1988 W124 300 TurboD Coupé ''Gold'nBrown'' - intercooling it

And today the car received a good old fashioned hand wash The hard work waxing it last summer payed out - all it needed was a quick once over with water, leathering dry and re-polish with a microfibre cloth





You would not believe how black the water in the bucket was

Feels like spring is approaching fast. Er - no, actually spring never left And only 4000km to go untill the next oil change.

Cheers,
Jan

I've just tiped a big road trip report thingy, the forum software swallowed it - so here's the short version:

I bought this:



To help with the rear suspension renewal.

Gah. Not going to type that again. End of story. It's spring!

Cheers,
Jan

And the obligatory "look-how-much-I-can-spend-on-parts" shot;



This all will go to the rear suspension - busy day of work ahead!

An then I made a little potato-chop on the center console. Don't know yet how to paint it, but I think I prefere it all brown with only the smal plastic covers left black...





I'll paint this as soon as it gets a bit warmer.

Cheers,
Jan

Looking good Jan! Rear suspension looks interesting, hope you do a full report as usual!

Want to do all that on mine too, how similar in setup are the W124 and W126?

Super, I'll get some of those ordered then! I've done the sway bar links a year or so ago so I would dearly hope they are still ok!

Just need to sort the creaking door cards... Any suggestions?
(Apologies for the hijack. Again!)

With spring approaching fast, I thought it was time to chnage to summer tyres. With which intention I loaded the 205/55 tyres in the boot and headed to work. It wasn't until we had two tyres removed, that there was no way we could get the tyres to inflate on the 8" wheels. Not with our very basic tools. Sigh. So back on with the wrong tyres...



So I headed to another garage, where E (3liter) had just pulled the head of his '85 300D. I remembered there being helper rings to inflate tyres - unfortunately not for 16". So I did a few minor jobs and a quick check up on the car. And then assisted with the power of my mind on the head gasket change. And by talking lot's of cow manure of course.



And some more impressions from friday & saturday











And after the head & camshaft were back in place I left, as I had cought a major cold - but the car's runing again and all is well. Apart form the usual smoke screen. This will need further investigating some time

Cheers,
Jan

Today I spontaneously drove into the outskirts of the Black Forrest again - due to a car listed on eBay. Namely a '87 or '88 series one W124 coupé with 62.000km on the clock. It was a sunny, warm day - but still, what was awaiting us was very sad.



I thought "yeah, 62k my ärse!!". But - the milage is genuine. It it wasn't so dirty, it would be a car in brand new-ish condition. NO rust anywhere, no wear - no accident - nothing. And still it is being broken for parts. And there's no way to legaly return it to the road ever again. neither was it involved in drug trafficing, murder or a robbery.

It's a victim of the scrappage sheme. Which is a utter blöödy crying shame that is!!! Excuse the words, but some people are dümb as sh!t!!



So we continued the dirty buiseness and gutted it out. The guy knew what the parts are worth, but we still got good prices - but I mainly came for the genuine MB roof rack:



Also took a perfectly working driver's mirror (30€ - new they cost 500!!)...



...and FINALY after a month long search this car had the wiring loom I was hunting for:



The one to the left is a series 1 loom, the one on the right is a pot-facelift series 2 loom. And what does it do? It switches power back on for the electric windows. If ignition is turned off and the door opened. So you don't have to put the key back in if you forgott to close the windows. It's purely a comfort thing, but I want to have it. This was the last missing piece for the elctric window conversion

I could have taken so much more with me - but it was too sad to do. And I'd rather save my funds instead of throwing them at parts that I don't realy need. And if I need them - it's not like good used parts are mega-rare. I got a hand full of usefull bits - that's enough. And the roof rack has made this car 100% more practical

That's it for now.

Cheers,
Jan

- thanks! I basically have two operating modes when it comes to cars: ignorance and full-on-nerd I once owned a B3 Passat and I could not care less about anything about it

The other thing is that I earn my money with working on W123s and W124s. So one thing sort of leads to another.

Continuing my monoloque... Today was mirror-day.

First discovery: wood screws



Second, as expected: broken mechanismn. Water gets in, the joints corrode, seize and then the die cast breaks.



So I put on the 62kkm mirror on I bought last week; fits like a glove and looks like new inside. Not a slight hint of corrosion. I conserved it with weapons oil, greased the joints and on it went.



Another first; a mirror that can be adjusted with just two fingers

And whilst I was at it, I also investigated the passenger's side mirror. Which is electric. The cardanic joint was broken...





I you look closely, you can see that the unbroken glas is also heated. It's from the TDT engine donor and matches the Coupé's glas. Glas gets warm - everything's working. So not only did I repair it, I also upgraded to heated glas. Which is easy, as the electrics are allready present But the housing is broken as well and tilts too much towards the front... Sooner or later I'll be needing a new mirror.

And I honestly don't know why I didn't grab this one from the 62k Coupé as well...

Cheers,
Jan