did some tweaking of the door jamb added some shims and it sounds and feels much better. BUT then we look very carefully and realize the door is OUT too far at the top rear of the window channel when the rest of the door is perfect. We made major improvements but I guess there has to be some compromise with 20+ year old cars that have been wrecked.

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1987 300D (230,000 mi on a #14 head-watching the temp gauge and keeping the ghost in the machine)
Raleigh NC - Home of deep fried sushi!