G'day Folks,

With the advent of the new long term build and project section on the forum I thought I'd join in with a new thread showing what I've been doing to my W123 300D.

This car was my first Mercedes. I bought the car because I wanted to have something that could carry a family of five, do 40 to 60 mpg and run on free chip fat. So that was one of the first mistakes I made!

The next mistake was to think I was buying a reliable vehicle that (most importantly in Holland) would be exempt from the dreaded road tax. Road tax here in Holland is ridiculously expensive if you don't really want or need to go anywhere, but that wasn't the case for a “classic” which used to be exempt.

In January 2014 the rules changed, however, and now all diesel powered vehicles younger than 40 years old have to pay what is essentially a higher business rate of road tax. At the time of writing road tax for my 300D will cost 1760 Euros a year before I go anywhere because they expect all diesel vehicles to travel at least 50,000 km per year (business distances). The future of the vehicle in its current guise is uncertain.

So to cut a long story short the road tax is no longer free but despite the low miles (160,000km ~ 100,000 miles) the car didn't turn out to be particularly reliable either!

Still it is not all bad news. I've been having fun – I've been distracted – I've digressed – I've been self prescribing automotive therapy during a time in my life when things have been pretty rough. I've stripped the chassis to component parts and taken many smaller parts down to nut and bolt level. I've learnt a lot. In terms of pleasure and satisfaction the car has already paid for itself because I'm a bit of a mechanical engineering nut case. To me taking something to bits – seeing how it works – admiring the engineering – thinking of ways not to buy expensive special tools – to substitute special tools with commonly found hardware and wood has been my reason for car ownership.

This is a story of what has gone wrong so far and what I've done to fix it. This story might not end well – the car is in danger of being scrapped – but you never know things might work out well for it in the end. Then again pigs might fly. Only time will tell.

Many people have said “scrap it and move on”. But this is after all a four door W123 – the best looking W123 body style in my opinion. The W123 is a bit of a boring design but comparing the W123 saloon to the W123 coupé (that looks unfinished and too short for its girth); and the kind of afterthought-ness of the estate (which seems to amplify the Mercedes geek design element); the W123 saloon is quite obviously the car they wanted to make in the first place. I think they designed the W123 four door first whereas the W114/W115 chassis was obviously a coupé first because that looks the best...

...anyway I consider a four door W123 to be worth saving. Here in Holland there aren't as many on the roads as there were a few years back. The W123 is getting to be a rarer every day. The chip fat craze definitely killed off most of them and now older petrol engined cars converted to run on LPG are also being targeted by governmental envy and they are disappearing too.

As I'm not willing to pay the price of driving a diesel in this country any more I reckon I'm going to have to go down the petrol engine route. This isn't really what I want. Given better (in particular cheaper) battery technology I'd go all electric and for the type of distance I'm likely to travel in this vehicle it would be just fine. But that's not going to happen just yet. The jury is still out on what I'm going to pick engine wise (but between you and me it will probably be a M104 and a 722.3)

The car is mine, The doggone car is mine - so what now? Diesel dilemma...

The car is mine, The doggone car is mine - so what now? - Mercedes-Benz Forum

So here's the car. This is what it looked like when I got it.

480 Manganese brown (metallic). Steel wheels and hub caps.

Attached Thumbnails

         

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1992 W201 190E 1.8 171,000 km - Daily driver
1981 W123 300D ~ 100,000 miles / 160,000 km - project car stripped to the bone
1965 Land Rover Series 2a Station Wagon CIS recovery therapy!
1961 Volvo PV544 Bare metal rat rod-ish thing

I'm here to chat about cars and to help others - I'm not here "to always be right" like an internet warrior



Don't leave that there - I'll take it to bits!