1996 E300 Hopeful Rebirth

[oilslick]

I purchased a nice 1996 E300 last week. It has 140k on it. It’s black with tan interior. It’s about as clean of a car as I’ve ever purchased. The previous owner said that the glow plug light started flashing and then would no longer illuminate. He figured it was a faulty glow plug or two and began the repair himself. He managed to replace all but one glow plug. Glow plug #2 snapped off in the hole and he then tried to drill it out. He realized that it would be best to remove the head to do so, so he began removing everything necessary to lift the head. He was very meticulous with keeping everything organized and together. He then decided that he didn’t really want to dig into it any deeper (so he said) and let the car sit for two years covered up next to the barn. This is where I came in. A family member of his is a friend of mine and knows my love affair for all things Mercedes Diesel. She told me about the car and put the owner and I in touch with each other.

I drove 2.5 hours to see the car and knew that I wasn’t going to give the $800 he was asking for the car in the condition it was in, so I offered him significantly less than what he was asking. He agreed and I had the car towed to my parents house just 50 miles away. Over the past few days I have put the car back together just so I could see if it would fire up and run. It finally fired up and it sounds disastrous, especially with compression coming out of the #2 plug hole. I will take it all back apart and inspect everything. I have another OM606 head stored in my garage. It came off of a ‘95 E300 that had an “oil cooler” leak into the coolant. I was just learning on the OM606 engines at the time and didn’t really know about the type of oil cooler that was used on them. I had ANOTHER OM606 engine stored behind the shop and I used the head from it after I had it completely reworked. It now lives in my ‘95. Anyway, I can now see that the plug hole has been damaged and will need the expertise of a machine shop to make it right again. For now, I plan to use my known good cylinder head to see if I can get this car on the road. It’s way too nice to part out. I hope to buy some time with the used head and have the present head on the car reworked and installed in a few months.

Any pointers that any of you w210 diesel owners can give me?