Rooster300SD - I wonder if there's a W123/W126 difference here...


I did the entire job with my jack stands under the jack points (1983 240D). They weren't in the way of the job. Granted - this is how I did the job. Apologies in advance for the long, rambling tale:

I didn't know the extent of the work that I needed to do. I just knew that my car needed a lot of underbody attention. I needed to pull the driveshaft to replace the clutch (nearly dead) and driveshaft center bearing (upon inspection, nearly seized, and the mount was destroyed). I couldn't get my driveshaft to compress on the splines (seized) so I ended up dropping my differential and pulling the driveshaft out the rear in one piece and then freeing it up/replacing parts with it on the garage floor.

As others have stated, once the differential mount was disconnected from the body and the rear shocks were removed, the rear springs pretty much just fell out. I wouldn't have believed it, but there is zero tension on those springs once the shocks are out and the differential isn't bolted to the body (at least, on the W123 with stock springs).

Once my differential/driveshaft/shocks were out, I could then remove the subframe mount bolts/plates and lower the subframe as a unit, if that's what I wanted to do. Given my tight and cluttered garage space, I opted to work one side at a time. Also, I wasn't initially going to replace the mounts. I only wanted to replace the trailing arm bushings, one of which was 100% obviously completely shot.

But, once I got this far, I realized that I couldn't reasonably access the outboard trailing arm bolts without lowering the subframe. So, I lowered the subframe one side at a a time and worked one side of the car at a time. That's when I discovered my subframe mounts were shot and decided to replace them, too.


But, all the while, my jack stands were under my jack points.