Hello from West Virginia! (newish 300d owner)
 

Hello all!
I purchased my 1985 300d turbo in july of 2012. I am the 4th owner. I have named her Sadie the 80's Mercedes from Hades, lol! I use to own a diesel 1986 isuzu P'UP that my dad gave to me in the late 90's as my first vehicle. In my youth (stupidity) I traded it for a grand am. I loved the car, but missed that reliability of the diesel P'UP. I was on a quest to find another P'UP when I came across these beauties and I fell in love with them! My wife did too, which is just awesome! I paid $1100 for her (the car not the wife!) and I drove down to TN to get it. I was on the road for 24 hours straight since I had to get the rental back at 10am the next day. My wife stayed in a hotel and drove the 300d back the next day.

The car does have some probelms (shocker, I know :rolleyes:) The vac system was all screwed up, the seat springs were all broken, wipers didn't work, A/C had been converted but didn't work, alignment was shot, tires were a mess due to improper alignment, hail damage and paint fade, odometer broken, rear defrost didn't work, trunk leaks, oil leaks, low trans fluid, low coolant, alternator won't charge battery during idle (found out the hard way), fuel gauge wasn't working properly (hard way again), on and on with typical problems. I found the real problem when I got her home and jacked up. One of the PO's drove her off the road or hit a curb or something that dug a groove on the passenger side from the front floor board to the back seat and.....it started to rust!!

Now onto the things I've done to the car. New tires, alignment, fixed most of the vac problems but still have a leak somehwere, fixed odometer, oil changes, lubed a lot of stuff, noodled the seats, new break pads, used some rust stop products on the groove, filled it in with bondo, used rubberized undercoat spray, seriously cleaned fuel sending unit (squeaky clean!) and works great now, charged A/C worked in the summer but charge has leaked off now, cleaned out banjo bolt and line at intake manifold (snapped the line like a friggin idoit...have a temp fix in place), diesel purge and new filters, changed coolant to zerex g05 from the blue/green stuff that was in there, but I forgot to drain the coolant at the engine drain so I pretty much wasted my money there, I removed the EGR and that's pretty much it.

From what I can tell by the color codes and pics on google. I have Smoke Silver paint and henna red MBtex interior. I have the service records from the PO's except the last guy that owned it who didn't really do any work to it that I can tell. Anyway here are the pics (hopefully they work!)

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-h...0/IMAG0272.jpg
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-B...0/IMAG0276.jpg
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-g...0/IMAG0278.jpg
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-7...0/IMAG0279.jpg
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-X...0/IMAG0277.jpg

Welcome aboard Fender Bender, sounds like your on your way to making that car a decent driver again, just remember, there is no such thing as a cheap Mercedes. you will learn as time goes on if you do not already grasp that. You will always get out of you car what you put into it, until you try and sell it:D
You definitely picked the right site to join owning that, there are people from all walks of life from all over the world on this site that own your same car.
You will learn a lot here. no question will go unanswered. Every problem that could occur has already happened to someone else on this site.
there are a ton of (keep it orig) guys and a ton of (mod it out) guys,so no matter what you say you will always hear others opinions,
but you just go and do what ever makes you happy. Good luck with your new purchase. thanks for the pix, those are always appreciated!!

another RED interior
 

Welcome to the forum!! You are the 2nd new member this week with a red interior. I've got one as my current project.

Now the fun begins.

Welcome, FB (FenderBender!)
 

The best vintage Diesel Forum in the world......solar system......Universe!;)

Go diesel, or GO HOME!:)

Beautiful car! Isuzu Pup for sale, or long gone........? :o

Welcome to the Forum, hope you hang around for a long time.

As davidlee said, there isn`t any thing that hasn`t been done, fixed or questions asked about. some one some where on this site has done what ever problem you come up with. sometimes the answer comes from Australia, Europe, Alaska, Texas or the guy down the street.

Once you work through every thing you should have a nice 300D.


I remember when all these little PU`s were new with the Diesel engines. they only offered them for a few years. I still have mine, and she made another run to PNP today.

Charlie

I'm impressed with all the work you've -- wish I'd have done half that so far. :). I love the Henna Red.

Also, where did you come up with that username? :P

Sweat equity is your new life motto! LOL I work on a budget as if I were making car payments. $300 a month for parts and I provide my sweat on my free time. In a year or two, you should have an almost perfect car. The best part is that you just built a new-ish car for a fraction of the price of a new plastic car. You also get the pleasure of seeing that star lead you to every destination you reach. I look at a new car from today and think "some day, my 300SD will pass the tow truck hauling that thing to the junk yard in a few years."

As etont9999 said
"You also get the pleasure of seeing that star lead you to every destination you reach. I look at a new car from today and think "some day, my 300SD will pass the tow truck hauling that thing to the junk yard in a few years."

mine is a 300D but still,,,that quote X2!!!!!!!!

Thanks for the warm welcome guys! This is the first car that I've ever worked on myself. I was never interested in working on cars until this.

Jooseppi - I play guitar. That's how I came up with the username. Bending strings on my fender american strat! :)

Skid row - Sadly it's long gone.

Y'know, I used to play guitar. We had an old five-string guitar* in the attic, and I would drag it down every once in a while and make a racket beating the life out of it until another family member with better taste got sick of it and told me to put it away.

I play piano now. Much more peaceful.

*Translation: a six-string guitar with one broken string. It made some awesome noises when you threaded the broken string through all the rest, though!