Nick Danger

Hello, I am a new, first-time Mercedes owner having just purchased a 1984 380SE that has spent the last two decades either garaged or being used minimally. Showing 74,000 Km, it is clean and straight but showing some age in minor ways. One of those being the interior wood trim elements on the dash and doors. A couple of minor cracks I can live with, but it is coming loose in places, with on small piece at the extreme right end of the dash off completely. My question is what type of adhesive to use to re-fasten the loose pieces? I may just remove the pieces entirely, clean off the remaining old adhesive and start from the beginning? Contact cement?

Nick Danger

I purchased the vehicle from my brother, who bought it from an old gent who was no longer driving it. It had been sitting in a garage in Vancouver for almost a decade. He wasn't getting much use out of it where we both work in northern Alberta so the plan was to move it to a residence he keeps in Phoenix where it would be of more use. The opportunity for an interesting road trip with somebody else footing the gas bill came to me and off I went. To make a long story short I wrote him a cheque shortly after my return so I am now the proud owner of a 30 year old car that's parked in Phoenix. I will return there in a couple of months and move the vehicle to my own residence in British Columbia's Okanagan Valley.

A couple of things came to my attention on the trip south, and I have a couple of additional questions:

1.) The front seats are a little hard, not particularly suited to the long drives I have in store for the car. Could this be a result of the padding compressing over time? I can't imagine that the designers of a 'luxury' vehicle would not make driver/passenger comfort a priority.

2.) The car seemed reluctant to find lower gears when accelerating to pass or navigating at lower speeds. Depressing the gas pedal right to the floor was usually required. I took to manually down-shifting myself when hill-climbing and passing at highway speeds but it was a bit of a slug around town. Is the transmission in need of some maintenance or adjustment? When my brother bought it after it had sat idle for some years he had all the fluids throughout the vehicle changed so I'm assuming transmission fluid was on that list as well. Any ideas?

3.) There is some talk on this forum of switching to larger wheels. Is this strictly a cosmetic move or are there benefits in performance to be gained? One of the things on my list when I go to pick the car up is new rubber so I'm wondering about larger wheels/tires than the 14"s that are on it now.

4.) Is there anything else related to the age of the vehicle and the fact that it hasn't seen many miles in the last fifteen or so years that I might want to look at?