Welcome to the forum. I hope we can be of some help.

This car you've found, you can depend upon it to be a diesel. Everything else is problematic depending on the quality and quantity of care that the car has received in the past and your expertise with a wrench. We take my wife's '96 diesel with 262,000 miles on the road all the time with nary a worry but then again, it came with a complete service history and I have kept it up.

It also depends on what kind of "late 80s" 300D you have found. If you stick around long enough to learn about the "rod-bender engine," for example, you will want to revise your opinion of "bulletproof."

Transmichigans generally will need work at or before 300,000 miles. Depending on the year/model, the car may have "environmentally friendly" insulation in its wiring. Unfortunately, such stuff turns into fragments after 20 years or so. There are many other things to looks for. Please let us know more about what you've found.

Jeremy

__________________

"Buster" in the '95

Our all-Diesel family
1996 E300D (W210) . .343,000 miles Wife's car
2005 E320 CDI . . 148,000 miles My car
Santa Rosa population 177,300 (2026 projected)
Total. . . . . . . . . . . . 668,300
"Oh lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz."
-- Janis Joplin, October 1, 1970