The previous owners and myself have kept track of all the car maintenance, so I have all the records from 1984 to today (stacks of papers) and I have it all organized in an Excel sheet.

The car is in San Jose, CA. I am moving to Europe on Tuesday and did not have time to sell the car. The import regulations of my home country and the hilarious transportation costs prevent me from taking it with me. I think this is a killer deal.

(650) 269 5188

I think the car is worth $4,500 since I spent more than $5,000 this year. All OEM parts (Bosch, Behr, Bilstein, etc.)

I have to sell the car by Tuesday 12/18/2007. If it is not sold by then, it is going to charity.

Brand new transmisison.
Tons of engine work: head milled, new valves, new precombustion chambers.
New flexplate.
New battery, starter and alternator.
New dashboard.
New control arms, ball joints, support arms, rotors, tie rods.

Mileage is 310,000 but keep in mind that the car has less than 2,000 on the newly finished engine and less than 10,000 on the new transmission.

Garaged through most of its life (except the last year and a half. I have a project car in my garage now).

Everything except A/C works: power windows, mirrors, antennas, doors and seats. Cruise control.

Very nice exterior with no discoloration of paint (except mild hard water staining on roof) and no dents.
Interior in excellent shape with reupholstered seats except the passenger seat, which is still old and has a 5 inch tear in it.

After seeing your car, I'm going to take the faring off my own roof-rack system, it looks classier without it. (Louder, though.........)

Amazing car, I'd buy it in a heartbeat if I was out there.

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1983 Mercedes-Benz 240D
Automatic, A/C, Power Sunroof, Power Right Side Mirror
231K Miles FOR SALE MAKE OFFER

As a California car that was garaged is it safe to assume there is no rust on the car?

Do you know what about the A/C is not working? Does the heater still work? Defrost? Do the correct vents open when selected on the ACC pushbutton unit?

Since I am not really familiar about what goes into a rebuilding an engine, what would the difference be between an engine that is listed as rebuilt and the work you had done? After an engine is rebuilt, what kind of lifespan can one expect out of it?

Thanks,
David

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1985 300D. 179,000 miles.

Thanks jkoebel!

Hi David,

There is absolutely no rust on the car anywhere. The underbody is completely clean... most of it is still in the original paint and the rest of the underbody is at least in original primer.

All of the vents still open (the center and the side vents) and the automatic temperature control still appears to click through correctly (at least most of the time). The heater works fine.

I charged the A/C with freon and detected a leak under the dash, close to the passenger side door, with the help of my mechanic who had a sound-leak detector. The A/C leak only occured recently (about 3 months ago). If I was keeping the car, I would fix it before the next summer.

Not to push you though, I am serious about Monday being the last day it can be sold and also serious about giving it to charity if it does not work out. The deal is already incredibly cheap and I'd rather have some NGO in need benefit than some reseller looking for killer deals get it for less than $4500...

Engines listed as rebuilt can have all kinds of sometimes dubious work done.

To answer your questions shortly, I expect at least another 150,000 miles on the current engine.

The OM617 lower block is incredibly difficult to work on and if this stuff has been touched the chance is that the piston rings will never seal as well as they did when it came out of the factory and it will need another rebuild sooner. Thus we did not touch the lower block. The compression is still within spec on all 5 cylinders (I forgot the readings, it has been a few months).

There are several ways to rebuild, some people will replace only components that are about to fail, some people only marginal and some people all of them.

I had my mechanic replace all of the prechambers and redo all of the valves though the only thing engine needed immediately was a head gasket. I figured anything else would be a hack job and I had no intention of doing that to this car. To replace the iron head properly after 300,000 miles, you have to mill it flat because it will have some warpage after all those years of hard use. Since you are already machining the heads, you might as well do the machining for the valves, valve seals, etc. and that's how you spiral into a complete rebuild job.

The engine was still running fine but I noticed that the water temperature started reaching 100C (220F) with a brand new radiator, and that's never ever supposed to happen on our cars in proper condition. The cause was the headgasket that was leaking in enough air to not allow the waterpump to pressurize the cooling system enough to evacuate water at the same rate it was doing it before.

I work on cars also (500 horsepower 1975 Camaro), but I used the 300SD as my daily driver, only letting my good friend mechanic with 20+ years of experience in both Europe and United States to work on it (I try to only work on my project cars, not my daily drivers). He only works on Mercedes cars and mostly on W123, W124 and W126. I made sure he filled out all the receipts with detailed work done so I have it for my records and to show someone else one day as a proof of immaculate maintenance (I inteded to keep the car as a classic, maybe selling it in 10-20 years..).

BTW,

Please call me at any time (we are moving so I am up late and up early) a (650) 269-5188 if you want to get a quicker response...

Your car looks nice in the pictures and sounds like it's in great shape! Did it sell or did it end up going to charity? I am just now seeing this post and it is past the 18th!