Very cool! Sometimes you get lucky!;)

Pun intended? :-)

SUCCESS !
 

Very good Rich, glad to see it worked out O.K. in the end .

For those reading along here and wondering about Rich's Sanden / PF condenser up grade ~ I drove out into the Desert, Indio, Ca. (East of Palm Springs) in my same up grade 1982 240D , it reached 108* F out side and the dash temp varied from 40* ~ 65* depending in the hills I encountered, mostly I kept it at 60 +/- MPH with a few 75 MPH sprints .

four people in the car so lots of warm air to displace .

If you have an old Mercedes and like cold A/C I highly suggest you begin budgeting for this up grade .

I am generally the funniest when not trying to be.;)

A/C working great!!
 

For some reason, the A/C is working better than it was after I first got it working! I was driving today, and I started to get very cold! I stopped to take a photo of the outside temperature and vent temp thermometer. The vent temp was just a tick above 32 degrees! Yes it was not blazing hot outside, but still hot. Later I took another photo. Hotter outside, but just a little warmer vent temp (under 40)......Rich

Turbo rebuild
 

It has been a while since I have posted about any work on the car, as it has been doing very well till lately. It started smoking (oil) at idle, and was getting worse. I suspected the oil separator, so I purchased one on ebay and installed it. Still the same smoke at idle. I then suspected the the turbo, so I purchased a rebuild kit from my local turbo shop and got to work. The CA version is much easier to remove the turbo than the Federal, (at least it seams that way) and having a bypass pipe makes it even easier. Removing the turbo and disassembling it revealed exactly what I thought I would see. Both ends clearly had oil leaking past the bearings and seal rings. I got all the parts cleaned up and painted.

Turbo rebuild part 2
 

After the paint dried, I assembled the turbo leaving all the flanges loose, so I could "clock" each section with it mounted on the manifold and pipe. I used all the new fasteners that came with the kit. Tip: When installing the seal rings, always put the gap at the top with the center section oriented properly. In this case, the oil inlet/outlet are about 10 degrees off vertical. After getting everything installed and tightened up, I took it for a test drive. Much to my dismay, it still smokes at idle, although not as much. I will be looking into changing out the valve stem seals, as they are probably original.

Replacing valve stem seals
 

In my quest to curtail the excessive smoke at idle, the next thing that could possibly be the problem is bad valve stem seals. After pulling the valve cover and front set of cam followers, I put the crank at TDC. I then removed both adjusting nuts, top spring retainer, and spring. The seals were definitely original. I used my valve adjusting wrench to pry the seals off. There may be a tool that works better, but this seemed to work well. Going by the firing order (1-2-4-5-3), I removed the old seals, installed new seals, and installed the spring, retainer and nuts. I tightened the jamb nuts tighter than they would be normally, so the cam follower assembly would be easier to get back in place. After doing #1, I rotated the crank using a 22mm wrench on the P.S. pulley nut. This is the only way to rotate the crank and be able to see the position of the lobes. By pointing the exhaust lobe tip directly at the driver side fender, the piston is very close to TDC. After removing one of the spring/retainer/nuts assembly, you can push the valve down till it comes in contact with the piston, and then rotate the crank till the valve stops rising. After replacing the seals in both #1&2 cylinders, the cam follower assembly can be installed, and both sets of valves adjusted. Moving to #4 next, the cam follower assembly needs to be removed before installing the seals on the remaining three cylinders (the valve stems thereof). After #4, then #5, then #3, the cam follower assembly can be installed, and valves adjusted. The whole job took me about three hours working on and off.

Turbo oil feed line
 

I ordered a braided Stainless Steel turbo oil feed line kit from ebay, and figured this would be a good time to install it. Also, my brother 3-D printed these little magnet holders to hold a sheet over the open cockpit when the hard top is off, and the soft top is down. They work great to hold down the fender covers too!

Let us know if this cures smoking at intersections. From your description of the smoking I think I have exactly the same problem on my 85 300d california. I got a lot of mine to go away with my catch can but it is still there to a lesser extent. I have stem seals on the shelf waiting for the next valve lash interval.

Those turbos seem to last forever. I had one rebuilt because the turbo was whining a bit. The rebuild was relatively painless but did not stop the noise. Of the things you have done I would suspect valve seals first.

As far as I can tell, the smoke at idle is gone. There seems to be a tiny bit of blue smoke (as viewed from rear-view mirror) all the time, but I suspect that is from it having 306,000+ miles on the engine.

well, yeah there is always that.;)

My smoke might be turbo seals. If I do a hard high rpm run for a mile and stop at a light I get a little smoke. It clears up after a few seconds while I’m waiting. I’ll start reading up on rebuilding the turbo.

I had the exact same issue. I too had to take the seat backs to my local upholstery shop and have the covers modified to fit the seat backs. The shop went against my wishes and backed all of the leather on the side panels with some kind of thick material, and that made it very difficult to install all the hardware because of the extra thickness. DON'T let them do this to yours!!!
In the end I made the covers work, but was not happy with the way the shop did them. I also probably paid too much. I hope I have learned something from the experience.