MBDiesel.net - An Owner's Journey

Fall is settling upon us here in Georgia, and with the change of seasons comes the rite of passage of every Mercedes diesel enthusiast: valve lash adjustment.

Today I checked the valves on the 300TD wagon - three exhaust and two intake valves needed adjusting. Only 1 exhaust and 1 intake were tight enough that the feeler gauge would not slip in, the other three valves were just a little too snug for my preferences. I'd rather a loose and slightly noisier valve in a daily driver, even though I tend to check valves on our cars twice a year (at most about every 6000 miles for the 240D, and closer to 4000 for the 300TD).

Tomorrow I hope to knock out the 240D. This is about the latest in the year that I've done valve adjustments on our cars, but we've had a lot going on the past few months and I haven't been as diligent as I like. Poor thing's gone almost 8000 miles without an adjustment!

In the last bit of car-related news, I recently resurrected Greta, our 300SD. A few years back, we had custom alternators wound for the 240D and the 300TD. It was a great idea at the time, but the company we used could learn a thing or two about quality. Shortly after the warranty period expired, the 240D's voltage regulator let go. That was right about the time the bearings in the 300TD's alternator started making loud noises, especially when the humidity was high - and let's face it, this is Georgia, so when ISN'T it high?

Also around that time, Donna and I were in the throes of purchasing a house and moving everything to it. In the interest of keeping the daily driver up and running reliably, the bad voltage reg went into Greta, and she donated her good reg to keep the 240D in tip-top shape. Then Greta was driven to our house and parked in the driveway. A few months later, the battery was dead. Fast forward 6 months after that, and I jump-started the car and drove her around the neighborhood a bit - scarcely any juice left for brake lamps.

Well, now the ol' girl has a new battery and a new voltage regulator.

And in some obvious site-related news, I've updated my blogging software from MySQL 4 to MySQL 5, and I'm still in the process of cleaning things up. Bear with me.

Apologies to those who may have visited the site a week and a half ago and found it replaced with an ASCII middle finger accompanied by a soundtrack of someone belching to music. Apparently, MBDiesel.net found itself the target of a Turkish script kiddie group. These things happen from time to time, but I had it resolved within an hour of noticing it. Kudos to ICDSoft's technical support teams for assisting me with restoring the site! It wouldn't have happened easily without them.

Today, I took the 280S out for a spin. I cranked her over last week, and she fired right up! Yesterday, she was evicted from the garage so a guest car could take up residence for the weekend, so today I decided to take her out and about and see what she had decided to break in the past few months of sitting.

There I was, minding my own business (and the idiot lights and gauges in the dash for signs of impending trouble), rocketing down I-285 in the middle of a pack of traffic. Next thing I knew, I had to jam the brakes, and the pedal went straight to the floor without affecting the car's speed at all. Since I've become a little more adept at handling the idiosyncrasies of the average Mercedes Benz jalopy - thanks in part to cars as bad off or worse than the 280S - I downshifted (thank goodnees for Euro cars with manual transmissions) to engage a little more engine braking, and then hovered over the emergency brake pedal in case the car needed additional help. Fortunately, a second attempt at depressing the brake pedal resulted in some brake force being applied to the wheels.

My original plan was to circle I-285 at least twice to burn off a good bit of the old gas in the fuel tank, then refill on the way home with fresh. The brake issue put a sizable dent in those plans, and I headed for home. Continued testing of the brakes along the way yielded similar results - nothing happening on the first push, but relatively full braking on the second and subsequent attempts.

When I pulled off at the gas station to top off (any fresh fuel is a good thing), I felt the temps at the hubcaps. The passenger side wheels were about what I would have expected for a 45 minute joyride in the super-hot temps Atlanta has been experiencing as of late, but the driver's side wheels were rocket-hot. Sticking calipers. So, it looks like I'll need to do a brake bleed at a minimum, and possibly pull the calipers to see what's up.

But - she runs, and runs well!

Got a message from Karl at 300series.com. He was cruising the net and came across the site and invited me to check his out. He's got a lot of good info an write-ups on his site pertaining to w123s, you should go check it out.

Changing the website color scheme became priority one today. I've gotta do something with that header bar, though...

Friday, March 24th, 2006 at around 10:45pm, the 240D ran.

I spent nearly all day wirebrushing parts, bolts, washer, nuts, etc. I installed and aligned the clutch, then attached the transmission to the motor. Next I attached the oil filter housing to the block and ran the oil cooler lines. Then late in the evening, Mat and I decided that the night wasn't over until that motor was back in the car.

240Ds are great - we literally had the motor bolted into the car in under 20 minutes. I've got a lot of pictures that I need to resize and sort through, then I'll be posting them to the site. Hopefully this will happen before the weekend is out.

Also, I've started this new blog on the site so that visitors can feel free to comment on the latest goings on. What that means now is that I will be once again re-vamping the site. I'm sick of the yellow on black, even though it does make it easy to read. This probably won't happen this weekend, but will be in transition over the next 1-2 weeks as time permits.

Donna and I had a good run at the junkyard today - lots of good door checks, even found a replacement seat bottom for the wagon's driver's seat. I'm going to try and get the 240D buttoned up this week, but that's going to take a lot of time after work. Still need to install the tie rods in the 280S, too, and finally get her aligned.

Alright, all the links are offically fixed and routing to the proper pages. They also link back to the linking page that got you there so navigating back and forth is fairly simple. Now I think I'll go back to researching parts I'll need to rebuild the 240D motor this Fall...

Overhauled the site. I got sick of the linear style, and moved to a frames layout. All the old information is still there, and linked, but a lot of internal links still need to be fixed. I'll post another update when that has been done.