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Test Drove a W126 SD today
My friend is wanting to jump on the diesel benz bandwagon. We looked at a 1982 300sd owned by my friend and local MBCA president's brother.
The car presented well; black with beige interior both in good condition. Euro lights and rare euro 16" wheels, I'm guessing from a later W126. I did notice a less than silver dollar size bubble beginning to for on the left rear quarter, but the rest of the paint seemed in pretty good condition. The interior was the high point of this car, it looked nearly showroom. The front seats were replaced from an '85 500sel and look great.
The mechanical history on this car was very suprising. The brothers bought this car in 1999 with a broken timing chain at 150k. They immediately replaced the top half of the motor, as well as the transmission a few years later. The brakes were new, AC serviced and converted in 2001, and the car had almost no blowby. Barring a bad rear window motor or ?regulator? (not sure this is the right word) and a nonfunctional power driver's seat, the car was well sorted out and showing 220k on the working odometer.
Driving the car was a pleasure. Very even acceleration, excellent braking and turning. The suspension was also very soft, unlike my lumber wagon diesel needing new suspension. The car behaved just as well, if not better than my nice W123.
A few bad points I noticed were the slight over shaking of the engine at idle probably requiring new motor mounts and the tires seemed rotten. My friend the seller had a lift at his shop, and we got a good look at some scary looking jack points in the process of collapsing, but I believe not initailly from rust, though they are now corroding? It was enough to make me nervous standing under the car. The rest of the underside looked very clean. It seemed rather unusual for a car as solid as this.
Any theories on the cause of the jack points collapsing or opinons the car in general? They are asking $3,500 for it, which seems fairly reasonable, barring the scary jack points. His brother's plans for the money consist of a downpayment on a used CDI or new C class.
I'm kind of on the fence with this car and my friend is as clueless as I was 6 months ago. The jackpoints would need to be adressed immediately, and new tires. The price is firm and they just decieded to sell the car.
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