No interior pics yet but its really overall pretty good except the rear seat since it needs new foam. Most of the pictures in this album are not of the car but of interesting things this guy and his neighbor owned.
1980 300SD Slideshow by oldskoolfan2 | Photobucket
I think this was his first Mercedes diesel but he has two Volkswagen diesels as seen in the pictures. His neighbor has a Ford Falcon station wagon. He also has an ex-Ukrainian military Dnepr motorcycle which ironically my brother had been looking at those on craigslist the day before we bought this car and it happened to be that this guy's Dnepr was one my brother had seen.
The car has a few modifications such as a trailer hitch (bolted to sheet metal and bumper so it won't tow much but I wouldn't want to try much weight anyway), a valve to shut off water to the heater core (less heat in the interior), and it has a camera mount welded to the underside of the car that the guy used to film rims for a dealership (obviously the W116 is a steady enough car for the job).
The owner was a professional camera man who says he has done tons of films from the Mercedes plant in Alabama (which he said as he was filming the building of an ML, a worker was putting in parts in the interior and a switch exploded out of nowhere, but it didn't make it into the final film) to filming part of the torch relay for the 1996 Olympics. He was also flown over to Germany to do films for Volkswagen and Mercedes, which was part of why he buys VW diesels. He was selling this car and his motorcycle to buy a higher end quad copter for filming.
Now since we looked at the car, a few issues have propped up. First, the passenger rear door worked and within a few minutes of us starting our look over, the handle must have failed and now it can only be opened from the inside. The car usually starts up really easy and quickly but it is having issues of not wanting to crank at all for some reason. Also the antenna was working but now it isn't though the previous owner said he had it replaced recently, not sure what this is, but I suspect the starting issue is related and has to do with the ignition switch, which he said was replaced but I know they are a common failure item.
Other issues known:
Locking one door does not lock them all, probably vacuum issue.
AC does not work, guy never had it hooked up and when he got it, it didn't have the belt to it. We do not know about the servo, but the heat works though I don't know if it is stuck on heat like it could be if it has failed. It does have a crack in the plastic housing. We accept that it will probably need to be replaced sooner or later as well as the AC compressor.
The door seals are bad, and OEM is double what I had expected, but my dad says he was successful in the past with sealing the doors better with weatherstripping bought at a hardware store. I will look more into it but it seems like the only brands available are URO, CRP, unnamed seals from Thailand on Ebay, and OEM but at $300+ for OEM, we might use another brand, at least URO claims to have a 2 year warranty (whether or not you can actually use that is a different matter).
2 window go up and down, need to be greased, both on driver's side don't work, if the regulators are bad is to be determined.
Half the lights in the interior are blown, barely any in the instrument cluster are good, seems as if the rheostat doesn't work.
Needs new axle boots, the ones on there were still good but look as if they started to rot, no cracks go all the way through the rubber.
Upshifts to 2nd and 3rd and harder than the rest by a good amount, maybe a vacuum issue or just how these transmissions usually are.
The paint is original, has its issues
Could use some new belts and a valve cover gasket
Headlights got water or something in them, need to be cleaned out and maybe replaced or refurbished
The good:
New tires
Came with full tank
All normal wear suspension components and bushings have been replaced so it rides well
Recent brake job
Runs extremely smooth and quiet
People love it
Overall, we feel we couldn't have done any better with $1400