Ladies & Gentlemen,

I’m a short-time lurker and this is my first post! I’ve been reading the archives here for a couple of months and will be a good boy and search for answers to my questions before I needlessly garbage-up the forum by asking what’s already been answered a gazillion times. I’m a “Beamter” and heavy user over at http://www.mye28.com/, so I don’t want to emulate the behaviors I myself find frustrating.

Now, here’s some info on my “new” ride: about a month ago, I bought an ’84 300td from a friend in Baton Rouge and drove it home to Alpharetta, Ga (~30 miles north of Occupied Atlanta) yesterday. It’s got 312K on the body, an unknown amount on the engine, the body is fairly straight, the white paint is mostly serviceable, and the interior is extremely filthy (the previous owner apparently took a bath once a year, ate most meals in the car, let greasy weasels joust in the rear compartment, and drove around with the tailgate slightly ajar). The wagon did fine on the trip home and got about 25 mpg at 80 mph average, with the cruise control being inop and the extremely feeble dash lighting being the only real frustrations of the trip.

This baby will be the daily-driver successor to my “uninsured look” AMC Eagle which I sold to my bro-in-law about five years ago; since then, I’ve used my ’86 BMW 535i as my daily driver. Already this morning, I forced a cell-phone-yappin', no-signal-usin', I-don't-need-to-yield Lincoln Navigator "driver" to merge on my terms (which were perfectly courteous and legal, BTW). Ahh, the freedoms of driving a somewhat-rough car!

Things I have on the to-do list:

1. Replace the broken vacuum levers and check the overall tranny adjustments (yep, I know about http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/showthread.php?t=158216)
2. Clean the entire car with Krud Kutter/Simple Green
3. Install the new Blaupunkt Key West CD/MP3 player (free shipping and a Skil cordless drill from Crutchfield as of this morning)
4. Check the condition of the timing chain
5. Check the injector pump timing
6. Fix the inop windshield squirters
7. Check the EGR and intake manifold for grunge build-up
8. Diagnose the inop Tempomat
9. Diagnose the inop vacuum/locking system, to include figuring out why the passenger-side front door “automatically” locks itself
10. Find the missing parts from the tailgate (the inside handle and lock knob and who-knows-what-else)
11. Diagnose the inop rear wiper
12. Replace the left rear door window that’s chipped along its top edge
13. Modify the fog lamp sections to hold H1 high-beam headlights and wire them appropriately
14. Remove the stock roof rack, buy some Yakima tracks, and install my old Yakima system on the roof
15. Get some dubs wit spinnaz!

If any of Y’all have any suggestions for this diesel W123 newbie, I’d appreciate hearing them!

BTW, is there an MB equivalent to RealOEM (example: http://www.realoem.com/bmw/partgrp.do?model=DC84&mospid=47231&prod=19850700)?

Regards,
Shawn D.

(OK, that last one on the list was a joke)