Yeah, to add to my earlier story, I botched the tumbler removal process and tried to brute force it on a hot summer day....as they say haste makes waste. I should have just given up early and had a professional repair the tumbler. But instead it set me back $500+ to have it drilled out and redone completely. I think this is about the most frustrating thing that I have happened to the 300SD.

The other thing to keep an eye out for is the oil cooler rubber lines. Both my cars have experienced a sudden "failure" where the hose bursts and your pressure drops to zero. Scary if it should ever happen. Check for any signs of leaks on the rubber part of both lines near the oil cooler. This is probably the one and only design flaw of their engineering.

These cars seem to run forever otherwise, with good attention to fluid levels of oil and transmission. The lock thing was probably the most expensive repair I've had in several years...

I didn't know anything about brakes when I started, but I watched an independeant mechanic do it (he let me) and then bought and studied the haynes book carefully, started slowly by doing brake pads only. Gradually, I did rotors, and wheel bearing repacking. Simple actually, but be sure you know what you are doing as these are your brakes and you don't want a failure to occur. For a while I did one pad replacement and alternated the next replacement with the dealer or a shop to make sure everything was going correctly.

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1) 84 300SD 285K+ Miles (Ver Calif)
2) 84 300SD 175K+ Miles (Ver Federal)