300 SDL - So far so good
 

Hello All-

I joined this forum back in February after making a bit of an impulse purchase of a 1987 300 SDL with 220,000 on the odo. There was no rust-through on the body and the interior is awesome. It had all the service records from day 1...including oil changes every 3,000 mi. I posted back then with some questions regarding terrible power and a cold starting problem and I was directed by several of you to WHunter who works at a local indy shop near me. I had only logged about 100 miles on the car since I had purchased it but the performance grew progressively worse. I scheduled an appointment with WHunter (Roy) and crossed my fingers. The car actually died on the way to his shop...about 3 miles away. It would start and Idle fine but didn't have enough power to even move itself. They kindly showed up to rescue me with a tow rope and then the fun really started. The first line of thought was bad fuel and filters, etc. No luck. The compression test was decent (thank God) so then Roy really got to earn his money. The car turned out to be a CA model which didn't help. You may have seen the pics of the mouse hotel under the battery tray that Roy posted. Mine! Also mine were the wafer thin motor mount pics. The trap Oxidizer was replaced/removed by Mercedes in 2000 at 164,000 miles under recall so that was also ruled out. Unfortunately Roy eventually got to the heart of the problem. The turbo had basically self destructed and began plugging up the catalyst - eventually preventing the engine from getting rid of the exhaust. Needless to say this wasn't a cheap fix. I'm thankful to live near an honest, knowledgeable guy like Roy. Even though I'll be paying off these repairs for a lot longer than I had hoped or planned for, I ended up with a sweet daily driver that still turns heads and now is a pleasure to drive. My next diesel will definitely undergo a pre-purchase inspection by someone like Roy. Reading this forum every day while she was in the shop helped me keep the faith. You guys are an awesome community and I just want to say thanks for letting me in.


Keith
1987 300 SDL 220,000 +

Welcome to the party! :D

Yes indeed, without the support from people like Whunter, and many many more, I would not have as nice a running 300D, or 450SL!

Busybenz............ :)

Glad to hear Roy got it running! A dead turbo that is kind of rare when you first posted it sounded just like plugged fuel filters.

Perhaps Roy will know, but I have to wonder if the turbo didn't die from ingesting the innerds of the original trap-ox? As I understood, the trap-ox campaign was supposed to include a turbo if the trap had begun to come apart internally. Someone please correct me if wrong.

EDIT: As I hit send I remembered we are reading about an SDL, I'm thinking the trap-ox campaign was for '85 models. Who remembers which year(s) were covered?

SDL's had trap ox's. I know the 86's got stuck with them maybe the 87's as well.

Actually I know of a 1986 SDL running around with the trap ox still under the hood. I told them to take it to the dealer and get it replaced but you never know it is probably still under their.