While crawling around under my '86 300 SDL doing the flex discs and center bearing (thanks again to the community for the help, everything went according to plan, at least I think it did) I noticed that I had some issues with the trailing arms. The picture is of the passenger side, and that hole is big enough for me to get a finger in there and feel around. Not great. Drivers side has a hole as well. It's smaller, but starting. Definitely a bit surprising to see as from what I know about the history of the car it hasn't spent any time in a salt heavy or rust prone environment. It was purchased new in California, and then made its way to Colorado with the third owner (I'm the fourth) and stayed there.

Regardless, I'm going to have a shop that I trust do the work since I don't have the time, space, tools, or patience to do that right now. I found the following link but I'm not quite sure how to interpret the column on the far right. From what I've been reading, there is a good amount of cross compatibility with the W123 trailing arms and the trailing arms from later W126 models.

This thread has some great images of a guy who did his own, and boy do I wish I could do what he did but this is my daily so time is a factor. The hardest part for me right now is sourcing the trailing arms themselves. I skimmed the classifieds on this site and will drop a couple lines in there, but if anyone knows of a good lead on trailing arms, preferably in the Denver area, let me know. I'll be getting in touch with my mechanic whom I trust (he did my oil pans about a year ago) in the next few days. If anyone out there has dealt with this and has anything to share I'd love to hear it!

Cheers,
T.P.Crockmier

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