Ownership Verified: My first car is a Benz

Looks nice and original. What's the haze in the windscreen, I hope it's not under the laminate?

That's an 80s model year car, right? I thought all of them had black (plastic) side strips and mirrors. The same as the front bumper.

You should get some 15" Kanaldeckels for it. :)

That's just condensation...

and if you had xray-vision you'd see the 15" Kanaldeckels in the trunk :D

Oh and it's built in 1990, they were built like this from '89 to '93, as my old one (1993) looked the same apart from the colour
 
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Good to hear you're all right. And I'm amazed by that Benz. I didn't read the full post at first, and thought you just drove off into a field. Didn't realize you rolled it until I read some of the replies.

And congrats on the Benz 2.0
 
Glad you're okay after such a tumble, grats on the new ride :)
 
Here goes my new car:

http://img16.imageshack.**/img16/7840/img0952ix.jpg
http://img713.imageshack.**/img713/9408/img0953c.jpg
http://img718.imageshack.**/img718/5033/img0956mz.jpg

Its a 230 E with a rotten interior wich smells really bad...
air fresheners are the devil, kids :barf:

But hey it has got a sunroof so you can let the bad smell out :D

Unfortunatlyhttp://img405.imageshack.**/img405/4005/img0955mx.jpg 5 gears would've been better :(


Edit: I forgot about them alloys:
http://img830.imageshack.**/img830/1079/img0958x.jpg
:) that makes up for the interior
 
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http://img718.imageshack.**/img718/5033/img0956mz.jpg

Its a 230 E with a rotten interior wich smells really bad...
air fresheners are the devil, kids :barf:

Needs a second L then :p

J/K, congrats on the car. And those 4spd boxes are like the 5spd boxes without the overdrive 5th gear, so you get similar performance, just a bit mmore noise on the highway. But since the M102 sounds quite nice, that's not a bad thing in my book.
 
Biiig update

Biiig update

So here's a update for the Benz, since i have been working on it a lot in the past 9 months.

http://img818.imageshack.**/img818/9060/img1150n.jpg

It may look dirty on the outside, but that's just to fool everyone :p
And i may be too lazy to wash it regularly :whistle:
On the inside however it's better then ever.

Lets get started:

I changed the oil a month or so after i got it because it had so little oil in it, the dipstick would show me minimum level each time i checked it, and sometimes the check oil light would come on so i figured whatever, just give it new oil, should be done anyhow.
Turns out i should've just poured some oil in the engine and be done with it but if it weren't for the word should i would be rich by now :D

Next on the schedule was the T?V. Because both brake pads and discs front and rear were absolutely shot i had to change them, but that wasn't the problem. The real problem was when I tried to do something on the Benz without using the jellylike mush inside my skull and overtorqued one of the bolts that are supposed to secure the brake caliper onto the wheel carrier by so much, I screwed the threads out.
costa quanta: 40? for a used wheel carrier and about 6 hours of my time to install it.
result: I learned to stop when it feels like it not when you torqued it to the (wrong) specs you remembered off the top of your head.

With this sorted out, the Benz passed the inspection with ease (no visible faults, thats good for a 20 year old car)
http://img577.imageshack.**/img577/9673/p9217160.jpg
:)

After that I bought a automatic antenna, since the manual one that was on the car was broken.
Install was kinda tricky, i had to rip the interior apart to get to the cable wich gives the 12V signal that tells the antenna to go up or down.
http://img843.imageshack.**/img843/8216/img1171x.jpg
Try driving like that :D

By now i drove about 5000 kilometers, every single one a joy in a car better than my mom's 5 year old Opel

?better? is a relative word anyway, if you include headgaskets in that comparison, my Benz clearly would've lost three months ago, because it let about 1L coolant every ten kilometers seep through and right into the fourth pot. I drove 40 km like that, then i couldn't bear it anymore and took the bycicle instead.

After every part needed was ordered (including new oil, only 3000km after changing it), i started taking the head off. Took me about 4 hours and some help actually getting it out of the engine bay.
http://img832.imageshack.**/img832/9223/pa037171.jpg
Vast emptiness...

At that point it was 10pm and it wouldn't matter anyway since I wasn't going to get anywhere without a driveable car so I decided to stay up all night and i would be finished by 3am.

Yeah right. Like that was ever going to happen. I inspected both the block and the head, and found this:
http://img59.imageshack.**/img59/1255/pa037169.jpg
Nice crossthreading, I dig it. Also there was this small imperfection in the head
http://img32.imageshack.**/img32/5023/pa037170klein.jpg
FUCK!
(happens when the PO doesn't change the brown piss wich they thought was coolant, that stuff was OLD)

Ah nevermind, scrape the last bit of cash that's left together and head off to the machine shop.
Two millimeters later:
http://img835.imageshack.**/img835/4271/img1211p.jpg
aaaaahhhh shiny :D

So after everything was put back together it fired right up with no problem whatsoever, and I drove another 3000km until now. I don't want to blow my own horn but i think that's pretty good for someone who has never seriously worked on a car before.:cool:

Afterall it is a great car, it was just not taken care of enough. Well that changed, mostly because I have a bet running that I can keep this car running for another ten years, and I dont like the thought of someone else driving MY car if i ever sell it.;)
Well i hope i dont have to one day.
 
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Oh, and maybe i'll take a proof pic tomorrow, i can't belive no one has asked for it in EIGHT months! C'mon guys, really? ;)
 
Nice job fixing the engine!
smiley_thumbsup.gif

How many kms does it have on it?

Btw, has the smell gone?
 
Thanks!
It has run 186.000kms (edit: now that you got me interested and i looked it up, probably about 100000+ less than your sec?) and driving with the sunroof+windows open 90% of the summer really helped a lot, you can't smell a thing anymore

VetteBoss, please do tell me why my cylinder walls look bad, i don't have the mechanical knowledge yet to tell. I just thought it is a good thing when the factory crossthreading is still intact.
(or do i mean a completly different thing when i say cylinder walls, because i think of the cylindrical surface along which the piston moves up and down)
 
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Indeed, I'm a couple thousand shy of 300 000 kms.
 
Cylinder walls were really bad. Ouch!

The cross hatching pattern in the cylinder bores is a good thing, it helps retain oil for improved lubrication. The fact that is still present after so many kms means that engine has very little wear and should be good for a long time yet.

Edit: And I see the OP responded, oops, anyways, here is some reading on the subject if you are so inclined. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honing_(metalworking)
 
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Indeed, I'm a couple thousand shy of 300 000 kms.

Make sure to grab a picture when you reach that milestone.

Whoever reaches the next hundredthousand km on the odometer first wins!! :p
*runs outside and drives away*

The cross hatching pattern in the cylinder bores is a good thing, it helps retain oil for improved lubrication. The fact that is still present after so many kms means that engine has very little wear and should be good for a long time yet.

Edit: And I see the OP responded, oops, anyways, here is some reading on the subject if you are so inclined. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honing_(metalworking)

Thank you for further explaining that, I only knew that cross hatching is a good thing, but not why.
I think he meant the surface of the cylinder head, that really looked like s**t.
 
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:thumbsup: Benz is looking good, shame about the head and gasket. Can I join in on your race to the next milestone? I'm on 283000 now, and about 1100 gets added each week :p :burnrubber:.

Ofcourse you can!

Also you will probably win with those weekly kms :D
 
A little late, but better now than never, here come the proof pictures:
Outside
http://img4.imageshack.**/img4/9144/img1313vh.jpg
and inside
http://img812.imageshack.**/img812/7991/img1327b.jpg

And some random pictures i took while i was at it:
http://img708.imageshack.**/img708/269/img1317pk.jpg
(new avatar)
http://img20.imageshack.**/img20/3827/img1326yi.jpg
http://img195.imageshack.**/img195/8061/img1323oi.jpg
these are more recently that the one in the update above, you can see that i also painted over some of the biggest rustspots.
 
Looks awesome. I see you're taking good care of it. These things love to be taken care of. :)

I especially like the rust-fixes. Pretty uhmm honest.
 
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So i made a list of what i want to do on the benz in 2012:

-Replace the fuel injectors, I suspect they are leaking since sometimes in hot weather I have a hard time starting the engine because of fuel that leaked into the cylinders while it stood. And I think a leaky injector is also causing it to drop about 20 rpm in idle every 15 seconds. (I think of it like a tap that leaks and a drop falls down every 15 seconds, causing it to be too enriched) This problem has solved itself with rising temperatures, i still need to tackle it, but i will get around to it sometime autumn

-Throw some new seals/gaskets at the intake starting with the Injector seals and see if the stagnating at around 2k revs stops. See above.

-Change all the fluids and filters in it.

-Tackle the little rust it has, mainly the jack points for the factory jack and some other minor areas. (This includes taking off all the plastic panels that could hide rust)

-Check every rubber part in the suspension, that stuff is 22 years old.

-Maybe paint over the obvious rust fixes on the driver's side in body colour.

-Try to find the problem that's causing the radio to sometimes only use the right speaker at low volume, then switching back to both speakers and since I turned the volume up to hear the right speaker it is now LOUD. And annoying.

-Tear the interior apart to find the rattles that are somehow changing their location every now and then; maybe there is some plastic part in there wich works its way down the A-pillar. The rattles are somehow gone, don't ask me why :dunno:

If I can work my way trough this list depends mainly on how much i can spend and how long i can live without transportation. Although I need to meet the first five goals mo matter what. Just because these are major.

On my general automotive agenda for 2012 is to
A: look for a beat-up but original dirt cheap classic mercedes. Pre 1985 and no w201 or w126 (I don't want no plastic on my classic Benz :))
or B: buy back my old 220E wich has A/C, had more power, less fuel consumption and was only 5 days older than me. Thats 4 reasons to buy it. I tend to black out the reasons NOT to rescurrect it tough :rolleyes:.
 
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