Fixing 1987 300D Turbo W124
 

Whats up ,

Hope somebody can help me with some advice and tips. This is a long story. My father owned a 1987 300D Turbo W124 since the day it came alive. I've always like the car since I was born. Never intentionally thought he was going to keep it for ever. What can I say my dad was obsessed with the car. It never gave him any problems for almost 2 Decades. Well he is on disability and he is re-tiring and moving to europe very soon. So today he was having some electrical problem and I went outside with no knowledge of diesel engine and got it to work. It seems like the battery is dead, infact I never seen a battery so big in a car. It starts right up when you jump it but it doesnt charge at all. I thought it might be the altenator, but my father told me that it charges differently then a gas car. The battery must be dead because he had symptoms of this a decade back. Well I called the dealer and they said they had the battery in stock.

Well anyways he gave up on the car, and said I'm going to let it sit here and then junk it sometime. I actually felt heartbroken. I look at the car and I'm like how can you do something like this. I love this car its a classic and its one of my 2nd fav mercedes body styles. Im 22 years old and im thinking of keeping the car intentionally to drive around on a weekend sort of thing. The body has minor dents but has rust on the right rear wheel weld . The body is not that important to me tho, because I can always fix that later. The car had 1 re-built so far it needed a head gasket, timing chain , water pump , and a injector or too. I think its on its original transmission the car has about 260k on it and the miles stop counting because my sister 7 years ago lost control of the car in the rain and it hit the wheel in the back onto a curb.and ever since that day it stopped reading miles . Well my dad just fixed that but never intentionally cared about the miles it was reading. So far the car has electrical problems or sometthing idk. The rpm gauge does not work, the climate control stays on defrost, power door locks dont work, the headrest in the seats dont go down. How can i fix all this, i was reading something on the forums and they explained that the car runs on vacuum for serveral things. I found the backseats have the power door locks vacuum pump there so thats probably easy to change. Now getting to the climate control where is the vacuum pump for that? Is it hard to change and where is it located?

Manny

Welcome Manny :) ,My best advice would be take your time and read all you can find on this site ,and try not to get overwelmed.Theres a lot of information to be found,also check out Diesel Giants homepage,he's got lots of information as well.Good Luck on your new car ,Johnny :cool:

yeah im really interested in fixing this , my friends tell me dont waste your time but those guys are young they dont know about diesels and there capablity of life. Excellent daily driver cars in my opinion. So does anyone out there know how to fix these problems?

Yes, and as Johnny said, start with the seach button!

Sixto
... stay tuned

My W124 has the same problem of the headrests not going down when you push down the button on the door. Try pressing them down with your hand while you press the button. Mine will go up, but not down unless you push on it.

For the locks, there is a connection under the carpet of the foot of the rear right passenger, almost under the right front passenger, you need to raise the carpet hard. This connection in most cases rusts due to condensation and disconnect all the signals to/from the vacuum pump at the rear seat. Read more about it here and you will solve the locks problem in no time, or at least you will be very close to a complete power lock system. Please start with this.

There's a recent thread in the Tech forum on fixing headrest risers.

Sixto
93 300SD

Whatever you do, don't let it go to the junkyard! If you feel you aren't qualified to fix everything, and it's too much work for you, post it for sale here and I am sure someone will buy it from you if you are reasonable on the price.