long story short, bought my first merc and diesel a few years back..
~ 300k miles and hummed but no history
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booted around for ~ a month then went on my first trip north ~ 250 miles, five minutes out on the return trip, noticed a change in the engine tone... turned out an oil line blew

ended up with a knock, did a temp fix (by passed the oil cooler) and finished the trip with mostly a gentle cruise

now have 2 used engines (one came with a tranny) and will be doing compression tests of the bunch,

car lived in texas mostly and has had a repaint, color has been described as smoke silver metallic

smokey currently runs as bought, starts instantly, virtually no smoke, normal oil pressure etc, but has a knock

pix and vids to follow, currently dismantling, refurbing and having a look at the goods

awhile ago, had a look under the valve cover, all looked normal, adjusted the valves but no change

you can maybe do a small job of redoing the bearings and having the crank toleranced out and still have a good engine if you had the time/space/energy to do that

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hum.....
1987 300TD 311,000M Stolen. Presumed destroyed

got one engine stripped off pretty good at this point, intake/exhaust assy is off and coming apart, gonna check it all out and refurb as required

gonna do a compression check next

engine was supposed to be a solid runner was about all the info that came with it, along with a good dose of pure bs ..so gonna check it out good before deciding what exactly to do with it