My 1974 240D - reversing years of neglect
 

Hi folks,

I thought it was about time I started a thread for my 240D. I've posted a lot in the vintage section and had some great help from folks on here, so decided to document my project a little more.

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In short, I bought my '74 240D in February 2019. It's my second W115, and I love it. It's a great drive, but years of neglect had left it a little tired. I'm gradually trying to reverse that, and with the current global pandemic situation, I've been able to accelerate the work a lot, as I have so much time on my hands.

So, today was a big day: it's the first time in about a year that it's actually got a complete interior. Given that this is my only car and it gets driven fairly regularly, driving in what feels like a construction zone most of the time gets a little old!

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But today, I reinstalled the rear bench, finally completing the inside of the car.

Last week, I fixed the final water leak after a long-winded saga of chasing various water leaks. As is sadly typical of these cars, negligence from previous owners (in that, both windshield seals needed replacing) had caused a fair degree of damage in the car. I've had a bunch of permanent repairs done on the car - welding is one of the few things I can't do myself, so I've taken my Benz to a trusted local garage to get the holes fixed, seams repaired, and then "future proofed" everything myself.

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After all that was done, and fixing the leak underneath the wiper cowling (found thanks to folks on here - you're awesome!) I was finally able to take the carpet out of storage and reinstall. It's all in good shape bar the drivers' mat, which is a little worn out (looking for a used Tobacco one is anyone has one?)

That just left the rear bench to re-pad, which had been reduced to bare springs and showers of horse hair shrapnel every time I had passengers. One day, I'd had enough of vacuuming horsehair every time I cleaned the car, so I dismembered the seat in the living room (much to the dismay of my wife... fortunately I cleaned up before she got home and so she only saw pictures :D)

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I have to say, repadding the rear bench is an extremely easy task. It's a little time consuming, yes, but it's well worth the effort. I bought a used-but-almost-new memory foam mattress, cut the part I needed to size and mounted it on the spring bed. As others have said, consider it essential to install some strong fabric/canvas on top of the springs to protect the foam, hog-ring everything in place, voila!

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So now everything is back together. I've just got to get serious on cleaning the MB-Tex seats and doorcards properly, as there's still decades worth of grime deep in the gaps, but the interior now is looking great. I'm especially happy, given that prior to this the interior lights didn't even work, the parking brake handle was snapped off and the right signal didn't stay in place. In addition to that, with the rear screen leaking, the parcel shelf was usually wet, meaning a lot of fogging up of the rear glass. That fixed, shelf removed, cleaned up and reinstalled, it's way better.

All that done (and all very easy jobs), it's a completely different experience driving this car.

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So, for anyone searching about rear seat re-padding: do it. It's very easy and very cheap to do

That looks really nice, awesome color combination.

Keep up the great work. Anything next on the agenda?

Nice job. Same interior color as my Red 78 300D.

Thanks for the comments!

Next up will be putting these back on the car:

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A couple of mine were badly corroded and none of them had decent paint, so I found some more trims and resurrected the best four out of all the ones I have:

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Another recent job was the sway bar linkages (which were long overdue a change):

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Fixed the mounting of the driver's seat too, which made a huge difference to comfort:

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I previously mentioned the interior lights. The job was another simple one - just taking apart the door switches, giving them a thorough clean up and reassembling. Being able to see inside the car at night is kinda useful...

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A few months ago I also got a new windshield and seal. Speedy Glass (the Canadian equivalent of Safelite) told me that mine was the last glass in the country - it had to get shipped from Quebec to the west coast, so I feel a little fortunate to have shiny new glass. Also treated the frame to some rust prevention too while everything was out:

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The Benz found a cousin a while ago too. I've seen this W108 around town a few times. It's in great shape:

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Back in the fall I had a nightmare with the brakes. The master cylinder was on its way out so I changed that and the brake line, then realized that the thread for the hose into the passenger side caliper had been previously stripped and bodged back into place. It was pretty damn dangerous. A relatively simple job became a complete nightmare, but it got done. New master cylinder, brake line, hoses - and a new caliper:

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Here's an example of the neglect of the car. When I bought it, this cap was on the brake fluid reservoir. Like, really? It didn't even screw on, was just placed on there. I bought a new one from the local MB dealer and later found the original one... that had been dropped into the inner wing just under the battery tray. Previous owner obviously didn't look hard enough for it and had cajun fish for dinner that night :D

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Had a couple of holes welded up on the floor pan and then set about cleaning up the entire inside of the car and protecting it for years to come:

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Did the trunk floor too:

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That's about it for now. Here's a pretty shot from early morning coffee time a couple of months back...

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KUDOS !
 

Very nice works on a good little car .

This is a great thread! Thanks for posting.

Awesome work. Nice workmanship.

Very cool. Nice inspiration for me to sort out the back seat of my moms 78 300D

Thanks for the comments folks, they're appreciated :)

I put the wheel trims back on the car the other day. Pretty happy, vastly improves the overall look of the car:

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Small update: finally got around to fitting my new hood release cable and handle today. It's one of those fiddly jobs I've been putting off for too long. When I bought the car the handle was snapped off and the (rusty) cable had been bodged back together with a piece of wood as a handle (which broke, so then I had to use a pair of grips every time I wanted to open the hood). Wish I'd taken a photo of the setup actually!

Anyway, I can confirm that fitting the new grommet in the firewall/bulkhead is a huge pain in the backside, but it's worth the effort to have a nice, smooth operation and definitely wasn't a difficult job aside from the grommet. I didn't end up taking off the whole latch mechanism in the end as the bolts didn't want to budge. Everything was accessible enough from underneath so made it work.

Old:
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New:
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"Work in progress" pic:
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Also, went camping the other weekend and a buddy snapped a thoroughly excellent photo of the car in action. The trunk is brimming with camping gear - I have not slammed the rear suspension! :D

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That's all for now!

Thought I'd post a bit of an update.

I've been off work for six months now due to the Covid situation. Finally today I was permanently laid off, so I've had plenty of time to crack on with the Merc.

One of the things I did was take apart my instrument cluster to clean it up, fix a couple of things and replace some of the LEDs, which were burnt out.

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Now it looks far better:
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Been also hunting high and low for an original "bamboo" driver's floor mat. Not had any luck yet, but hopefully. My other three mats are in great shape, so I'd like to keep it original if I can.
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The biggest challenge recently has been exhaust smoke. After some tinkering, I decided to bite the bullet and take the car into a local Mercedes specialist. The suspect was the governor diaphragm in the injection pump (identified by folks from this forum - thank you all!) and sure enough that was the culprit.

Check out the old:
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And the new:
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Stopped the smoke immediately and sorted out my high idling problems too!

The next issue is my transmission fluid oil pan:
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An MB parts place (naming no names for now!) sent me the wrong item so I'm now in the process of sending the item back and getting the correct one. My old one unfortunately has a hairline crack in it.

Lastly, went and visited a buddy locally who also has a W115 (300D). Took a couple of snaps:

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That's all for now..!

Update
 

Sorry to hear about the job loss .

Car is looking good, it'd be helpful if you posted pictures and part #'s of the dashboard LED's.....

Thanks! The LEDs for the dash were just the regular hardware store ones - they slide straight into the black holder units :)

awesome car. Looking by the day badassier.

Sometimes you need to take care of the little things to feel that sense of satisfaction...

Before:
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After:
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I might add that I finally sorted out the transmission fluid leak. It was leaking a bit when I bought the car, but the issue got a lot worse this summer. In the end, I bought a whole W123 300D transmission to butcher for the pan...

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Got the thing home and took off the pan...

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Transmission had been sat outside in the guy's yard for an unknown amount of time so looked a little crusty:

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But the important thing was that it didn't have a hairline crack in it like my pan:

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Bit of a messy job potentially, so it's always recommended to have various layers of cardbox, drop sheets, plastic salad containers to catch all the oil:

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The finished product. Really a tiny job but makes all the difference to not have an endless drip of transmission fluid coming from the underside of the car. One thing of note: I discovered that the original gasket/washer that fits into the pan itself had the tiniest lip on it (probably 0.3mm) which made all the difference to fitting flush into the drain hole. That, plus a stat-o-seal washer at the bottom made for a good, oil-tight fit.

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Also, at the end of summer, a photographer buddy of mine shot a bunch of great images of the car. Thought I'd share as they're pretty cool :)

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