1986 300E, 140,000 mi.
White with blue MBtex interior

Hello to all,

This is my first MBZ. I've been a Volvo owner (5) for a long time but have always liked the looks and reputation of the Mercedes. My wife's sister is moving to Hawaii (Kona) and they didn't think it would be worthwhile to ship two cars so she asked me if I wanted to buy her Mercedes 300E for $3000. She had purchased the car new, serviced it very regularly, and had every service receipt since new. What could I say but YES!

I have to say I was a little nervous about taking on a strange make of car. I do nearly all my own car servicing and repair and I was pretty familiar with Volvos. After I have lurked on this site for awhile and read many of the threads on it, I feel much better about being able to fix what breaks on this 300E. As you know, the 103 engine in that model is pretty straight forward, no EGR or air pump -hooray! I'm already familair with the problems of Bosch relays.

Just briefly about the car. It has recently (within 10K miles) had the following done:
New master cylinder
New radiator, hoses, thermostat, and fan
New accessory belt
New Michelin tires
Resealed front timing cover
New dist. cap, rotor, plugs, OVP and fuel relays
New outside temperature sender
New front struts
New front brake pads and rotors

In addition the motor mounts and rear suspension control arms are fairly new.

I have replaced the battery and plan to replace the injector seals. The engine idles a little unevenly. I also disconnected a very erratic alarm system until I can get time to work on it. I plan to try to get the dash lighting to work better, possibly LED bulbs. I thought Volvos were bad but this is really dim! I have put nearly 3000 miles on the car now and it appears that the oil consumption (15-40) is about 1/2 quart, not too bad.

Well this is long enough. At some point I hope I can be of help to others on this forum. I am fairly active on the Brickboard (Volvos).

Jim Holst, in Oregon.
1986 Mercedes 300E
1993 Volvo 940 wagon
1984 Volvo 240 (daughters)
1976 Dodge pickup, hauls anything