Okay, so now that the car is on the road, things weren't 100%. The throttle linkage definitely needed quite a bit of work, as did a few other things that were a little... "tired" from sitting for so long. I started driving the car for short trips, taking routes I knew well, or that I knew had areas where I could pull over if necessary. This strategy worked well as I "familiarized" myself with the car.

In between parts orders, I tackled some other issues, like treating the rust in the trunk.







I didn't want to bother with replacing the beautiful Becker Europa II headunit just to gain an auxiliary input, so I sourced a 7 pin DIN to 1/8" minijack adapter from a seller on eBay. Here's a little parody video I put on my car's blog.

More recently, I grew frustrated with the broken clock... well, more like the series of broken clocks I encountered from various salvage yard pulls. After the third one, I just gave up on the idea of finding a working clock. Using a tutorial from either this forum, or another, I installed a VDO Vision series tachometer where the clock used to be.







Surprisingly, the VDO tachometer is a decent match to the aesthetics of the car, and the backlight is a warm enough color that it doesn't look too out of place while driving at night. While the mod was pretty straightforward, I did take several photos along the way that I am willing to share for those interested in the process.

More recently, I found a gray market W115 300D at a junk yard about a half hour from my house. I stripped off some trim pieces, including a rare passenger side mirror, which I have never seen on a US spec car. The actual mirror glass was missing, but a W116 a couple rows over had some extra clean glass ready to swap in. Thankfully, the install was relatively easy since the door already has the mounting holes for the passenger side mirror.







That's where things stand as of today. Current plans include a custom exhaust using a pair of 3-1 Euro headers that I found, backdating to the early 68-73 bumpers, installing new floor pans, and replacing window seals. Pelican/Peach has been great about having the right quality parts I need when nobody else seems to have them, and I am really thankful for this forum. I'm still not sure where this restoration will take me, but I am having a lot of fun doing this on a relatively small budget. These cars were built really well; even though my example is far from the best, or even an ideal place to start, I've found that these cars can be very forgiving. If anything, this car makes me want to find an early W114 coupe or C107 to add to my collection.