New Member

[MicroRacer]

I would like to introduce and thank everybody for the help they have provided me so far. My name is Bill (MicroRacer) and I live in the Reelsville, IN area. I just got home my "new to me" 1983 300D. Now I only paid $600 for the car, so I really didn't/don't expect a lot. The thing that sold me on the car was the 167,000 miles that the car had on it. So far this is what I know:

Good- The car starts immediately (and I mean first crank) and idles smoothly in temperatures down to 25 degrees. The engine smoked when cold but as soon as the engine warmed up it quit smoking. When accelerating up to highway speed there was still no smoke. I can't tell yet if the turbo is working or not. The interior is immaculate with no tears or rips in any of the seats. All the gauges seem to work. Oil Pressure runs at 3 running down the highway and just above 2 when idling. There was pretty good record kept of the maintenance for the first 120,000 miles. It seems like the majority of the 300D’s life the car was in SC. I found 4 decent tires mounted on original rims in the trunk. The trunk also appeared to be in great shape. The heater seams to work and with the temperature controller set on auto the controller seems to be working fine.

Now the Bad – There are dents in both front fenders and the body is very rough. There is also some very light rust on the driver’s side lower panel. I have a friend that is very good at bodywork so I should get the car looking nice eventually. When I first started the car it ran well but would not immediately shut down. I read about the shutoff valve on the injector pump from this forum so I hooked a hose up to the switch and started the engine and killed it a few times by sucking on the hose. I hooked the original vacuum line up and it immediately killed the engine each time. Walla first problem is solved. I checked all the windows and it looks like both front windows are inoperable, but the back 2 worked great. The antenna did not work initially, but it works now. It looks like my biggest problem seems to be with oil leaks. The engine is covered in oil. There is definitely some oil leaking from the valve cover and oil leaking badly from the oil cap. There is a post dealing with leaking from the oil cap that I searched and found. I plan on getting the engine cleaned so that I can find the other sources. I also plan on getting the compression checked to see if there are any internal engine problems. I'm pretty sure I might have a transmission problem just not sure how severe. I do know that it takes a second for the transmission to shift into reverse. I'm sure that that's not a good sign. The transmission shifts immediately into forward and does not slip. When not accelerating hard the transmission shifts smoothly. When I accelerated up to high way speeds the transmission wanted to stay in second. I had to let off the throttle to get it to shift up. I understand that weak seals in the transmission can cause the delay into reverse. Is there a conditioner that might delay me getting this fixed?

Well that's the problems I have found. I'm sure there will be more of them. I've purchased a Mity-vac already and I'm fairly mechanical, so I'm hoping that this is going to be fun. The closest Mercedes shop is in Indianapolis that is 45 minutes from were I live, so a lot of the parts that I will be buying will be from Fastlane.

Eventually I plan on turning my 300D into a grease burner, but not until I have the car running right first. I really appreciate a place to learn about the 300D and I know I have lots to learn and I look forward to learning in the future and hopefully being able to contribute at some time.

Bill

[Limited Edition]

Welcome to MercedesShop. There are a lot of good posts available with the "search" feature that you may be interested in.

[MicroRacer]

I've been using that SEARCH button intensively. There's definitely much to be learned.

[Stevo]

Bill

Nice score. I always wash my engines at the car wash. Degrease, hot soap then rinse. Common place for oil leaks are oil filter housing to block gasket, oil cooler and hoses and valve cover gasket. Buy a new oil cap or at least a new rubber gasket. Good luck and have fun,