After one year of owning an '85 300CD, I can say you should plan on spending LOTS of time lurking and searching on this site... I simply could not own mine without it--period.

In addition to the aforementioned advice, think about all of the mission-critical rubber parts on the car. Like mine, yours are probably old, dried-out and cracked. So think about replacing belts (metric), coolant hoses, oil cooler lines, fuel lines, flex discs, axle boots, etc.

Also, buy quality OEM parts, not cheap parts-store knock-offs like many PO's have done. Good luck!

Chris

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1985 300CD (California version)