The W111 Coupe romance lives on

[Todd Miller]

As my life ebbs and flows, I come in and out of being able to drive the coupe, which leads to it sitting for months at a time, or in this case, almost a year. At least now I have a real garage, so it's sitting in the dark, completely enclosed, and I'm able to start it every few weeks just to cycle fuel through the system, and keep the battery happy.

It's been a big couple weeks for the car, as I've finally had time to address a few of the big issues that were keeping it from really being driveable.
1) It looks like absolute crap due to my poor storage of it from 2009-Feb 2019
2) The new tires (an expensive set of Goodyear Invicta GL "double whites") were destroyed from sitting.
3) The clutch slave failed and leaked to the point of repeatedly draining the system, making the car undriveable until performing the fight of bleeding the system.
4) The brake system had an issue of dragging the rear brakes, even with new hoses, rebuilt rear calipers, new rear rotors, and rebuilt right front caliper with new hardware for the new pads.

So while I got my ducks in a row, I took the car to a local body shop and asked them to repaint the roof and trunk. It was done this past Monday, so I brought it home and started on the laundry list. Finished it and had a first "real" drive in it, with no issues, since 2009.

I'm in love, just like the very first time.

[cth350]

Lovely car and welcome back. -CTH

[Todd Miller]

Thanks CTH. She photographs well, but is in terrible condition, inside and out, with really bad structural rust.

[Tony H]

Glad to see another old Benz back on the road. I too am struggling with issues preventing my coupe's return to the road like the lack of a dedicated shop space. I get to visit it at the storage facility often. And the interior is stored here in the garage so I can smell the leather.
Are the black license plates original? My original blue/yellow plates are no longer usable since we moved from Ca.
I spent some time in the SLO area during my career. Liked it there a lot.

[Todd Miller]

Hi Tony,
I don't know the history of the car. My guess is that was a gray market type of import back in the 80's. (All of it's structural rust was packed full of spray foam insulation, shaped to look like the correct form, and then heavily undercoated to hide the chicken wire, metal plates held in with rivets, and other BS) When I purchased it in '92 it had a red, white, and blue CA plate on it, which I immediately repainted to black and gold. I took advantage of the CA DMV allowing original era plates to be "re-plated" to a same era car. So in 2019, I went in search of an appropriate plate.

It's been a good amount of progress on the sled this past 2 weeks, and I also got in some quality time on my '86 Ninja 600R, and '70 Austin America, so those are also back to normal, drive-it-daily, reliable status.

[Tony H]

I'm kinda of a stickler for era correct plates. I was sad to lose my original Ca ('78) plates from when it was imported. I think I can use YOM plates here but the process is not easy.

[Todd Miller]

The process here is very easy, which is nice.

[aluminum]

Ya That Rust is a Killer only real fix to weld in new Panel Area's.
The Brake Drag is Common and almost always the Pistons Sticking / Sticky in the Rear
Brake Calipers or all of them > The Steel and Aluminum alloy don't really mix well . Crud gathers below the Pistons creating a proper release then the Brake fluid Boils that's why you need Dot 4 Not Dot 3 > You really need to Flush out a Lot of fluid to Change it out all the way and a pressure bleeder is best .

[alabbasi]

I recently picked up a W109 3.5 in exactly that color. It was a non running car but I got it to run pretty quickly after I bought it. I now need to work on the air suspension and address a couple of niggling electrical problems.

I have a 6.3 which I love but I'd rather shoot myself in the face than work on it. I'd love to have a W111 coupe some day.

[Todd Miller]

When I see under the hoods of the V-8 cars, I die inside a lot!! Love them for the engineering marvel that they are, HOWEVER!!!!