Hi there all, I thought I’d do what I probably should have done early on here, introduce this project! One reason I didn’t was because the “project” itself took shape in a rather organic way.
It all started when I saw an ad on Ebay for a 1981 Euro 300TD with 4-speed manual transmission. It was a very nice looking car, here’s some info on that car: http://www.memory-motors.com/Show_Car.php?CAR_ID=132#main I was so enamored with this car I flew to Milwaukee to check it out.
At nearly the same time I found a car locally in Southern California, that was a very not so beautiful 1982 Euro 300TD. The difference was that the “beater” car was well, let’s just call it $10K cheaper. I drove the local car, the day before my flight to Milwaukee, and told the owner I’d call him from Milwaukee when I knew which one I wanted to go with.
While the Milwaukee car was just about perfect, as I dug, and dug, I began to find things with it I just wasn’t sure about. Some blistering under the paint in a couple spots, a decent amount of blow-by going on, and some signs of a previous serious oil leak, but it was really a drive away car…AC worked, SLS worked and had just be gone through (for the 3rd time in its life).
Long story short I called the guy in California, and asked him how to get a deposit to him to hold the car till the next weekend when I could get down with a friend to pick it up.
The “brown” car, a 1982 Euro 300TD N/A with 4-speed manual.


One of my early thoughts was to find a turbo engine, and build up on that. But, did this car ever need a lot, besides a new engine, which it needed badly, as I found out, in the short time I drove it, it was burning oil like it was trying to keep OPEC happy, though it did always start (unless below 50 degrees) and ran pretty well, if very slow. The list was getting longer though, interior bits and pieces that were missing or just in bad shape, a fuel tank that was leaking due to road rash, since the SLS was long gone, and rather than put heavy duty springs, they just used the same springs with spacers in them, and HD shocks…it didn’t work.
So, I was faced with buying a bunch of stuff…and as luck would have it, I found a 1983 US 300TD with 199,000 miles on it right in my neighborhood. I went to drive it, and found several little issues, and creative home mechanic “solutions” that didn’t work, like cutting off one of the air cleaner brackets to replace it rather than moving the oil line to the turbo to install it properly…But, the price was right, and the engine was very powerful, solid, fired right up, and sounded “right” to my ear at least. AND it had almost all the parts I’d need for the other car…so, I bought it:
The “white” car, a 1983 US 300TD Turbo with Automatic.

I went back and forth on which car would be the donor and which would be the keeper. A buddy that would be helping with a lot of the heavy projects, proffered that I should keep the white car, because he liked all the nice things on it, sunroof, power windows, etc…, where as I saw most of that as a detriment, I really loved the simplicity of the crank windows, solid roof panel, manual climate controls, etc. In the long run, I ended up going with the white car, once I found out I could move the manual climate control system to it (the push button system, was in the dreaded “fail safe” mode with defrost only).
Some of the other reasons for going with the white car:





So far, the engine and transmission has been pulled from both cars. I’ve gone through the turbo engine, replaced the water pump, swapped the pump housing from the euro engine, replaced the turbo drain line seals and O-rings (OMG that is not an easy job even with the engine out of the car), checked the timing chain stretch (thanks to all the help I got from people here on the board), replaced the oil cooler lines, replaced the oil filter gaskets, deleted the EGR, replaced all the rubber fuel lines, and installed new injectors (shout out to Greezer), and glow plugs, replaced the vacuum pump gasket, replaced the oil pan and gasket, and installed a new AC compressor and brackets using a kit from a to be un-named source, cleaned and degreased, and then degreased, and cleaned some more


(was this thing part of the Exxon Valdez oil spill?), and I’ve begun the process of stripping the white car’s engine bay and front end to prep for paint as I intend to do a color change…leaning toward a solid taupe/gray of some shade (still working that out in my mind). I just hope I can get the bay cleaned well enough for paint to stick, at some point the SLS must have exploded, as that entire side of the bay including the headlight buckets are just covered with oil.
Since everything in here was BLACK before, I'll call this progress.

In the end, I'm hoping I end up with a nice, reliable, trustworthy, 300TD Euro driver with a turbo engine. So far, I’m excited, though a bit overwhelmed, and everyone here as been fantastic in helping with the latter aspect. I feel like I’ve made some friends here, and really appreciate all the knowledge there is here. I hope, on occasion I’ve helped too, in the comparatively small way I can. Shout out to cooljjay (who helped me figure out how to put pics in the post), yes of course, I might have some N/A bits for your car once I know I’ve got mine all sorted out!

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1983 W123 300TD US spec Turbo engine, with Euro bumpers and manual climate control, and manual transmission.