87 300D's signs of old age

[MBDFahrer]

Recently my 87 300D has been plagued by bad luck and revealing alot of its old age issues.

1. 12/21/03 - I got into a minor car accident with a Chevy silverado. It damaged the hood, upper radiator support, and the grill. The hood has been replaced (much needed), the upper radiator support only moved about 1-2 mm, and the grill was repaired.

2. 1/1/04 - Lets start the new year off with a knock. Ever since the new year, my steering wheel would knock when turned from going straight to the 10 o'clock position or to the 2 o'clock position. It would occur more often when turned to the right than to the left. Is this a hint to future problems?

3. 1/5/04 - This really isn't a big issue, but its still an issue. My LCD that displays the outside temperature under the speedo is shot, I wanted to remove it and find the part number but can't even get the gauge cluster out. I used home made gauge removal tools and would get it out just a little, But it would slowly sink back in.


4 1/6/04 - Today my friend played around with my sunroof since he just found out I had one. He opened it only 2 inches but we heard a squeak, followed by a few more. I didn't want to find out what else would happen so I closed it. To my amazement, the headliner on the roof came off, The roof closed, but the liner just sat there. Since I'm thinking about servicing my roof anyways, I decided to remove it completely. Before the headliner came off, I felt a screw that wasn't in its place and was just sitting on the liner. I carefully removed it, but didn't find the screw, is it important that I find it?

5. Vacuum leak in the system is causing the transmission to shift harshly from: P - R, N - D, 2 - 3, and sometimes it skips gear 3 and goes straight to 4 when going up a hill from a stop. I've tried disconnecting the Emission Control System (ECS) but it was only better for a few hours. Not knowing how legal it is to do that, I decided to rehook it up since the shift quality didn't improve by much. There's also a black line that isn't connected behind the driver side firewall. What is this black line connected to? If anyone has information on this in particular, it would be highly appreciated. Or if someone has a vacuum schematic, it would be really nice.


6 Final issue, does anyone know a good source for sunroof parts and original mercedes vacuum lines? I would like to redo the old and brittle lines with newer ones.

I know this post has been long, its tough typing it up too, but I wanted to cover as much as I can in one post. Thanks to all of those that managed to finish reading it. And definetly thanks to those who can reply to this.

Jason