I went out and found an 82 300SD donor vehicle, but it's not exactly in good shape itself. $500, engine seems to leak more oil than mine did, and (surprise, surprise) the oil cooler line is nearly sliced through

What are the steps from here?

1. Buy the rusty, broken tie-rod, bad-brakes vehicle and try to fix it up with all the parts from my car
2. Buy the other car and get a specific part or parts replaced on my old engine... any ideas what this would take?
3. Get the whole engine from the new one dropped into my existing vehicle

I've obviously got no business trying to do any of this myself, so if you have experience with labor costs, let me know (I'll do a search on the forum, too). The 82 is similar enough to the 84 non-California engine, right?-- it looks pretty much the same under the hood.

Thanks everyone,
Brian

What to do...

You need an engine with good compression across the cylinders- 350 psi min. I'd look for a rust bucket which was sloowww, but started quick and has reciepts of regular oil changes. Then I would put a good engine in my good body. If your body is not excellent, I'd junk it and get a very nice example and be happy.

You can pull the injectors and run a compression test pretty easy- just need some injectorline return hose for replacing everything. Valves being out of adjustment can give low compression.

Those are the finding it yourself option. You can buy one from a high-end recycler with a warrentee and compression readings -last time I looked was $1500. Which while sounding like more, might be less than getting a bad engine and doing this all again.


Michael

__________________
Michael McGuire
83 300d
01 vw A4 TDI
66 Chevy Corsa
68 GMC V6 w/oD
86 300E

Please stop for a minute.

You are undertaking a very large project. The labor involved to do 1,2, or 3 is significant. To justify any of the aforementioned options, you must be sure that your end result is a very good to excellent vehicle. Otherwise, it makes absolutely no sense. In fact, it may not make any sense anyway. You can find a pristine 300SD for about $6500.00 and it won't need anything. Keep this in mind.

So, option 1:

This makes no sense unless the body is immaculate on the "new vehicle". You stated that it is rusty. Why spend $2000 to move parts onto a rusty vehicle??

So, option 2:

You would not use any parts from the old engine to repair your engine. If you have your engine rebuilt, you will use new parts. The cost will be anywhere from $3K to $6K, depending on how much gets done. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense, either, unless you have a pristine 300 SD.

So, option 3:

You need to determine the condition of the "new" engine. A compression test is mandatory. If the engine is a very good to excellent engine, then the cost to swap engines, approximately $1500 to $2000, makes some sense. But, even this expenditure must be weighed against the resulting conditon of the 300SD when you are finished. It's still a lot of money to put into an old vehicle, unless it's in very good shape.


None of these decisions are easy. However, if you are adamant about fixing this one, and can't consider a replacement 300SD in good to excellent condition ($4K-$7K), then option 3 is the only sensible option.

I don’t think you killed it put the car up on ramps use a floor jack then slide the ramps under the tire, use a breaker bar a 27mm deep dish socket and use your foot to try and rotate the engine. Engines that seize from oil starvation do not start and run at a later date then decide to seize at an even later date. I have purchased more cars that needed new engines when in fact it was 1 a bad battery 2 bad battery cables 3 bad starter and your car is displaying the symptoms of one of those problems. Take an hour and try to turn it over with the socket again but realize if you have a good engine with high compression and lets throw in a jammed starter for fun it can be very hard to rotate it by hand use your foot and push as hard as you can. Of course if your not too far away and you don’t mind me spending an hour changing the battery starter and cables I will give you a hundred bucks for it and drive her home I just love the looks on PO faces when after buying the car I swap batteries and drive there car away.
Dave S