380SE - Time for a Decision

[raymr]

The car has 210K miles. The drive train is good and it burns some oil but not visibly. The body has a few dents but no external rust. The wheel wells have some fiberglass patches to fix a few rust holes.

Here are the issues:

1) I discovered partial rust-out on a front frame piece. Someone lifted the car at that spot a while ago and cracked the undercoating. It has to be repaired.

2) Timing chain was last replaced 100K miles ago. Its not making noises yet though, but its due.

3) Seat leather is hard and worn through in some places.

4) Back window leaked at one time, and was resealed with unknown rust problem still underneath.

I'm not in love with the car but its a good solid ride. I'm not interested in replacing it but I don't want to start spending big bucks to keep it running. It will never be a valuable MB I don't think. My first impulse is just to keep it safe to drive which means repairing the frame part before the rust spreads. Then maybe a chain replacement, after that just kinda let it go until it dies. Any thoughts?

[lee polowczuk]

if you can drive it within your budget i woudl keep it.

i would not throw money at a car with rust.

[donbryce]

I have a 1985 380SE, used mainly for occasional vacation trips and as a second car around town, April thru Oct only. It has 185,000 miles. I'm a little amused at your statement "after that just kinda let it go until it dies."
I couldn't tell you how many times I've cursed the car when it develops a problem, then I go through the cycle of (1) I need to fix it before I can sell it, (2) Ya know, I kinda enjoy the challenge of doing the fix (usually) and (3) Jeez, it works/looks great now, I can't bring myself to part with it! I add up the hours/days spent working on it, and say it comes to 1/52 weeks a year. Big deal, it's worth more to me as a second car than the measily $$ it will bring at sale, especially in today's market of high gas prices.
OK, that said, I think you should roll up your sleeves and do the following:
- Scrape and grind off the undercoat and rust on the frame area. If it's rusted through (I doubt it is), get a competent welder to patch it (that might be you, of course). Apply a generous coat of flexible seam sealer over the cleaned up/patched area (great as an undercoating, almost the same as MB stuff IMO).
- If you can do the timing chain yourself, it's not a really hard chore. Read up on the procedure here, and in the shop manual...you do have a paper MB manual I trust? They're about the price of an hours labour used on EBay. CD's are much cheaper, but vary greatly in quality.
- Sheepskin covers are a great solution to worn out seats. The padding and springs are easy to refurbish yourself too.
- Any rust that's in there below the window won't be a problem for a daily driver like yours/mine provided there's no leaking into the trunk. Lots of threads on curing water leaks here.
In short, it sounds like you have reached a similar point of ownership as me. The bottom line is: keep it on the road as long as it returns some pleasure to you when you drive it, or at least enough to offset the pains of maintenance.

[Jim B.]

One thing else to think about, these are HUGELY safe in a bad bad accident, if you had one you could probably unbuckle the seat belt and WALK away, and how many equivalent 2006 cars could you say that about?

[raymr]

Thanks for the advice.

The 380SE is my year-round daily driver. The car has a lot of good points. For example I rented a new Impala last weekend and it felt rubbery and twitchy compared to the 22 year old Benz.

I need to do something before winter season. The rust is the major concern and I would bring it to a shop to have it done right. Otherwise I would sell it as-is and buy something new. The thing is, once you drive a Mercedes, even an old one, the new cars on the market hold much less appeal.

My dad gave me the car and even though he said do what you want with it, I think he secretly wants me to hold on to it. He lights up when I tell him stuff such as the K1 trans. repair or the pool noodles in the seats, and he marvels at the help thats available on mercedesshop. But I know an old car lilke this will eventually need a big infusion of cash, or time, or both. So, its a dilemma.

[gmercoleza]

Purchase of a replacement will also require a large infusion of cash, and along with that potentially comes a whole new set of problems to fix. I say if you like the car, then spend what it takes to keep it on the road. My $.02...