No. Look at picture 2. There's a big square hole on the bottom of the striker where the latch secures. You can clearly see the broken off piece of plastic in there. That is the piece that bumps the latch "home", when it breaks off, the latch half-catches but doesn't latch into place, thus requiring multiple slams and failure to latch.

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Current stable:
1995 E320 157K (Nancy)
1983 500SL 125K (SLoL)

Gone but not forgotten:
1986 300SDL (RIP)
1991 350SD
1991 560SEL
1990 560SEL
1986 500SEL Euro (Rusted to nothing at 47K!)

Gone and wanting to forget:
1985 524TD 167K (TotalDumpster™) [Definitely NOT a Benz]

The front lip and the lip under the rear bottom are both made of the same piece of molded rubber that is inserted under that larger piece with the hole and tube in it.

It is not plastic (the reason I believe it is just harder rubber is that you can stick your thumb Nail and it will grab into it a little) but it gets hard as it gets older and why it breaks off.

What it is made of you are seeing in the picture you described is where the lip broke off and in that particular picture I replaced both lips with epoxy putty.

Here is a site that has some pics of the separate pieces.

NEW W123 Door Strikers/Latches Out of Spec !

Concerning the job I did in this thread with the hot glue it fixed the 2 problems I had on that side. Since it fixed the issue I did that I did not look further to see if there was any issues on the underside.
Also my Wife has the Car and lives 10 miles in another City at my other House and I cannot look to see if the rear underside lip is intact on the ones I did the hot glue repair on.

Concerning the side I fixed with the Epoxy Putty that was done over 1 year ago and although part of the putty has cracked off they are still working.

As I said these repairs could get your doors to close till you can do something better.

I did an google image search and now I am seeing a what is listed as a W126 Door Striker and it seems to have a white plastic insert. But that does not mean original W123s have the white plastic insert.
That is at this site: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1568388

There is a title W126 Mercedes Door Striker Rubber but no image is opening for me but that could be due to the dial up internet.

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84 300D, 82 Volvo 244Gl Diesel

That's the one ~ Mercedes redesigned it but it fits perfectly and is what the Classic Center sells you .

Before you go the !$! route, take the time to diligently search the junkyards, I never have any problems finding perfect ones in W126's.....

They're a bugger to get out unless you have some sort of impact tool .

Only take the rear ones, they're always less worn .

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-Nate
1982 240D 408,XXX miles
Ignorance is the mother of suspicion and fear is the father

I did then what I knew how to do ~ now that I know better I do better

Ever since I broke my hip back in 2011 and had two operations ending up with a hip replacement my lust for stabling around in the Junk Yard carrying my Tool Box has pretty much ended.

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84 300D, 82 Volvo 244Gl Diesel

Do you want a box of spares?

I pull them from every door of every car while I'm in a junkyard. I have a drawer full of spares now. You pay postage and I'll ship a bunch to you.

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Onus probandi incumbit ei qui dicit, non ei qui negat

I recondition w123/w126/w124/w140/r107/r129/ steering boxes!


1984 300D "Elsa" odo reset 6/2011 147k
1983 300TD "Mitzi" ~268k OM603 powered
1995 E300 "Adelheid" 262k [Sold]

Thank you but I prefer to deal with things using my own resources. As I mentioned I bought 2 new cheapie ones that did not last but about a year and developed the same issue.

But, that means I still have the 2 original Mercedes ones if I could remember where I put them.

Apparently the solutions are to buy the kits with the new rubber or buy the cheapie ones and remove the rubber and install them into the original Mercedes ones.

But, the focus of this thread was what to do right now if you have the problem and that is what I tried to have some answers for. My Wife who lives in another Town drove 3 days unable to close here door till she could bring it to me to fix.
It took about 30 minutes for me to see what was wrong gather the stuff and do the fix. Fortunately I had used the hot glue gun for some other repair a week previously if that had not happen I doubt if I would have thought to use it on the Striker.

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84 300D, 82 Volvo 244Gl Diesel