New Member

[gmercoleza]

Hi all, I am a new member. I discovered this wonderful board a few months ago and used it to assist in deciding on my latest purchase - a '91 300E with 118,000 miles in anthracite with gray leather interior. This is now my daily driver (70 miles round trip to work plus weekends). Bought it off eBay for $4,200, drove it from IL to TX without a hitch. I probably paid a little high, but feel I got a good deal nonetheless due to the condition. I spoke with the owner 2 or 3 times for about an hour each and got a very good feeling from him regarding the overall condition of the vehicle. Having owned Benzes in the past I knew all the right questions to ask. The CarFax was perfect (2-owner, clean title, never failed emissions, no accidents, no service notations) and he had some fairly expensive recent service history. A fairly thorough pre-purchase inspection he had performed revealed the only major flaw to be a bad inner front tie rod end on the driver's side. I replaced that for $25 and set the toe using a tape measure (figured the caster/camber wouldn't have changed) and now the steering is very tight and tracks perfectly straight ahead. Steering wheel is straight too.

Just as a precaution, I also replaced the air filter/cap/rotor/wires/plugs and ran a container of RXP through to decarbon and prep the catalytic for the TX safety and emissions inspection. It passed with flying colors; if I recall correctly the emissions were pretty much on par with my 2000 Honda Odyssey. Amazing!

Everything is original on this car - original radiator, alternator, power steering pump, a/c compressor, etc. and with the exception of an occasional erratic idle it runs flawlessly and always starts on the 1st or 2nd crank (usually 2nd when hot). Cruise control and climate control work like a dream. I just put 3,000 miles on the car and changed the oil for the first time last night (used 20w50) and with the splash pan removed noticed that everything underneath the car seems to be in top condition as well. It will need the front oil seals at some point due to light seepage, but in the month I've owned it I have only had 2 or 3 pinhead-size oil drips on my garage floor, so the seal can probably wait until another repair dictates.

Changing the plugs and wires was an ordeal and took me 4 hours - I wouldn't doubt if they were original too, or at least very old. Each wire disintegrated as I pulled on it, no joke. I had to bend each boot and crack the spark plug insulator within so that I could break and rip off the top half of the boot. Once the top was ripped off, exposing the shattered spark plug, I had to use 3 bugle-head screws driven in between the remaining boot and spark plug very slowly with a stubby screwdriver. Then I grabbed 2 of the 3 screws with a pair of pliers in each hand and wrestled with every ounce of my energy in order to get the remaining piece of boot off. My knuckles were bleeding pretty quickly. Once the boots were removed, I used my finger to suction a straw to the crevice tool on my vacuum cleaner. With my mini suction tool, I carefully vacuumed each spark plug recess and got all brittle plastic and broken ceramic insulator out of there. Then removing the plugs was incredibly hard - I used a 1/2 inch breaker bar with a 3/8 inch reducer to break each one loose. Fortunately, the threads in the cylinder head were not damaged, and lubricating the new plugs with WD-40 greatly assisted installation of the new plugs. The old plugs, by the way, looked fantastic - the gap was HUGE, I mean 3 times what it's supposed to be, but the terminals were dry with no oil, no blackening, no soot, just a very nice off-white color with all electrodes and insulators intact, though very worn looking. Again, I wouldn't doubt if these plugs had been in the car for 118,000 miles and 13 years. The cap and rotor were atrocious too - I don't know how the car ran so well. Interestingly, changing all these things did not result in any noticeable idle improvement.

The exterior condition overall is pretty amazing, with the exception of some minor paint issues which I'll get to in a minute. There is no rust at all on the car; the previous owner only had it in IL for 2 years, the original owner before that was from TX. The paint is all original and I really can't believe how shiny it is. If not for the very light scratches you can find if you look really hard in the right light at the right angle, you would swear the car has been repainted. But it hasn't. Many times at a stoplight I will notice that my paint looks better than the brand new car sitting next to me. It probably helps that I did a thorough wash and used Zymol HD Cleanse followed by their paste cleaner wax.

The interior leather, aside from very light dullness on the front seat bottom cushions, looks almost new. As for the back seat, you'd swear nobody ever sat in it because the leather looks practically new. I just refinished the center wood (shifter console, ashtray, and a/c controls) and prefer my new finish to the original which was severely cracked. Once I re-dye the front leather seat bottoms and steam clean (and possibly dye) the carpets you will be hard pressed to tell the interior from new. Oh, and you can eat out of the trunk.

The Becker radio was not operational and I gutted it in favor of a $27.00 manual tune am/fm cassette from WalMart. My system used the external amps mounted in the trunk, and selecting the cheap-o radio gave me a low power to feed into the amps in order to keep the existing speaker wiring (in my experience a higher-powered deck would have resulted in distorted signal). I know you won't believe me, but it actually sounds great (active-bass sytem with woofers in the doors). I use an external iRiver mp3 player with digital FM tuner plugged into the deck's front auxiliary input jack and I am all set. I will eventually upgrade to a higher-end in-dash cd/mp3 deck; my current setup is a temporary fix until I am ready to gut all the wiring. To be honest, it sounds so good I might just leave it for a while.

When I got the car home, I noticed the previous owner's description of the vehicle's exterior as "almost flawless" was not in line with reality. From 5 or 10 feet away, the car looks fantastic, but as I washed and waxed the car I noticed a few little gouges and scrapes on the rear driver side door and wheel arch, as well as some gouges on the rear passenger door. I don't know why they aren't very apparent right away; probably the color of the car or the shiny glare from the rest of the paint causing a distraction. 3 or 4 tiny gouges were actually so deep that it appeared a very small amount of rust was forming inside of them. In addition to the paint issues, the console and a/c wood was extremely cracked despite the seller's claims that the interior was in super condition. He made no mention of the cracked wood but somehow found a way to mention that the piping on the armrest was cracked (huh?). In hindsight, with my prior Mercedes experience I should have known at least the console wood was going to be cracked, but anyway...

I confronted the seller because if he had disclosed the flaws I probably would have bid under $4,000 rather than click his "Buy It Now" of $4,200. He actually allowed me to return the car and said he would refund my $500 deposit and all money - the problem is that I would have to drive the car back and pay for my own gas, food, expenses, and return airfare. That's nice and all, but I really love this car and explained to him that his inaccurate description led me to bid higher than I would have if the flaws had been properly disclosed. I was hoping he would offer me $200 or $300 to appease me (and I would have used the funds to correct the flaws), but at this point he is just ignoring me. Am I splitting hairs here?

Anyway, despite the flaws which bug me (I wanted and thought I was getting a "nearly flawless" car) I still really like the car. Again, it is in fantastic shape considering the year and mileage. So far I have spent $400 or so for the first 30 days and 3,000 miles of driving on the following:

inspection
cap/rotor/wires/plugs
air filter
rxp additive
tie rod end
am/fm cassette
wood stripper and urethane

I look forward to gaining additional information from this site. I wish it was here years ago when I went through the school of hard knocks on my other Benzes. I have either direct or indirect experience with the following, and look forward to contributing my $.02 as well:

126 valve stem seals
114 shocks
leather interior dye
wood refinishing
stereo replacement
126 conversion to R134a
126 fuel pump replacement
126 monovalve

As my wife would agree, I change cars like socks and have owned many other (lesser) cars through the years. With the exception of newer cars under warranty (like our Honda Odyssey) for the most part I have always maintained and repaired them myself. I'm always interested in learning more, and this site will be a great help!

Cheers.