Soooo... anybody wanna get the ones in my yard?

I would love to, but I might as well be on the other side of the world as you being in CA.

Well I guess I'll stop feeling guilty about my garage and driveway full of w123s and 6s - and I the 300SDL that I'm going to look at in the morning :D

Whereabout, Jooseppi?

You know where I am out in Worcester, and I go YEARS between seeing anything with an OM61X at the local yards. Not that I go often... but I still don't see them much anymore.

Here in Miami we don't even see 201's. Most of these cars got exported to South America (Chile and Argentina) about fifteen years ago or so.

Well, things were encouraging today, 4-5 617 diesels in the yard including a W114. There was even a decent R107

http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/...1&d=1438467255

Quote:


Originally Posted by ollo View Post

Hello folks. This one was near me, so I went out this evening and had a look: It's on a large farm between Yoder and Canby, about 10 mi. North of Silverton.

Seller is a BMW guy who works at a shop in Portland. Has some classic BMW's in barns & garages on the property. He also has several motorcycles but just the 1 Mercedes.

Said he's not familiar with diesels at all, got this one cheap and family drove it for a while, but it was hard to start in Winter, had blow by and never did have any power(240D Auto!), so concluded it needed a re-build & parked it in a barn 2 years ago.

It has good paint & a truly rust free body, interior was fair, save for typical drivers seat split. Needs a good clean-up. Passenger side CV axle boot is torn and radiator is rusty. Good tires. I gave him $350 for it. When I get it home, I should be able to get it running and go from there.
Don

"Don great that you got it, let us know how it turns out.
Hard to start could just be Glow Plugs, valve Adj., Filters or low compression.
Might be a Diamond in the rough"

Here's rest of the story: Car had a clean title, but seller never transferred it to himself as a previous owner had filled out himself and wife as both the buyer and seller on the title.

I tracked that seller down(a grass farmer down by Albany) and got the necessary paperwork signed off. Once I had a good title, I tackled the car. Cleaned up inside and out but never got it to run.

Valves were all right on, compression was very low. #1=0, #2 & #3 low 200's and #4 just over 300. 2 MMO treatments only yielded about a 20# improvement. Given that it needed rear axles, driver's side hood hinge base attachment was rusted out, it had a wonky ignition switch and unknown condition of the auto trans, I decided to sell it.

But first I swapped out the nice headlight assemblies & window crank handles. Then took the map pockets from both doors as mine were missing. Car sold right away for $575 & there were 3 buyers who all wanted it. So, with the right car plus some effort it is possible to make a few bucks on an old Mercedes diesel. Don

Buyer was a diesel head from Monmouth, who will re-build it with his grandson. Don

While I prefer a stick-shift in a 240D, in defense of automatics, I've driven a couple that were quite peppy.
Many of the 'slugs' probably had issues with valve adjustment , vacuum, throttle linkages, or even fuel filters. And it's very important to try to find a solid example, with little or no rust.
I drove a $200 automatic 240D as a second - third car for several years, and would've probably kept it, except that it had been well thrashed by the PO's teenagers, had a tired engine, and was very rusty. Still, the automatic was at least tolerable, and the car was perfect for local errands and weekend yard-sales. So test-drive those automatic 240Ds. Maybe you'll find a decent one.

Happy Motoring, Mark

New owners of old 240d MB's automatics need to be instructed to just put the pedal to the floor every time you start off from a stop.... many of them think of flooring the pedal as wasting gas... having been trained on gas engines... with accelerator pumps.. which do waste gas proportionately to the aggressiveness of the pedal movement...
but these diesels do not have an accelerator pump in that sense... and they need the power....

San Diego is M-B junkyard heaven. I hit the Chula Vista Ecology once when down there on "1/2 off" day, and recall six 82-85 300D's to choose from. Now that my son finished UCSD, our SoCal trips will be fewer. The yards here are full of 1990's M-B gassers w/ the funky Bosch Jetronics mechanical fuel injection. Sometimes the bodies are still nice, so guessing it isn't affordable trying to keep those high-end cars fed with parts.

I had a couple VW's with Bosch K-Jetronic (aka CIS) fuel injection. The problem is hardly anyone understands pre-OBD fuel injection systems, especially mechanical ones. K-Jet is actually extremely reliable, but problems have to be diagnosed by careful fuel pressure readings at different points in the system. Modern mechanics tend to try to easter-egg them by throwing in lots of new parts, which gets expensive fast.

Those cars also got pretty terrible fuel economy by modern standards, which probably contributes to them getting junked early. Think non-crossover SUV mileage.

Ha, I just finally noticed this. Holland's in Billerica is where I see them most often. Seems like a good yard in general.

I have a somewhat opposite problem. I have a 1980 300D that is in excellent condition. I bought it in 1997 from a good friend who bought it new. He was 90 years old. He had just put a factory new transmission in it. It had 140,000 miles then. It has 180,000 now. I have a diesel Isuzu that is my daily driver. I replaced the lower control arms, the rotors, the calipers, the tie rods, the flex discs, the evil servo, the ac compressor (last year) and much more. It runs and drives beautifully. (The evil servo appears to have gone bad again.)
http://i774.photobucket.com/albums/y...psrscrc4bb.jpg
Here is the problem. I have it here where I live in southern Mexico on a six month visa. Every six months I have to drive it down to the Guatemala border and renew the car visa. The current visa runs out in April. I am going to get rid of the car. If nothing transpires I will just drive it over the border to Guatemala and sell it to the first person who has money in his pocket for whatever I can get.

I am 72 years old. After a lifetime of messing around with old cars I have finally gotten sick and tired of them.

Richard

Beautiful car, Richard. A shame you can't find an enthusiast there in Mexico to inherit it.

Here in California I'm still seeing 123s in the local Pick-n-Pull, probably because they don 't rust as fast as in other areas. For several years there have been fewer of them and more 124s. Occasionally even a 210 although they still seem to be considered fixable by the insurance companies.

More and more, cars from around 2000 with no collision damage are showing up (not necessarily MB). Something expensive has broken, apparently, and the cars aren't considered worth repairing. Sad.

Where are you located? It would be a fun road trip for me to bring it back to TN. How difficult would it be crossing the border headed North?

Jeremy, This car lived in Santa Rosa for many years, as did I. I drove her down here in June of 2013. You probably didn't see her much because I kept her in a garage and drove my diesel Isuzu almost all of the time.

Junkman, It would be an adventure. I have to take the car personally to a border customs office to de-register it with Mexican customs in April. Guatemala is a nine hour drive from here. Laredo is three days (two if you push it hard). I am not going to drive to Laredo. So figure four days from Guatemala to Laredo, and then another two to Tennessee.

I have until April to decide what to do. I am not figuring on getting much money for the car. Even if it were back in California I couldn't get much for it, and I can't sell it here. People ask my wife all the time if she wants to sell it, but they don't know the expenses they would incur getting it imported and legal.

As I said—it would be an adventure for you to come down and drive it to Tennessee. (Of course, you might fall in love with Mexico and decide to stay. That happens a lot.)

Richard