Well, good for you! The Flex is a sharp vehicle for sure. Good luck with your decision to abandon all that prestige.

For me, I simply don't care for the McCar era we find ourselves in and actually enjoy driving something that there's not several on my block. I drive day in and day out and rarely see another E320 wagon or 260E. Now, are they prestigious? I guess that depends on one's perspective.

As stated before, I've been tempted to do exactly as you have, you're just a bit ahead of me [emoji854][emoji23]

Dale

Love your last sentence! :D

See if you have a good electrical shop around locally, they can rebuild starters and alternators quite reasonable around me. Last starter I did was for the 300SEL around 300k. Still worked, I just wanted it fresh while the head and intake were off again. Ran me around $110. I think the alts I had done were very reasonable, just did bearings, resolder, and new VR.

You have multiple vehicles, so you may be able to afford a few extra days of town time.

Unsure if someone else pointed out, but you should be able to easily upgrade the alternator in these cars for a modest cost if needed or desired. My OM603 and M103 run 143A alts from W140s, I think the V8 cars. Pretty sure the late W124s I have seen had the M104, but cannot say with certainty.

"Well, good for you! The Flex is a sharp vehicle for sure. Good luck with your decision to abandon all that prestige."

Flex is not a matter of style, although it is kind of a rarity, in itself, not something you see at every light. Main thing is that it has the same interior layout as an old school station wagon, which I require for my music gear, specifically upright bass. The Flex has a foot more room lengthwise in the back with the seats folded down, also low tailgate. All those were reasons I was driving Volvo and then the Mercedes. Couldn't find a low mileage Volvo and chose the 138,000mi Mercedes figuring it would give similar service. Most unreliable car I have ever owned second to a 1990 300ZX Twin Turbo.

I found the Volvos to be like the Toyota of European vehicles, just change the oil tires and put gas in them and drive them for at least 250,000mi. Expected the same out of the Mercedes and was severely disappointed. I can't have a project car when I drive 3,000mi a month.

After a closer look-see yesterday, it appears that I'm in for a tensioner replacement [emoji35]

The plastic pointer is well beyond the 'left' boundary of the slope marking. I did not make any attempt at adjusting it since I'm not *ready* to do it. The belt seems to be a bit loose and that would likely be where I'm getting the intermittent squeal.

Dale

That's what happened to mine. I put the new belt on and couldn't get the tensioner to pull it up before running out of threads. That is the stupidest tensioner design I think I have ever seen. It's a piece of rubber you wind up, so eventually, it takes a set and loses tension like an old stretched out rubber band. Everybody else just uses a spring and they never fail. I already had the whole front of the engine back together except the fan clutch, fan and shroud when I found mine was shot, so basically had to take it all back apart. Totally wasted a couple of hours and four days waiting on parts. And again, this is a car with less than 165,000 miles.