A friend with a diesel benz wagon recommended your site, and told me he found your community very helpful. I found a 1987 Mercedes 300D for sale locally. The poster is extremely light on details in the ad- essentially saying it has 245,000 miles, he invested a few thousand dollars in it, but he is selling it for $2000. The pictures make the car look VERY clean inside and out. In fact, that's what made me consider going with the sedan instead of a wagon. I did some searching of the forums for the 300D but I mostly found very specific questions and some tire/wheel talk and pictures (which looked very nice btw!).

I found the following on wikipedia: "The W124 chassis 300D (pre E Class facelift) has the OM603 engine, which is a 3.0 litre six-cylinder turbocharged engine that appeared for one year only, 1987."

So it seems that would be the car I'm looking at. Straight 6, turbocharged, correct? Could you please help me better acquaint myself with the common trouble areas of this vehicle? I'd like to go into the test drive etc. with a little background, so I know what to look for. If the car looks good cosmetically, what should I look for mechanically?


Here are the pictures of the car

Any help is greatly appreciated

I think you need to check out this thread. Need link to 124 buyers guide
Some great info

Kevin
1978 300D
1979 240D

If that car is $2K, buy it! If you have to do engine work later it would appear that car is worth it. If you don't have to do any work, would be an awesome deal.
Biggest issue with that model is warping or cracking of the cylinder head if it's ever been overheated.

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Jimmy L.
'05 Acura TL 6MT
2001 ML430 My Spare

Gone:
'95 E300 188K "Batmobile" Texas Unfriendly Black
'85 300TD 235K "The Wagon" Texas Friendly White
'80 240D 154K "China" Scar engine installed
'81 300TD 240K "Smash"
'80 240D 230K "The Squash"
'81 240D 293K"Scar" Rear ended harder than Elton John

Wow, great! Thanks so much. I feel like a fool for missing that. There is a ton of fantastic info here... it is also scaring the crap out of me =]

That article yellowbenz posted had a section discussing the heads. It immediately caught my attention, because it would obviously be an expensive fix. Great tip regarding the serial numbers though.... it will be the first thing I check.

For $2k, buy it. If there's no significant rust in the rockers, no oil in the coolant, runs well and drives well, interior good, A/C works properly, you're getting your money's worth and more.

That been said don't spend your last $$ buying it, you likely will want/need to spend some money on it in the first 6months-year.

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Gone to the dark side

- Jeff