A few more pictures.

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Unfortunately the rust will almost certainly recur. Were there no rust, I would proceed given your attachment value to the car. However, rust is what it is, and going from the provided pics, it's bad, going strictly with my personal experience with a 77 240D that was not quite that bad.

I appreciate your attachment to the car and your desire to do right by it and your great-grandad. The fact that you have family members interested is good, subject to their motivation....

Here are a few questions you may want to ask yourself:

- Where will I do the work? (If no heated inside space is available, you are already limited in what you will accomplish this year prior to winter, given that I think you have probably been experiencing the incredibly bad summer we are getting north of you here, where it rains every second weekend.)

- My family is voicing support, but how many hours will they be able to put into it to assist, when push comes to shove and other commitments get into the mix? Is this enthusiastic support (putting in time, lending tools if needed) or just a vague level of support for a nice idea?

- Am I prepared to spend $1,000 in mechanical parts alone this year, aside from the inevitable body rust repairs, to get the car on the road? (This includes tires, brake system components, change of all fluids, likely climate control parts, possibly suspension or front end parts).

- Do I have access to someone with a MIG welder to do the floor repairs, or am I willing to purchase and learn to use one?

- Am I prepared to stick with this for some time and work through any number of small, irritating issues?

There are a lot of very knowledgeable people here who can help you, if you are up for the challenge. But you have to be realistic on the road ahead of you.

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Mac
2002 e320 4matic estate│1985 300d│1980 300td
Previous: 1979 & 1982 & 1983 300sd │ 1982 240d

“Let's take a drive into the middle of nowhere with a packet of Marlboro lights and talk about our lives.” ― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

Thank you Zacharias, I really appreciate that. The heated inside space is something I'm going to have to work on. As for the family support, I'm really lucky, I've already borrowed some tools (I'm making sure to keep them looking good...). My uncle that I mentioned is definitely willing to put in time... He's the kinda guy that wants to make sure a job gets done. He also has welding experience, and I'm pretty sure welding equipment. The money may be a bit tight, but I think I should be able to manage. I'm really hoping I can get this guy movin and am so glad I found this community willing to help me figure out what I can't. Love you guys!

That rot is pretty bad....I would look for a good body and put your drive train in it....I see your seats are broke down.....this will be a expensive job, if you want your seats to feel and look nice....I would personally do what needs to be done to make it a runner and drive it into the ground....wouldn't waste the money into this car....and I hate to say that....

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I'd say a full restoration would be a no go. But if the inner structure isn't too bad you could get the mechanics bits sorted and have a classic beater for a few years before the body is unsafe. I'd start with the cheap stuff - brakes, rubber bits, etc and end with the more expensive like the tires. It could be later used as a parts car for a nicer example.

That looks like an uphill battle against rust.

Your restoration (full or not) has to start with a good body, meaning the core is not rusted out. Superficial rust may be okay, but in your case that is bad rot. You'll be fixing the car around the body anyway, so better start with a good one.

Your first course of action would be to determine whether the body is salvageable or not. If I were you I'd want to start with a good body, with minimal body restoration needed. That means, if I were you, I would check the mechanicals to see how much of it is transferrable to a new body. But if you're determined to fix the body, be sure to do it properly the first time, as rust can come back if not treated/fixed properly.

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http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7271/7...144c3fc1dc.jpg

THIS. I had a '77 240D that wasn't quite that rusty. With the slow progression of rust in northern Nevada, I could still be driving it, but I also had a 300D that was begging for a manual swap, so after driving the 240 for three years as a daily driver and not putting much money into it, I cannibalized it for the transmission and sold the rest.

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Whoever said there's nothing more expensive than a cheap Mercedes never had a cheap Jaguar.

83 300D Turbo with manual conversion, early W126 vented front rotors and H4 headlights 400,xxx miles
08 Suzuki GSX-R600 M4 Slip-on 22,xxx miles
88 Jaguar XJS V12 94,xxx miles. Work in progress.

Speaking as someone in the same climate, I'm DDing my 240D and the rust is visibly worse than yours, but the car is structurally still in good shape. That rust doesn't look too bad. Yeah, its going to be more extensive, and I wouldn't use that front jack point, but it might be livable.
First order of business is to determine the safety factor of the rust. What you look like you have is pretty typical salted roads rust which if you are lucky can be localized. Check your floor pans for softness, especially around the back mount points of the driver and passenger seats. You want to make sure the floors especially in those areas are solid, if not, the car is unsafe as that's where the seatbelt mounts and seat mounts. If its rusted out, and a common problem is the joint between rocker and floor can rust through, the seatbelt ends up bolted to an unsupported piece of thin sheet metal, and the seat itself can pitch forward out of the floor.
If this area is soft, I would consider the car undrivable until it were fixed, and that would make an impact on me getting it going as a driver

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I only noticed the seat bottom on the driver's side being damaged. I believe the seat bottoms will swap between the passenger and driver's sides so put the best one where you will be sitting.

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You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime you just might find you get what you need.

this rust in this pic-



probably looks more like this, if not worse. This damage actually looked less rusty than your pic before I starting picking at it. But then again this brown car was incorrectly and horribly repaired when it first started rusting, so it got way worse really fast. If your white 300D hasn't seen any rust repair, it may not be this bad. This is partially from someone filling a rust hole with greatstuff insulation foam-



The problem with these cars is the undercoating and innercoating is so thick that rust issues get way worse than you expect.

Here is the same car after cutting out all the rusted panels-
something similar to what you could be looking at, OR, it could be more localized, but pull the carpets and start feeling for softness in the floor. It will be like the consistency of graham cracker between rubber

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2x on getting an accurate rust picture. That's what I'm trying to avoid you getting trapped in... a car you've put $$$$ into repairing, only to find it's turning to dust under your feet.

That's where I'm at with my SDL right now If I had known where to look I never would have bought the car because of rust.

-J

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1991 350SDL. 230,000 miles (new motor @ 150,000). Blown head gasket

Tesla Model 3. 205,000 miles. Been to 48 states!
Past: A fleet of VW TDIs.... including a V10,a Dieselgate Passat, and 2 ECOdiesels.
2014 Cadillac ELR
2013 Fiat 500E.

Any of you have a ballpark for what the cost of this could be? This is my first time working on a car and I'm not sure what it's gonna cost... Am I looking at $1,000? $2,000?

well, lets say you get new tires, 400-500 right there. you start driving it around, you could go a long time before dry cracked stuff starts to break, but it can't be a surprise when it happens. Id expect that once you get it moving, a couple grand, maybe 2500 in the first year would be something Id expect to put into it, without addressing rust issues, and with doing most of the simple repairs yourself.

The good news is just about everything on these cars is DIY as said prior, so given the desire to do it, you can save a lot of money. They really become money drains when you pay someone else to work on them though.

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There is one other upside perhaps. The equipment you aquire to repair things can last a lifetime. The sooner you own it age wise the more money you save with it over the long term.

Another feeling I have after having done major rust repair. A car for one reason or another has to be really deserving of the effort. If the repairs required are really extensive a body swap is much easier on the head and wallet. A persons time has to be worth something and the hours required for extensive heavy proper rust repair mind the equipment and material costs can be unreal.

The metal in that rear dogleg is an advanced form of corrosion. Getting back to solid metal may be quite a distance. When you see something like that you want to really get a picture of the overall substructure condition underneath the car.