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I bought my first Mercedes on Saturday, a 1981 300sd! I'll be using it as a commuter so I can put less miles on my E36, but ill be having some fun with it as well. I work for a company that sells diesel additives, so I will be using the car to measure the performance of our products.
The car was owned by the PO for 15 years. He sold it to his mechanic after becoming fed up with repair bills and issues, particularly tranny issues. He had a new tranny put in a couple years ago, and when it started leaking he sold it to his mechanic. The mechanic found a warped pan, replaced it with a new one, and posted it on craigslist where I found it.
The car has rust bubbles on the back of the rear wheel wells and on the front of the frame-rails. I have a friend who fixes rusty plow truck frames so he will help me fix the frame, otherwise I will neutralize and seal off the other rust for now.
The mechanic put nice fresh seats out of a parts car, and included some updated headlights as well. I may sell the headlights and buy euro headlights. The woods all messed up inside so I will probably do something about that as well. The outside is pretty clean other than some faded clear on top of the door pillar and a damaged fender flare. There is some corrosion on the chrome under the grill, but its mostly hidden when the hoods closed. I will get the car detailed and try to replace the chrome trim without spending too much.
I also found a clunk in the rear diff when looking at the car on the lift, so Ill need to find one of those. I lowered the asking price due to this finding.
I will start off with a bunch of maintenance, and then go onto fun stuff. It needs the turbo rebuilt, but the kit was thrown in with the car. I have some sound equipment I will install, and some newer wheels I might polish and mount up. Ill definitely lower the car, maybe even bag it if i can put together the components without spending too much.
I wont go crazy with it until it proves reliable, I bought it for $750 so I wont be surprised if turns out to be a PITA. It doesn't blowby excessively and the tranny shifts smooth, so I'm hoping it will run well. I will enjoy the hell out of this car, I'm very excited to start driving it! I'm getting plates and picking it up on Saturday.
I'll also be turning up the boost on this car. I have some 3" exhaust piping and a resonator, as well as a boost gauge and manual boost controller I can use. Ill be ordering up an EGT gauge as well. I need to learn more about fueling, but from what I have read so far I can get slightly bigger elements to make more power using the stock turbo
04-26-2017, 01:31 AM
