After a two year break, sitting in the very back of the shop gathering dust, my trusty old 300E is back on the road as my drive to work car.

She is a 1988 300E manual transmission car. There were only a little more than 300 of these cars shipped as US models in '88 and a little over 700 in '86.

I looked for a manual transmission 300E for about two years and found this one in 1997. It had 70K miles on it then and was in really nice shape. I got COMPLETE records on the care including every receipt. I drove it around several states for a few years before buying a new manual tranmission C Class in late 2000. That car didn't work out very well with HUGE amounts of electronic related problems so got rid of it and went back to the 300E.

I got it out of the back of the shop a few months ago. I put it there with a bad A/C compressor and a few other maladies. After getting it out I had several problems including:

Cruise Control intermittent, then just stopped working altogether. I found a bad clutch switch, replaced that and have reliable cruise control.

I finally got my hands on the CORRECT compressor for the car, got it in, evacuated and charged. I was keeping my eye on the evaporator to see if it would leak any R12. After I was convinced that the system was tight, I recovered the R12, replaced the receiver/drier and did a THOROUGH evacuation and recharge. She still has the factory evaporator.

I had applied for a 500Km Award badge before putting her away and they somehow lost the paperwork. I sent off another app and received the badge.

I put brakes on the back including calipers, rotors, pads, and hoses. I had done the same to the front, not long before putting her away.

I just put a new set of Michelins on her. I have a rim clamp tire machine and Coates 1001 Computer Balancer. All of them were within an ounce and a half of balance without weights, but I got them all balanced within a few grams. I've had her to ninety and it's as smooth as silk.

This car has a 500E rear sway bar and heavy duty Bilsteins. I drive 20 miles one way to work over a really fun, winding and hilly road to town. This car eats up that road and makes it a very pleasurable drive.

Next year she will qualify for an Antique license plate.

Edit: I forgot to mention what I have left to fix on the car. Both right side windows are inoperative. The sunvisor hooks are pulled loose from the headliner. The plastic trim at the lower front corner of the left rear wheel opening is broken loose. The front lower valence is busted on the bottom. It's always something.

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2001 SLK 320 six speed manual
2014 Porsche Cayenne six speed manual

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