Hello!

A friend of mine (he posts on here; started out as "300dtobe" and is now "ibe300d") got his '84 300D Turbo last week, and I had a chance to go over it for the first time today. We did an oil change, cleaned out the intake-to-ALDA line, and attempted to chase down a hissing sound.

First, there is an old Jiffy Lube sticker in the window, so it's clear that the car has been to one at some point in the past; I'm not sure how long ago. So, here's a list of what we found wrong that likely directly spawned from them:

• Oil drain plug is the wrong size (14mm instead of 13MM; I think the threads are the same, but unsure)
• Air filter was about 3/4" too short for the cannister, so it was possible for the engine to suck raw air in
• One of the rubber seals in the U-shaped pipe going between the air filter and the turbo wasn't seated right, alowing an air leak there (and probably causing that hissing sound)
• There were two (yes, two!) big O-rings in the oil filter cannister lid; I'm amazed that the car wasn't spewing out oil like no one's business
• The oil filter looked wrong; instead of having the upper part being a bypass filter, it looked like a large full-flow filter

Why do people trust these quick-lube services? I'll bet that they were throwing 10W-30 in the crankcase, to boot. Probably due to the raw air injestion, there's about 1/32" (rough guesstimate) of lateral play in the intake turbine of the turbo; probably the bearing. I hope that it doesn't get worse...

I think that's everything; as you can probably guess, both me and my friend are ...