New-to-me 1986 300SDL
 

Finally getting around to posting pictures. I purchased this car almost a month ago from the original owner...80 year old man. He had all the records, all the keys, a binder full of service records and the car was in immaculate condition. I've wanted to replace my SD with an SDL for a while, and just had to jump on this one. It has been garage kept since day one, and it shows. The car still has original paint, which is in really great shape. The interior is near perfect. It's obvious that he had the seats color sprayed at some point, but whoever did the work did a good job. I actually didn't notice this until after I bought the car.

I had the brakes, motor mounts, radiator and AC push button control replaced right after I bought it, and it's going to need a new transmission (rebuilt) at some point, as the current one leaks and there's a bit of a delay and a slight jerk into reverse.

The car came with chrome 15 hole rims and old tires, however I swapped those onto my 300SD, which I'm selling. Today I picked up some rims which I bought locally and had refinished. They look great!

Also took the original Becker out and sent it back to Becker Autosound to clean/rehab and install an auxiliary cable so that I can use it with my iPod/iPhone. And I replaced the headlight doors, which were old and cracked, and the cruise control amp with a rebuilt unit from fellow forum member JamesDean (highly recommended, by the way).

This car has a #14 head, but the temp reads normally, unlike one of the other SDLs that I looked at, and it's obvious that it has never been overheated (I plan to keep it that way). I'm amazed at how much smoother the 603 engine is than the 617 in my SD, not to mention the difference in performance!

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Simply......
 

Very clean and very nice! Just wish he could have ordered something a little more spicey in the color combo field.....

Thanks! Definitely not my first color choice, especially on the exterior. It's growing on me, though...particularly the palomino interior. I think it looks a lot better since I got rid of the chrome wheels and put back on stock painted.

Wow, that is such a nice example!
I am NOT jealous :D

I too was amazed at the difference between the 603 and the 617. The five cylinder seemed like a tractor engine compared with the six.

For even more performance you can remove the ALDA and set the boost pressure up to 13psi. My SDL was only making 7 psi of boost when I got him...

OK OP you ready? I gotta buncha q's...
 

When was the most recent service according to the records you were furnished?

How was it obvious the seats were re-dyed?

Please qualify "temp reads normally" and how did it differ in the "other" SDL you looked at?

Finally, where did you get the wheels redone? They look really good.

Thanks,

MBZ123

Very beautiful SDL congrats

Awesome SDL despite it not being the best color.

Nice looking radiator too!



.

How is this obvious? Why did you replace the radiator? Because it was more than 5 years old is a good answer but was it cracked or leaking?

There isn't much to criticize in the pictures so I'll say it needs proper length lug bolts. I'm not feeling the pinstripes continuing over the headlights or what appears to be green coolant, either.

Sixto
87 300D

Color/condition/records/miles/options/ghetto-window-tinting/exorbitant pricing/seller-deception, or most anything can kill a used car's desirability from the standpoint of a buyer - but at the end of the day, condition/records trumps everything on aging/scarce used cars.

Discovering false and/or misleading pitches about any used car after seeing it - will kill the deal for me in a heartbeat. Everything must match-up when determining the credibility of the car and seller.

X2

There's a lot more to a used car than what the seller tells you. It takes time to forensically unravel the truth about a car's past - then you never really know for sure.

You can buy a new car, and be left wondering too, when the car's left in a shop's custody - you never know what's taken place.

The wheel lug bolts do look somewhat cheezy IMHO too. :D Are they unsafe being that short??

Ahhhhhhhh..beat me to it!
 

That's exactly what I was getting at with the question regarding the most recent service. Hard to imagine an Indy filling it with standard antifreeze let alone a dealer? Talk about juxtaposition! Such a clean engine bay and then - WHAMMO! oops upside ya head - there's the green stuff.

As for the lugs, I seem to remember reading, here in the forum, the longer bolts are NLA and the short ones are standard replacement. Then again, I could have completely dreamt that up.

OP - How's the undercarriage look? And if you could still chime in on my previous queries, it would be appreciated.

MBZ123

Sorry, for some reason I wasn't receiving e-mails on these responses.

Regarding the service, the original owner's son is a mechanic at a local BMW dealer, so he has done the maintenance for the past few years. I don't have actual records of the work that has been done during that time, but have lots of print outs for parts orders placed online. Some things that he has done are obvious...changing the belts, fuel lines, shocks, etc. The original owner used the dealer for service for the first 15 or so years of ownership...all of those records I have.

Seats...there are a couple of areas where it looks like some sort of a spray was used on the seats. On the drivers seat on the metal hinge between the back and seat rest, there is what looks like a zip tie and it has this coating on it. Also, on the front edge of the passenger seat I can almost see what looks like the original finish underneath whatever was sprayed on. The original owner's son did mention that the seats/leather had been reconditioned, however I didn't press him on what that meant.

The temp on this SDL normally reads about 85 and gets up to as high as about 95, but never higher since I've owned it. From what I've read online, that is the normal range. The higher limit that I gave is when the AC is on and I'm sitting at a stop light, or when pulling a load on a highway incline (which we have here in SoCal). The other SDL that I drove sat at around 95 to 100 and got a bit higher than that while I was test driving it with the AC on. As I side note, I'm probably going to replace the green temp sensor on mine with a red temp sensor so that aux fan will kick on and the AC compressor will kick off at slightly lower limits. I have observed the aux fan on low while the AC is on.

I purchased the used wheels from SoCal Mercedes Parts in Orange, CA. They sent the wheels out to a guy that they use all of the time, and that also does wheels for House of Imports (a local MB dealer in Orange County). Yes, I think they look great.

Radiator...when I took the car to my mechanic right after purchase, I had him change the oil and filters and give the car a once over. The metal clamp where the upper radiator hose connects to the top of the radiator was positioned a bit further out than normal (he noticed this; I hadn't), so he recommended checking this. I had this connection break at the top of the radiator on my 84 300SD, so I knew this could be a problem. Sure enough, when he removed the upper radiator hose to check it, the connection snapped and I was forced to replace the radiator.

Lug bolts...I researched these as well. The extended lug bolts are no longer available from MB...there were apparently problems with them snapping due to being over torqued. The car came with the extended lug bolts with chrome 15 hole wheels, which I didn't like. I used the extended bolts temporarily on the painted rims that I switched onto the car from my SD, however they bolts had chrome caps, some of which were missing. So I just bit the bullet and ordered new MB lugs from PeachParts and had those installed when the refinished wheels were installed. Didn't want to take a chance that the old extended bolts had been improperly torqued in the past and also didn't like that some were missing the caps (which I couldn't find anywhere).

Coolant...see below...

Couldn't agree more. I haven't found anything that was intentionally mislead...I lay no claim to be the most savvy car buyer...I'm sure that others would have asked a lot more questions and probably could have scored a better price. But, the car is worth what the buyer is willing to pay for it. This car certainly doesn't fit into my criteria of being the ideal SDL (not the best color, and of course there are things that it needs), however it's damn close based on what I've seen being an old MB diesel owner for the past 4 years. I'm very happy with my purchase, and in the end, that's all that matters. :)