MBDiesel.net - An Owner's Journey

I must simply do better than that.

Let's see, the past 8 weeks have been chock-full of Mercedes-related work, trips, etc. Over the holidays, the wagon traveled from Atlanta to Columbus, GA and back, then to Huntsville, AL and back, and then back to Huntsville again for New Year's Eve. The final trip to and from Huntsville netted me over 26.5 miles per gallon - love the manual transmission conversion for that. When I got back, I was off on an 1100 mile trip to Florida and back with Mathieu and our friend Thomas for some emergency home repairs. It's nice to be a passenger in a W123 sometimes instead of the driver - especially when it's a very clean '85 300D turbodiesel.

In other wagon news, she lunched a glow plug about 2 weeks ago after temps swung down into the low teens. I went out to get her started before heading off to the shop, and gave her 2 glows before starting her up - she had sat for 4 days or so previously and was completely cold-soaked, so it was the nice thing to do. She roared to life, thumping on one hole two or three times, and then I noticed the blinking glow plug light in the dash.

Why they always seem to pick the coldest day of the year to eat a glow plug, I'll never know. Fortunately, I had spares, and resolved the issue minutes after arriving at the shop.

The 240D will be needing at least a set of front brake pads soon, and possibly even rotors. I'll need to look at the car this weekend so I can get things ordered next week.

The 280S and the 220 lie dormant, though it's nearing time to bring the 220 back to life - as soon as I find the power steering pump I procured for it.

The 300SD was briefly resurrected about 3 weeks ago - gave her a jump and a glow, and she fired right up. Sadly, it's nearing time to part with her - we have too many mouths to feed, and she's still got life left to give to somebody else. It's not right for her to sit in our driveway unused.

We had a lot of traffic at the shop before the year ended. Most of it was effective at supplanting our current long-term project car from the top of the priority list - a lot of regular customer's daily drivers rolling through with critical fix-me-now problems. We've seen C126 dogbone mounts ripped off the frame by other shops, a T123 with a snapped camshaft, another T123 with 5 bad glow plugs (resistances measured in megaohms on 4 of them, high 80s for the 5th - spec is 0.7!), failed master cylinder in a W108, and a long, long list of other maladies.

Today we performed a full suspension swap on another daily driver w123 sedan - a lot of bull work, but it keeps you warm throughout the day.

As far as how things are going in the shop, I'm constantly learning new things, whether it be about the cars themselves or how to work on them. I'm not feeling inundated or overwhelmed, but finally like I'm standing on both feet and meeting the challenges head-on. I'm paying even closer attention to detail than before, all while improving how efficiently and effectively I work.

We're becoming voracious coffee hounds at the shop with the cold weather here recently. We started off this week at only a single 12-cup pot, and today we ended at 2 pots with the 3rd intentionally un-brewed. Donations are graciously accepted!

Now that the plate has been cleared, we're going back to hitting the project car (a single family owned since new W114 280 sedan) full-force. We're approaching severe backlog again, with the next project car already banging on the door. Time to dig down deep, push this one over the hump, and get it back on the road where it belongs, ready for the next 40 years!