EDIT: forgot to mention the other car is dark blue and mine is Astro Silver.
Yep take two and make one.
Took the other car on a test drive this eve..
Coincidentally, it has a nearly new exhaust line. Great shape. Mine is falling off in fragments at this point.
Transmission has all the gears. Shifting was very soft and 2nd/3rd was quite close together. But I'm assuming this is all due to factors in vacuum system and other control aspects.
So with those two things, the car pays for itself if i can get it for around 500 or 600. And if the transmission comes out without a major hitch.

Then there's the panels. They all are in better shape than mine, although all have a tiny bit of rust here and there. Mine have massive rust issues and some major dent issues.

As stated before, removing the panels from an 82 might prove to be a nightmare.

My vehicle has:
new brake pads
New rotors
Bled calipers
New engine mounts and tranny mount
Restored antenna (I was distracting myself from work one day)
New stereo system with excellent speakers in front doors (not easy)
My favorite interior, in great shape with zero odors
New fuel tank filter
New fuel filter and pre filter (cheap easy job of course)
New drivers door window regulator
Seems to be a completely healthy engine and just needs the basics tunings
Repaired instrument cluster
Water leak repaired

The other car barely could get itself up to 30 going up a gradual incline. It feels like I'd be starting from scratch over in terms of diagnosing power issues.
Surely I would have a whole series of discoveries. Despite the owners statement of having "a strong engine" it didn't successfully turn over the first go at it. And second time it caught but stuttered quite a bit for a minute or so before it sorta smoothed out and I drove it. There are a host of electrical type issues / lights stuff he said need to be addressed.
Hood has a giant rust hole and otherwise is in awful shape and looks literally like it boiled.

I don't think it's a better foundation for a car at this point, aside from the fact that the transmission seems ok. It didn't seem stellar but I'm not aware of what to check for.. from park I shifted around and found the timing between park and reverse and drive to be a little quicker and certainly to not have much of a jump to it. My car makes quite a jump when shifting from park to reverse.

? Is the parts car on CL or other site you can check to see how long it's been there ? .

@ $500 + labor buying it to swap trannies is a marginal thing .

a properly rebuilt tranny is no more than $1,200 drive in / drive out .

The 1985 722 tranny is a one year only deal ~ the speedo is electric and some other PIA stuff a guy in my W123 club discovered the hard way when he tried this .

If you crawl underneath both cars and the pan bolts, speedo cables, etc., etc. are all the same, look at how long the car has been for sale, if longer than two weeks, offer $300 and walk away .

He'll either stop you or call you back in a couple days , otherwise let it go IMO .

It's a good plan to built one good one out of two but it takes time, money and lots of effort on your part so chose wisely .

I've been building good cars out of wrecks/impounds for 40 + years and never had a bad one yet *but* always plan for some surprises .

Lastly, YES the valve adjust can and often does have a BIG effect on how the tranny shifts ~ anyone who claims otherwise simply doesn't have the practical hands on experience to know .

It WILL NOT get back your missing gear .

The basics should always come first even of you're on a shoestring budget .

__________________
-Nate
1982 240D 408,XXX miles
Ignorance is the mother of suspicion and fear is the father

I did then what I knew how to do ~ now that I know better I do better

Not sure i understand the kinds of projects you're referring to here.
I understand the compatibility concerns so that can and will come later, but as for basic project overviews...

1) Lets say i pick up this vehicle for 500 and park it in my driveway and take it off the road for good.. I then have to get the transmission out, then take the tranny out of my vehicle, then install this one in my vehicle. A 3 step process, and because i don't have a lift none of it can be done by me. That's a lot of labor and that doesn't include any fine tuning or tranny adjustments once in place.

2) Then lets say i avoid this parts car idea all together and opt for either a used good transmission. Pretend it's 600$. Seems this is actually less expense because it's only a 2 step project.. remove my tranny and put this tranny in. Same as above but minus one major step of labor.... but i don't end up with a parts car. If i already need other things, such as the good exhaust system, and maybe just a handful of small bits, then this sorta doesn't seem worth it unless i can benefit by avoiding having a whole parts car taking up space.

3) Then if i buy a refurb'd tranny... What is the 1200 mark you are roughly estimating? I haven't done very much research yet but i did always see those Sun refurb'd trannies for like 2K or so shipped.

Am I on the mark with this? I don't really know what kind of hours we're talking about here if i were to take it to a garage. My current mechanic and i spoke briefly about him sourcing me a good transmission costing 500-600 and then his shop doing the labor which he estimated being a 7-8 hour job. So i guess that's his labor duration estimate for taking out my transmission and putting a different transmission in.

Looks like you understand just fine :

Buy the parts car and swap the exhaust etc. your self @ home along with anything else you can use, then have it towed to the nearest competent and HONEST (this can be the tricky part) M-B Indie Garage and have them do the tranny swap, either scrap the left over hulk or have it towed home again for panel removal .

Now you're looking at the big picture, as I said it can get involved/messy .

$2K for a 722 tranny is absurd . your Mechanic should know where to source a rebuilt one much cheaper if he cannot do it himself (I don't do automatics either) $600 for a USED tranny ? not in this life unless it comes with a two year unlimited mileage warranty (as if) .

Most junkyards are happy to get $250 for a used automatic and no, there won't be any warranty no matter what they tell you .

Try junkyarddog.com if you can't find a good one from a rusted out junker near you ~ should be plenty in the classifieds, remember to check older listing for "breaking for parts" as trannies usually don't sell and get left behind for the crusher with the old body shell .

Time to get a legal pad and start taking notes, making calls, etc.

Ask your Mechanic how much for a drive in/ drive out rebuild . there won't be any 'well it depends on what we find' if he's honest .

__________________
-Nate
1982 240D 408,XXX miles
Ignorance is the mother of suspicion and fear is the father

I did then what I knew how to do ~ now that I know better I do better

OH you mean having him rebuild MY transmission? I see. I didn't get what you meant by drive in drive out.

Here's something else though.... I may have just discovered an identical vehicle as mine, in overall better shape, and for rather cheap. Only about twice as much as that parts car. Panels look very good. Engine has higher miles and air pump isn't good.

NOW i'm considering making my car the parts car...

Here's a list of stuff that, in an ideal world, i could pull over from mine to this one... Is this all possible?

- Break Pads and rotors
- Engine/eng-mounts/eng-shocks.. mechanic buddy has a hoist and does this regularly. The other car's engine has 250K mine has 170K and has new turbo
- interior door panels containing my speakers (haha)
- possibly one window regulator

wow that might be it. If all that works, the only real loss would be the fuel tank filter which actually wasn't that cheap to do

How crazy does this sound?

Ok folks, there is competition for this other car i'm speaking of.
If anyone has any thoughts about the reality of my hopes and dreams, it would be great to hear.
I'm going to probably see it this afternoon. Anything i should look for in relation to my needs?

Take it to a muffler shop and have them put it up on the hoist ~ walk around underneath it with a good flashlight .

You didn't include any links so we don't know how it looks, runs or how much $ .

__________________
-Nate
1982 240D 408,XXX miles
Ignorance is the mother of suspicion and fear is the father

I did then what I knew how to do ~ now that I know better I do better

1500 usd. Doesn't state OBO but i feel i can probably make an offer still. For pics are all i have so far..
It's been posted for sale for 7 days. Someone is coming to see it this evening supposedly. That could be just what they're saying to get me to see it of course.

"Good, reliable runner but has several things that need attention/fixing including drivers window switch, antenna, air pump (car has to be switched off under hood), AC. Has some rust (including hole in floor on rear passenger side.) Otherwise nice interior. Working CD player. Has hook up to run on veg. oil not currently connected. Current reg. and inspection."

"odometer: 246000"


https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9KVc_43kTcZMHhyaEs2cXotVGc/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9KVc_43kTcZQ1k2d2xienFCYmc/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9KVc_43kTcZQ0dKTmVVU1FiNmM/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9KVc_43kTcZR1dKUEZVTi1LWHM/view?usp=sharing

Alrighty I drove it around. There was no chance of lining up a stop at a muffler shop. Middle of the busiest part of city, and only a quick meet up. There would need to be a second meet up regardless, if I were to go and be prepared with cash to go for it. So as for the under side pics I did what I could.
Here are four galleries.
Exterior / Body https://imgur.com/gallery/Q7Ww0
Underneath: https://imgur.com/gallery/VVSMQ
Under Hood and Trunk : https://imgur.com/gallery/qWnLS
Cabin: https://imgur.com/gallery/aPDQg

I'll try to be brief:
- Transmission seems great. Shifting is hard but the cars whole vac system is out of whack due to bad pump.
- Exhaust system looks darn good to me. Sure performed quietly.
- Panels are far far far better than mine. I'll post some pics tomorrow in daylight of my panels (yikes). Mine have tons of rust and major dents. These ones have like two small dings and one small section of sun damage of paint, and some small bits of rust which I feel I can address
- Dash is not so good. All cracked up
- interior smells of mold, and after 10 minutes of driving my lungs felt irritated
- turbo has a sweet loud whistle. I was a bit bumbed how good it sounded vs mine!
- engine power? I don't really know enough to say. Having 2nd gear makes all the difference in the world when accelerating. But my car really does feel great sometimes, especially on the highway. But who knows, I couldn't drive this other car above 40. (Deep in the city) Yhis cars pedal requires more push than mine for initial pickup though, but I'm assuming that falls under the category of adjustment
- brakes are totally awful feeling without vac. Didn't squeak though

Honestly if the interior and smell was totally great, it'd be a no brainer to make this car the main car and use mine for major swap over of stuff/parts. I would even consider keeping its engine in place and have mine removed as a keeper of parts before I got rid of car.

And for comparison, here is my current vehicle.
A set of overall pics: https://imgur.com/gallery/ODcPS

Interior is very clean, aside from some recent additions of dust from not cleaning and light sand and dirt from a recent trip to the beach.

If I could just pull over car#2's transmission and the panels all myself and quickly, I would do this probably.

My panels are gonners. I feel car#2's panels are ones I can rework and spot spray to satisfactory results.

I think i'm going to jump in and make a cheap, though not a low ball, offer on this.
There are so many positives between the two vehicles that even if i have to park them side by side and think about it for a couple weeks, i can certainly make this work out very well. It might be all the major pieces i ever need for the successful completion of an excellent working and great looking vehicle.

Unless i hear from some local mechanic friends or forum buddies here about why i should not!!!

From my opinion you should make the parts car your buying into your main car. It looks like it's in pretty nice shape bodywise. It's harder to do rust repairs on cars. Dashboard you can do a swap later on..

__________________
'76 300D
'82 230CE
'84 300DT
'91 300D 2.5
'86 300D 5 speed
'86 250D 5 speed
'90 300E 24v
'88 560SEC
300TE euro 5 speed
91 350SD
http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i3...d6605222-1.jpg

Keep us posted .

? Does your current car even pass the annual inspection ? .

__________________
-Nate
1982 240D 408,XXX miles
Ignorance is the mother of suspicion and fear is the father

I did then what I knew how to do ~ now that I know better I do better

Yes my car passed inspection this spring. Wouldnt now with the condition of the exhaust now probably!

Ok I have a reasonable offer accepted and it's up to me to go for it or not. Have to decide today (Sunday). Would put down a deposit and go pick up this week in city.

My main concern is the cabin, since if I'm gong to make this the Main car, I do NOT want to end up with a mold battle that never ends. The interior of my car feels and smells and looks lovely. I really love sitting in my current car and so do my passengers.

So I'm thinking that my approach would be to buy the car, park it in driveway and immediately start opening up the cabin. Remove the seats and floor mats, and carefully remove all of the carpeting. I don't think it would be that difficult to get all of that out. But what happens if I still have mold smells even with all of that out? That would be a kicker.

Once that was accomplished and basic interior cleaning has removed all smell, I think I just go right ahead and swap the dash one day. Hopefully that can be done in one day? I wouldn't want to lose driveabailty of my current car for long.

After that's successful, and if the smell is still not coming back, I'll move my carpets and mats and seats into the new car and cross my fingers and hope that when I sit down the cabin feels like mine again! I can't think of anything else that could make t feel different.

If the roof material of cabin is contributing to the smell then that sounds like a nightmare. I just wish there was a way to confirm this. And if there is somehow something in the depths of the car, that'll be also a nightmare and I'd at that point have to stop and consider going the other direction and making this the parts car. Slowly though, as I'd be looking at a transmission swap.

My lungs were subtly irritated after 10 minutes in the car the other day.

Would someone help me look into the VIN or point me to a free/cheap resource for this?
I can message VIN to you if you just let me know.