Thanks. And whlie it was a great learning experience, it was all for naught.

Friday Samantha (my step-daughter), who is about $900 away from having paid me for the car, and I were driving to meet my wife and 7-month old when someone pulled out of a mall, gunning it to shoot across 3 lanes of traffic, hitting the right-rear door and spinning us around. We walked away and were blessed to do so, thank God for watching over us.

But the bottom of the car no longer has a straight line to it, the back door is pushed in pretty far and the right-rear fender is into the tire enough that it was barely driveable to the center lane.

The other driver was ticketed with failure-to-yield so hopefully we'll be able to get Samantha into another great Mercedes soon....or get them to fix this car, but it looks pretty bad.

I think I want to stick with the same type Mercedes, and with the wealth of knowledge I've gained from searching this forum I'll be able to check on things like the wiring harness for the engine, head gasket, transmission (learned the tranny on my own :-< ), and ignition system.

Either way I'm going to stay in the MB forums; a friend of mine is trading me his 1986 420 SEL for a computer system I rebuilt. The body is straight and it is a southern car, but needs rear shocks, left front turn signal lens, which I'll probably replace with the clear lenses, and eventually a rear main seal on the engine; which is a reman'd unit and has about 110k miles on it. Looks like it is a charcoal gray with the grey plastic bottom panels and a tan interior (it looks more tan than beige but that could be due to age).

Thanks again for all the help and I'll be back...

Bill

Ouch. Glad all are okay.

__________________

Gone to the dark side

- Jeff