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Sept 19, 2017 18:56:13 GMT
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Hi! It's UK gallons, US would be 31.3 - or for us continentals 7.5l/100km. Rear end is a 3.07, auto trans. Milage is so good, mainly because I was taking it easy & steady, many times I didn't exceed 60MPH. Traffic was light, no traffic jams - perfect conditions for good mileage. On day-to-day duty I'm mostly in the 8.5l/100km range (33.3 MPG imperial / 27.7 US).
I like my diesel, despite all the bad press...
Milage: 1.012.800km
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Sept 19, 2017 20:53:00 GMT
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Back from a 2125km round trip, no dramas for either my back or the car. 37.6MPG - nice! And how many jacks?  |
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lightyearman
Part of things
GYJDM - Grimsby based Japanese car club - Find us on Facebook
Posts: 639
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Sept 19, 2017 22:05:16 GMT
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I went to Berlin for the first time last week - still some real old Taxis earning there keep! saw a W123 240d saloon working outside the central station a few nights in a row. I've got a picture somewhere
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'89 Honda CRX siR Glassroof Flint black fully restored track beasty
'90 Nissan S13 Pignose - pass the mig wire
'86 Mini - matt orange, 13" Wellers, Project 2018
'97 LDV Convoy home built camper/tramper van
'04 Saab 9-5 Aero HOT. Anyone want it?
'91 Honda VFR400 NC30 17,000 km from new
'87 Honda XR80 4 stroke baby crosser
'03 Mini Cooper S - honestly, they are fun...
'15 VW T5.1 LWB daily brick
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Sept 20, 2017 8:45:04 GMT
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Sept 20, 2017 9:29:17 GMT
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Nice. |
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Sept 22, 2017 16:00:13 GMT
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The island of Rügen, well worth a visit... But back on topic; not only does the windscreen still leak, it's also completely sand blasted - after about 1 year/45.000km. Driving against a low sun is no joy... But this time - this time I'm trying this myself. I'm fed up of throwing a bunch of money at trained monkey idiots. The money they demand for such an easy task is ridiculous! So - I bought this, the first tool for the job; a pneumatic oscillating cutter...  Also going to buy a pneumatic glue cardrige press and a pair of suction thingys to lift the glas... Cheers, Jan |
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Sept 23, 2017 16:11:48 GMT
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So, bit more preservation work today... My initial plan was to just remove the inner wing guards, to remove dirt and muck that collects behind them. Then I spotted an issue - and removed the wing...  This is an issue that concerns all Mercedeses from the 70's to at least 1996. Mercedes used a bitumen based seam sealer on the lower part of the a-pillars. Only there - and always. Very strange. Now the issue is; the bitumen seam sealer was applied BEFORE the shells had been dipped in primer. Bitumen ages - once it gets brittle, it's an invitation for all sorts of desaster... I spotted a patch of loose bitumen sealer, so I removed it all...  As you can see, there's a LOT going on with the a-pillar, a lot of overlapping joints... And you can actually see, that there's only bare metal where the sealer once was:  Sometimes you can strip this sealer with your fingers, comes of in huge brittle bits... In my case, only a few spots were loose. Someone's put a thick coat of wax on there before me. So that's done a lot of good here. The quality of the panels is good, they seem to have been phosphated - else I think there would be a LOT more rust under the seam sealer. I was lucky to catch it in time, no huge rust issues here. I brushed Owatrol Oil on, pushed it in all the joints. After it's dryed, I'll put on some good paint and then proper polymer seam-sealer. Only doing this side now, the other has to wait a bit longer... Also put in thinner spring pads - sits much nicer now, with a bit of rake. No pictures, I'll take some soon. That's all for now... If you love your W124 and want to keep it for a long time, I'd say - do as I did. Take off the wings and fix this! I've seen cars with BIG holes there... It's an developing issue, those cars are now MUCH beyond theyr intended life span, I expect to see a lot of rotten a-pillars in the future (it's very hard to spot, hardly anyone ever takes out the mud guards). Cheers, Jan |
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A-Pillar is painted & seam sealed, no pictures, as I was doing it after work and no mojo to take photots of paint... Since the dark time of year is approaching fast, it is time to finally takle an issue that I ignored for a while. Basically, ever since I got the car  The illumination of the gauge cluster. On facelift cars, the illumination was improved a lot. It's done via acrylic light conductors, which guide the light from the rear to the front of the gauges. On facelift cars, it looks like this:  ^hard to see; the clear conductor forms a "U" shape around the bulb. On pre-facelift cars, it looks like this, most of the times:  Why? No idea... Now the easy solution is to just swap the gauges into a newer cluster and be done with it. BUT. The newer clusters are of a (very) dark brown colour. The pre-facelift clusters are actually black. I want to keep it black. It's been there for almost 30 years and over a million kilometers... So - let's try the hard way. As you can see in the top pictures, I removed the light conductors and theyr cover (the white plastic bit). The clusters are shaped differently, but - if you remove a bit of material here & there, the newer light conductor swaps into the older cluster. The pins line up. The basic shape is the same. The next picture is the old style black cluster. On the left side is the new style light conductor, on the right the burned old one:  Without any other mods and the conductor not firmly in place, there's allready a big difference! And the same viewed form the top; you can see that the new style conductor does a far better job of catching the available light from the bulb:  That's partly because the top of the cluster, above the bulb, has melted away. The new style conductor's white cover/lid/reflector or whatever you like to call it, extends over the bulb. The old one doesn't. This was done on a test-piece, but I'm positive I can improve the illumination of the cluster that's in the Taxi right now with a couple of easy-ish modifications. Whilst keeping the original cluster More on that, once it's done Cheers, Jan |
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how do you deal with the heat from the bulbs?....do you use leds, or different material on the reflectors?....
It is amazing how melted the old ones are!
JP
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I know its spelled Norman Luxury Yacht, but its pronounced Throat Wobbler Mangrove!
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Since the newer conductors rarely melt - I guess someone else has done the problem solving for me  Since the bulbs stayed the same. Or maybe it's because the old ones are inefficient to begin with, that people turn the dimmer all the way up all the time - I don't know. But for now, I'm not going to use LEDs. I don't like LEDs very much. Should I find out I'm melting the newer conductors too, they'r an option though. Cheers, Jan |
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So turns I was not wrong - but mistaken... I looks like the better light conductors had been introduced earlier. The Taxi's gauge cluster is stamped 4/89, which is probably the month of production - or pretty close. Anyway - it's very, very likely still the original. And it's got the better light conductors. But with a black housing. Nice! However, after 3 decades and a million km - they don't look so fresh anymore   I re-painted the cluster, like it was done form factory. Resp. at VDO's.  ^it really did look just like that before; as I someone's had a go with a rattle can... Amazing! Then I glued a pair of well preserved 2nd hand light conductors on...  And here's about how it looked before:  And that's how it it now:  So bright I have to turn it down I'm atually thinking about adding a switch to turn off the illumination, since I always drive with the lights on. And at day, I don't need the speedo to be illuminated. That might save a lot of melting issues. Well - or LEDs. Cheers, Jan |
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Time to make it complicated! Wire in one of those light sensors that are used for the headlights, but just for your dash. |
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That's a superb transformation.
If we're taking needless modifications, you could graft in one of the Saab buttons that turned off all dash illumination except the speedo, or the even more stupid "bright" button as used on my Impreza - which only changes the brightness of the digital clock!
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I thought about this "night panel" thing, actually... But this would require some serious modifications to the gauge cluster. If you look close, you can just about make out the shadow of the needle; all gauges are illuminated from the front, there's only 2 bulbs for all of them. The light conductors literally shine on the gauges... I was never really aware of this, until I replaced them. Clever, cheap, genius - not sure And we have an issue; the trip meter reset never worked. When I pulled the speedo, I pushed the lever - and it actually reset the trip meter. But now it has stopped counting... D'oh! The odometer is still counting though, all good. But... I want to investigate. It's irritating. Cheers, Jan |
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Oct 21, 2017 15:17:35 GMT
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Hi! The heater blower started to squeal a little, mostly when cornering. Time to take preventive measures, before it's too late. Ripped a big hole in the engine room...  Wiper assembly needs to be removed to gain access to the blower. A good opportunity to have a look inside and re-grease everything. Most wiper gearboxes run on nothing a but crunchy remains of what once was grease. No wonder after 30 years of service...   This is the beauty of the early cars; they have wiper gearboxes that can be serviced. Later cars have crimped gearboxes (with a plastic "turtle back") that are very hard to take appart. Apparently. I never bothered. Whilst the whole lot was out, I was able to cast a look at the heater core. This car always had this problem with not a lot of air geting through the heater. Now that I was able to look at the heater core, it confirmed my suspicion. Completely blocked with dirt... I guess that's a downside of ultra-high-milage cars. Hard to see in a picture, but the heater core evaporator's matrix is full of dust and dirt and partially blocked.  I didn't bother to clean it, since the evaporator needs replacement anyway... And if I remove the heater unit, I'm going to replace anything inside anyway (since it's a major task). Also greased the wiper motor. I was a little surprised to see a plastic gear here...  ...but it seems to do the job just fine. Greased it with Bosch silicone grease. Put all back together - and it all was like nothing had happened. Except less noise, the wiper doesn't rattle anymore and moves a lot faster. All good, all part of "things you should do when owning a W124". There's nothing worse than a slow mono-wiper. Nothing! Well, except W116 & W126 wipers. Not because they are bad, but because of their spastic movement, makes me scream everytime. Anyway, the blower received a dash of oil, that's usually all that's needed. And I know, what blower motor I need, in case I have to replace it. Since there are two versions that don't interchange. Cheers, Jan |
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Hi! Long time no see... That's mainly because I work 6 days a week, 55h and more. Just don't have the time & mojo to work on my own cars... But; oil chnage #4 this year was due, so I did that. And since I had a lift at work, I also applied about 2l of Fluid Film to the underside of the car.  I also replaced the burner fleece of the auxiliary heater. It still works absolutely flawless, ignites very well and gets up to full chat pretty quickly (glow plug shuts of after about 15-20 seconds). But... You can still get the fleece for little money, and it does an important job. So why not replace it for every heating season?  ^that's after about pretty much a year of regular use. Occasionally in summer, almost every day during the cold period of the year; 1-2h per day. I'm still amazed that this old heater works so well and reliable. And I had to weld the exhaust once more...  A brace to prevent it from falling off. I also punched in a couple of holes, but I was not willing to weld on 3 more patches. Sounds nice with a couple of holes Milage: 1.020.000 That's all. It would also need an transmission fluid change, but we didn't have the right filter on the shelf. So it'll have to wait a bit longer. Cheers, Jan |
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bsd
Part of things
Posts: 35
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Great to see an update, your content is always of interest! Are replacement exhausts scarce or mega money? If I could weld I'd probably attempt repairs too... but I'm a massive fan of shiny bits, so would likely get a stainless replacement and go without food for a few weeks!
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Thank you! Actually, they can be had for very little money... But somehow, I want to keep this one. I want to see how long you can repair stuff. It's a little experiment, it's not a functionally important bit of the car. So this is a "safe" bit to experiment with on a daily driver. Other bits - I'm a bit less happy to experiment with. And it got a nice tone to it, now that most of the insulation has fallen out Cheers, Jan |
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Was doing the Macmillan 4x4 Challenge one year in my old 4.0L P38. Somewhere I managed to lose the back box, but at around two in the morning, in a Welsh forest stage of the rally, climbing a logging track in low box, she sounded fantastic! |
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Nothing major happened, apart from a necessary transmission fluid change. And - nothing to report here either. But I though it was worth mentioning that the oil smelled, looked and feeled like new. Not a single piece of dirt, no a hint of abrasion. Usually on old transmissions, I find a hint of dust-fine particles in the oil. Not the case here. So I guess the transmission is in good to very good condition.  Have a bunch of nice holidays! Cheers, Jan |
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The illumination of the gauge cluster.
Since the bulbs stayed the same. 
