Hello! I'm back with a 84 300SD and love it! Except....I'm a sucker. Got the car from a friend a few years after my 300d Turbo broke hard parts in the tranny. He had this car(126) as well as the 123 and I felt it looked so much better than the 123. I kept the engine and sold the 123 body. He then sold the 126 to me for 900 bucks. The interior was screwed up and other than that the car ran good so it seemed. Did the banjo bolt clean out and wow! I heard what I thought was loose rockers and did a adjustment. Had to do it again....and one more time. The last one was perfect. Still the noise keeps clicking. I am asking what else it could be. After motor mounts and valves it runs/ idles perfect. It also hauls the mail too, With little smoke. I really like this car! But the noise is to me getting louder. It comes on best at about 1200rpm. I can hear it with the windows down bouncing the noise off curbs and back to me(nails on the chalkboard to me). At idle it goes away. Oh, rebuilt the front end and did shocks, 275,000 odometer stuck with a broken small gear. Blow by is very light on this car. I have no idea how many miles are on it. Dropped the trans pan and it was spotless with perfect red clean fluid. Any help? I have looked for 4 days on here for posts related to this with no real luck.

One other thing. The guy I bought this car from has a restored but not assembled (60%) 1951 220. I fell in love with it the first time I saw it. It is 100% complete just needs the engine installed, fenders, and everthing else from there. It has new leather and carpet with a perfect black paint job. I'm a sucker! But a ballpark on this car$$$ ??? He has gave me a price but I need to get an idea how good it is. Thanks! Curt

If I need to post the last part elsewhere let me know.

Cabrios fetch six figures. Coupes close to that (might be fewer coupes left than cabs). A nice sedan should fetch about $25K. Sedans are rarely worth the cost of restoration. Is the wood framing in good shape or is that part of the 40%.

These folks should be able to help with valuation - http://www.pauls********inc.com/

Sixto
87 300D

Headliner is in and seats/carpets/gauges/ all parts ready to be re-assembled. A very well done paint job and interior. He calls this car a medium detail restoration with a few changes he feels made the car better but not exact. For example there is a kind of "welting" under the body trim that he does not like and went without it. He has done 3-4 of the 220s and did not like how this material acted under the trim so he omitted it. He claimed it would get wet and dirty thus hard to clean out. To me it looks great. This person is burned out and does not want to touch another restoration again. He is selling all of his car stuff. He is asking 12k for it and all of his related parts to this car. He claims 99% of the money has been spent on the car. All you need is 100 hours or more of labor to put it together.

Is the engine tick coming from the vacuum pump and not the valve train?

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1992 W201 190E 1.8 171,000 km - Daily driver
1981 W123 300D ~ 100,000 miles / 160,000 km - project car stripped to the bone
1965 Land Rover Series 2a Station Wagon CIS recovery therapy!
1961 Volvo PV544 Bare metal rat rod-ish thing

I'm here to chat about cars and to help others - I'm not here "to always be right" like an internet warrior



Don't leave that there - I'll take it to bits!

It could be a half shaft being that you can only hear it during speed .Other areas of the car might be involved other than the engine.Did the guy ever have the head off the motor?

I will check it out. Will it fail without hurting anything else? The sound does seem like it's coming from the IP area but it also is hard to really pinpoint the location of the sound.

Use a stethoscope to pinpoint the location. Cruise control actuator can make a clicking sound.

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1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

Pulled the vacuum pump and no change. Will loosening an injector line stop piston slap or rod knocking? Is that a way to check?

Kerry, does the cruise control have to be plugged in to make the noise?

I am not Kerry... but I'll go out on a limb and tell you he'd say 'yes'.

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It does not look like the head has been off. The knock seems to get loudest just when the oil pressure hits the 3 on the gauge. I think that is about 1200 rpm. At idle no noise and 2500 and above too much other noise covers it up a bit. I don't think it's an injector because I have listened with a rod with earmuffs on putting the rod to the plastic ear cups.

Not to be abrasive, but so far you've called it 'ticking' and 'the knock'. At this level, we're just guessing and using method of elimination.


So, here's my next guess. With the vacuum pump off, pull the IP timer towards the front of the car then push it in. Does it 'wiggle'? Do you have a dial gauge that would allow you to measure that wiggle / play?

Loosening injector lines may or may not isolate a noise. If its combustion related, you might get lucky. Worn components (wrist pins, rod bearings) might soften in sound intensity.

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jt20 seems to be thinking along the lines I was too.

The intermediate shaft on the OM617 can wear and shuttle back and forth on an OM617 which eventually causes the vacuum pump to fall apart - which is unfortunate not only for the vacuum pump (very very expensive) but for the timing chain and associated parts if you're unlucky.

This theory that we have seems to tie in quiet nicely with your observation of the tick at higher oil pressure... oil is fed from the pump to the injector pump via the intermediate shaft.

__________________
1992 W201 190E 1.8 171,000 km - Daily driver
1981 W123 300D ~ 100,000 miles / 160,000 km - project car stripped to the bone
1965 Land Rover Series 2a Station Wagon CIS recovery therapy!
1961 Volvo PV544 Bare metal rat rod-ish thing

I'm here to chat about cars and to help others - I'm not here "to always be right" like an internet warrior



Don't leave that there - I'll take it to bits!

As far as knocking vs. ticking if this were a gas motor I would be hearing a bad lifter or loose rocker. To give the sound level, with windows up I can just hear it with fan on low and no radio on. At that I have to listen closely. It's loudest with windows down and the best time to hear it is slower speeds and next to curbs. It sounds like one part not a bunch of them together.

I will put a dial on the IS tonight or in the morning. The pump looked OK so I'm not as worried to "Run It". I'm terrible about seeing things like the ball bearing in the movies/cliffhangers where it tips back and forth almost falling into the chain of death! I don't know if anybody else is like that but I am. It can really drive me nuts.

It looks like 8-10 thousands. I could not get the dial indicator perfect but it was much less than my other engine that did not make the noise.