This evening I installed a Bosch rebuilt starter on my 1984 300SD. If I did not have this resource for technical information on the ins and outs of this repair job I am sure it would have taken me a few hours to complete the task. After reading an excellent write-up with pictures by Steve Kaa, I was able to complete the job in one hour and ten minutes. I was taking it easy while sipping a couple of beers, so I was not rushing, this is probably the fastest maintenance job I have ever done. The detail of information with the necessary socket extensions and the wobbly extension attached to the 10mm allen head socket, made the task of loosening and extracting the starter mount bolts amazingly staightfoward and easy.

Thank all of you dieselheads who post information on this site! You guys make working on my car myself possible.

Really, besides Steve Kaa, I would like to thank Brian Carlton, Forced Induction, BGkast, Larry Bible, and other members whose name I cannot remember, for helping out so much with post after post of useful information. Last weekend I flushed my coolant and cleaned out the spaces in between the fins on my radiator, which I learned mostly from posts by Brian Carlton. I even used the scrubbing bubbles bath foaming cleaner after reading a post by Brian. It worked really well, I was able to get the radiator completely cleaned out on the outside. Now my car runs no hotter than 87C or so on a hot day. I would be completely lost on how to accomplish these maintenance procedures if it was not for this site. Thanks also to Phil at mercedesshop for the forum.

Please excuse the lenghty post just to say thank you to all you guys who post information on this site,

Gilbert