Hello forum,
I am new to PeachParts forum, in fact I am quite new to the whole w124 world. I was brought here by the PWOGAMAN's post from 2009 about retrofitting a a passenger airbag into his wagon. I hope he's still active on this forum.

First, a little bit about myself. My name is Yuri and I'm in Toronto, Canada. My whole life I've been a SAAB guy, but just a couple of weeks ago I picked my first Mecedes, a 1987 300 TD wagon. I've been hunting for a diesel wagon for quite some time (very rare in Canada) and when this one popped up I immediately bought it. It is silver with a tan (palomino) MBTEX interior. It's not in showroom condition by any measure, but it will be once I'm done with it .

As I'm sure you can relate, as soon as I got my w124 I immediately started figuring out ways to improve and restore it. My first order of business is to refresh the interior. It has faded, and although in solid shape, has years of grime that just won't come out of the beige textures. As luck would have it, my mechanic has a perfect donor car; a 1994 320 wagon with black interior in perfect shape. I am going to do a COMPLETE interior swap and was hoping I could ask you a few questions as it seems some of you have gone on similar missions.

I've already removed all the seats and trim from the donor car. The only things left are carpets and dash.

Dashboard.
I am trying to decide if it's too much of a project to transplant the dashboard and passenger airbag. I don't particularly care about having the passenger airbag, but the bottom trim on my dash is tan and I'd like to swap it to black. Since my car has a glovebox opening, is there any way I can use the donor black trim and keep my glovebox?
Also, donor car has wooden tim along the dash. Mine does not. I'd like to have it, but not sure if it's worth the hassle swapping dashes just for that.

Carpet
Can carpets can be easily swapped between 87 and 94 models? The carpet on the donor car seems easy enough to remove, I'll have to check if mine is glued in when I get home.

Steering Wheel.
Would that be a direct swap? I've read some cars have a contact spiral, not sure what that is. If the donor car has it, would it be compatible with '87?

Speakers / stereo.
Donor car has front-door speakers, mine does not. Since I'll be using new door panels with speaker ports, can speakers be directly mounted on my doors? If not, can aftermarket speakers be fitted somehow? I understand the '94 model has an amplifier that directs highs to the dash and lows to the doors. Should I bother swapping the amp, or would a modern deck do just as good a job? Since I'll have everything removed I'm going to run new speaker wires to all doors.

Would appreciate any warnings or advise on this project. I assume everything is a direct bolt-on from '94 to '87, just hope I don't come to any surprises of parts not fitting.

Are there any other interior components that I should swap while I'm at it?

Cheers!


Mine (photo makes it look much fresher than it actually is)


Donor (just dirty, but all the parts are there and look as new)