1988 Mercedes Benz 300ce

I’m horrible at build threads so we’ll start easy.

i needed to do some preventative maintenance on my DD a 2012 Mazda5, I was looking around for something cheap and bulletproof to drive while it was down. I was looking specifically at w201 and w124 chassis Mercedes as I’ve had really good luck with them. The coupe and convertibles had caught my eye but with prices $4k and up to enter I was beginning to look elsewhere. 

Around thanksgiving a $1000 CE showed up in Indy CL so I hit the guy up but being a six hour round trip he and I couldn’t make our schedules match and it disappeared. It reappears for more money at a different number (same pictures) so I hit him up; again, couldn’t make schedules match. Shows back up in February for $700 but he won’t reply to me, I have my brother text him and he says $500 come get it now or I’m putting it back in the garage. I leave Toledo, go by my house and get the truck tools and a dolly, pick up my brother in Lima and head for Indy. It’s nice, for a $500 Car.

Runs well but pukes trans fluid as soon as it’s in gear. No biggie, I’ve swapped four or five trans on these.

158,000 miles, original owner gave it to his daughter whose husband sold it to me. Pick up a 100,000 mile trans at the JY for $125 and pull the old one.

Only to find that the replacement trans housing has cracks around it like a spiral ham, no problem the JY has two more; both cracked. Doh! Find a good trans in Columbus, 85k miles. Drive down Friday afternoon, grab it drive home swap fluid and start stabbing it in. Saturday morning by now I sleep awhile then button it up. New everything that came out while I was in there. Start it and the pan leaks, swap pans, it still leaks. Take a break and order a new pan. New pan comes and doesn’t leak; yay, now the dipstick leaks... Gasket maker to the rescue. 

Swap on some Centras with new tires and go title it.

No hurry supposedly to get it all running and operational; except, the following Thursday my Mazda drops two gears. So the race is on to get the Mercedes going so I can do all the work the Mazda needs and still go to work. I take Monday off and finish everything up.

Put a couple thousand miles on it and swap wheels with the Mazda’s (adaptors) 

New exhaust

At 4500 miles it strands me with a alternator;

And at 5500 a ball joint breaks

So we are at 7700 miles now and every piece of the suspension is new, new driveline, fluids all changed again just cruising. From here it’ll be more of a drive log as a I fix little stuff that needs help. All in at $2800.

nifty little crib stands.  i dig your implementation of angle iron.  W124 is one of the classiest vehicles ever designed

stylngle2003 said:

nifty little crib stands.  i dig your implementation of angle iron.  W124 is one of the classiest vehicles ever designed

On my TE I was swapping the trans and gave myself a concussion wacking my head against the wheel bucket. I couldn’t lay under a car for six months! I’m very careful around them now, but they allow you to set ride height on a lowered car up high enough to slide under

I love this car!

Woody said:

I love this car!

Much appreciated, it’s an under appreciated classic I believe.

Great looking car, especially with the 6 wheels on it.

Sort of a sidebar here, this is info I had a hard time finding so I’m documenting it here. When I had the volks on they rubbed in the front and I kept finding reference to the AMG mod; here it is.

Impressive right? The idea is that you can flare the wheel opening by spacing the fender out. 

Remive thefront trim panel, it pulls straight out (have extra clips, they break $.69 @ the dealer). This is the only rust I have found on this car.

Remove the screw, it’s a 10. Not that kind of “10” screw....

I bought cheapy hardware from menards

The spacers are cut out of unobtanium since AMG doesn’t sell the kit anymore, so I cut mine out of....a cutting board

Yeah, that’s right. I wanted something solid and resilient. The spacers are dirty here because I hd rugged this up previously to keep the tire from dragging

And install...

I’ll  have to update the front of the fender later since my phone died at this point but here is the finished product after sweeping the bumper to match.

It gains an honest .75-1” which is quite a lot. No more rubbing.

In reply to chandler :

I see the potential to apply this idea to other (German) cars...

Thank you!

It's hard to visualize from your photos... I can see where the front spacers went, but where are the ones at the rear of the front fender? Are there two along the bottom edge, or are they both along the fender arch with one at the bottom edge and the other where the trim meets the fender?

chandler said:

Woody said:

I love this car!

Much appreciated, it’s an under appreciated classic I believe.

And I will admit that this thread had me searching Craigslist this morning.

Love this build

Woody said:

It's hard to visualize from your photos... I can see where the front spacers went, but where are the ones at the rear of the front fender? Are there two along the bottom edge, or are they both along the fender arch with one at the bottom edge and the other where the trim meets the fender?

Ok, where I marked in yellow is where the spacers go, basically behind the front wheel at the furthest forward bolt and in front of the wheel at the furthest back bolt. The green is where the bumper connects and it has a SLOT so you can adjust it in and out to meet where the fender has been moved to. Make sense?

The real beauty is that none of that modifies anything permanently. It gains an inch of clearance but doesn’t look like a silly tacked on flare or a pulled fender.

Slippery said:

Love this build

Much appreciated, it’s a cheap beater really but man does it have class. Haha

Is that your because those wheels really set it off!

cdowd said:

Is that your because those wheels really set it off!

I have ten sets of wheels for it, I usually start buying Wheels when I start looking at a car.... those are actually my brothers for his 190e but we test fit them and they do look sharp.

I recently bought a 300sdl for $880, so a lot of that sounds familiar lol. I haven't driven it much yet because the front suspension was in completely terrible shape, but I'm in the process of fixing that right now.

That's a great purchase for the price and love the color. I had a set of Centra on a 560SEC the rounded Centra wheels not flat like yours. They really are period correct wheels. I think I sold them to Mr Suddard.

I tried to buy a bronze 300ce on brown interior late last year. Dude wanted too much with its issues. 

If I could I'd buy every w123, w126, c124, and w140 that I find under $1000. 

chandler said:

cdowd said:

Is that your because those wheels really set it off!

I have ten sets of wheels for it, I usually start buying Wheels when I start looking at a car.... those are actually my brothers for his 190e but we test fit them and they do look sharp.

 

10 SETS!  Good god.  I think we need pics of your inventory. 

Car looks great!

A few sets, you’ve seen the Volk CV-Pro /GR-C hybrids those are 17x7/8 and the Centras that are 15x6.5/7

MAE monoblocks 18x8 et28

Work euroline 18x8.5 et30

BBS AMG RT, they are off the first gen CL55 so there are 500 sets 17x7.5/8.5

Forgeline RS2 17x9.5 et56 from my C4 vette but will adapt well

That’s what I have pics handy of, have some sets of plain 17 AMG Wheels also...

One thing I never liked was the way it sat up in the back, hot rods are cool but I’d like it to sit level. Mercedes uses spring pads as spacers so I had played around with everything I could lay hands on and finally found a w210 part that was the thinnest; still sits up in the rear though.

So I very carefully measured and figured spring rates and..., that’s not true I eyed it up and cut half a spring out.

Perfect. Also, tried the AMG ducktail that I found in Russia and had shipped over here; it’s got the right part numbers but is certainly a fake. 

The drivers front tire is rubbing like crazy due to that damage that you can see, I couldn’t straighten it out enough to not run so I have the centras back on the front. Looks dumb but tires are to expensive to waste. I either need a replacement fender or thinner adaptors.

I was hoping to get back on it tonight but my wife surprised me with tickets to see Tusk, I love Fleetwood Mac so I’m looking forward to this. Maybe Saturday...

that spacer trick is so simple and genius at the same time.  It means nothing but the BBS AMG wheels are my fav by far.

That is nice.  One of my favorite Mercedes chassis.  

Awesome!  I’m a big fan of the CE.  Almost bought one a couple of times,   but never got the deals to work out.