Ok, Dragged this 79 300CD out of the back yard almost a week ago. It sat back there for 4 and a half years, untouched. Pulled the car home, and dropped a battery in it, and turned the key. Car started right up. Next day it was air-bound or something. I changed all filters, and fuel, and oil. The exhaust system fell out, and is in fine shape and can be simply re-hung, save for a two inch coupler, I need to put where it broke. I've found rust and rot, in the floors, and a few spots on the outside of the body also. I've been driving her around a lot, and the brake pedal acts as if the car weren't running. It feels very stiff, and tight. I thought this could have been a vacuum issue, but cannot find a problem.. Now I'm thinking, a stuck caliper, or something along those lines. The car would be running perfect except for the exhaust noise, braking issue, and a bad Glow-Plug relay, or something. I'm almost sure I bled the fuel system good enough, and I put on a few new sections of rubber hose where the old was dry rotted, and cracked/split. The car is still hard to start though.There's a softball sized hole in the driver's rear floor on the small muffler relief bulge. Almost the whole bulge, is rotted away completely actually. Aside form that it isn't really bad.
Does anyone sell just that small hump for the muffler relief, for the driver's side rear floor? I can't believe how loud this thing is w/o any muffler.. Sounds really bad. I want to weld in the floor piece before re-hanging the exhaust, because I'll have to drop it again, in order to put the piece in later. I'll need to access the area from the inside of the car, and from the outside, underneath. So hard to remove exhaust components w/o destroying them. Atleast, once they're "Crimped", together anyways. Know what I mean?