The W123 "Estate"

I don't have the time or space for another project car and have left my '67 Volvo untouched for the better part of a month or two. So naturally when I saw a listing on marketplace for 150 W123 "parts cars" sitting in a cornfield outside of Indiana, PA I messaged the guy. The short version of the story is that his uncle was a Mercedes man through and through and acquired well over 150 (primarily W123 and W126) Mercedes that he stashed away in various places. Uncle passed on and the guy I dealt with was helping to liquidate the estate. After perusing the Facebook page he'd set up with pictures of all the cars I picked a wagon (an estate car from an estate of cars, get it?) that looked reasonably intact and unblemished and paypal'd the guy. A few days later my girlfriend, my truck, and a uhaul trailer were on location ready to see if we could get it to start. 

The scene we were greeted with (actually taken after I extracted my car):

Many of these cars are truly parts cars. The remaining turbo wagons looked pretty worse for wear, the earlier cars were in better shape which is how I ended up picking this 1980:

I popped the hood and gave it a look over. There was diesel in the line filter and when I gave the primer a few pumps I could feel fuel pressure. There was no mouse nest in the intake. I put a charged battery in, glowed the plugs a few times (they worked!), and then this happened (with a little sniff of ether):

(Looks like you can't embed imgur video, here's a direct link): https://imgur.com/dgcSs0J

First start in... no one was sure! Somewhere between four and 13 years. I put it in gear and it went into both forward and reverse. Another buyer who was picking up a turbo 300CD pumped up the tires with a bike pump. Then I drove it right onto the trailer:

My Silverado towed it no problem, though some of those hills on 22 really kept my foot to the floor. After getting home I gave it a more thorough inspection. Looks like it had been sitting quite awhile: 

The guy had given me a stack of paperwork including a notarized title, bill of sale, power of attorney declaration, etc... and I registered it today no problem. I did have to clean it up since I have to submit pictures to the state to get approved for antique registration. Here it is after a powerwash:

All in all, not bad for $900 I think. I've always wanted a 300TD but they're just not around here anymore. I don't have much of a plan so far; I'll do all filters and fluids to start, brakes and hoses, tires of course. The SLS and rear springs clearly need attention. The interior needs a THOROUGH cleaning as it has been home to mice for some time. The car was an Arizona car prior to my ownership and the paint is completely shot, it is chalky and was coming off when washed. It also looks like there was a low-quality collision repair done to the front end at some point. The only rust I've found (so far) is the area under the battery. The lower fender, wheel well, etc.. have some rot. 

I have a friend with a rotted out 240 he'd like to get rid of and I'm curious about the manual transmission and manual HVAC controls, so that might be an idea... Mostly I'll just tinker around I think. Pointers and advice always welcome. 

I love these, and have owned a number of W123s. I have a few parts left over from mine, if you need any interior trim or anything else. 

Once I've de-scummed the interior I'll have a better idea of what I need! I'll let you know.

Overall quite the solid S123. Love these cars so much.

Filters, glow plugs and nozzles are my first order on an OM617 car. I've had issues that were traced back to algae as well on a car that was sitting a while.

I've not messed around with SLS but there is a retrofit to standard springs.

That was a really good buy!

Did any of the wagons had the roof rack crossbars? I could not see any in the pictures, but if there are I would go back and buy those ... they used to be $$$$.

Slippery said:

That was a really good buy!

Did any of the wagons had the roof rack crossbars? I could not see any in the pictures, but if there are I would go back and buy those ... they used to be $$$$.

Funny you mention this, when I was vacuuming the interior I lifted the rear seat and found a pair of crossbars hidden underneath. Some of the threads look messed up but maybe they're useable. 

orthoxstice said:

Slippery said:

That was a really good buy!

Did any of the wagons had the roof rack crossbars? I could not see any in the pictures, but if there are I would go back and buy those ... they used to be $$$$.

Funny you mention this, when I was vacuuming the interior I lifted the rear seat and found a pair of crossbars hidden underneath. Some of the threads look messed up but maybe they're useable. 

The car keeps getting better and better!!

The desire for a manual S123 will always be high, but short of grabbing one from overseas, I don't see it ever happening at this point.

Looks like a solid base to start from. An OM606 would feel right at home in there.

Yesterday I had a spare 30 minutes so I changed the oil. I've been thinking about oil change procedure recently and how the ease or difficulty of such is a metric by which I judge if a car is a "good car". Mercedes really got it right on the OM617! Also had to check multiple sources to confirm that, yes, it needs two whole gallons of diesel oil. 
 

Getting under the car was a mixed bag; most of the car is rust free underneath but the passenger side front rocker and wheel well is worse than I thought, sadly. 
 

Also, just a reminder to myself here, the trans is low on fluid by a quart or two. 

Quick picture of the passenger side cleaned up. You can see the worst rust on the car in the lower fender.

I had a half hour today so I degreased and powerwashed the engine compartment. I can't stand trying to work on stuff covered in gunk. For reasons I don't understand the spigot in the garage has both hot and cold supply plumbed in on ball valves. It's pretty cool to use hot water through the power washer! 

As far as I can tell the car is complete under the hood. It even has that failure-prone auto climate heater valve still (I have not tested its function yet). I'll do fuel filters next and then trans filter and fluid. After that will be brakes and tires, then maybe rear suspension.

Here's everything I've found in the car so far, cross bars included. If anyone needs brake shoes for a 50's Buick, let me know:

In reply to orthoxstice :

I've been looking for a 123 coupe or wagon. Could you give me his info? 

What a fantastic looking car! It's wild you were able to drive it onto the trailer under its own power.

I'm curious about the wear on the spare tire cover.   My garage also is plumbed for hot and cold water and has two drains, likely for a washer and drier since there is also a gas line.  

Thanks for saving this.

Maybe you should join the SPOC.

Society for Preservation of Old Cars

yupididit said:

In reply to orthoxstice :

I've been looking for a 123 coupe or wagon. Could you give me his info? 

I shot you a message; the coupes that are left are probably in better shape than the remaining wagons generally but I didn't have a ton of time to look at other cars when I was there. 

akylekoz said:

I'm curious about the wear on the spare tire cover.  

I also wonder about that, it's very strange. Either Arizona sun, PA moisture, or some combination of the two. Perhaps a previous owner had a dog that rode around in the back and liked to put its head on the cover? 

Speaking of the back I went to do some work on the car today and got completely sidetracked by the inop rear wiper. I got the tailgate apart and dismounted the wiper and motor after some confusion. For anyone doing this job in the future, the clip that goes around the shaft through the rear glass does not squeeze together, it pries apart! Anyway the whole assembly had fallen apart:

The motor mounting bolts had unthreaded and fallen into the tailgate. Luckily they were still there, wedged in a corner. I cleaned things up, added some fresh grease, and reassembled with Loctite:

Success! The rear wiper is fully functional now and runs in intermittent and constant and parks itself. I'll need to diagnose both the front and rear fluid misters but that can be another day. I then added some hydraulic fluid to the SLS tank which was empty, hoping to find that the SLS pump works but leaks. No fluid is pumping unfortunately so looks like I'll need to rebuild the SLS pump at minimum. Then I changed the fuel filters which is extremely easy on these cars. I added about two gallons of fresh diesel and some ATF to the tank. The gauge says I have half a tank. The fluid coming through the lines is a dark amber color. I'll keep adding fresh diesel and random lubricants as I go: 

I'd say it was high time:

Another day, another exploded component reassembled; but, this time with more complications! 

I decided to spend a little of this afternoon figuring out why the headlights, taillights, etc... are completely inoperative. A quick check at the harness and I had no power to low, hi, or fog and a confirmed good path to ground. I decided to check the headlight switch as I'd heard these are failure prone. I found this: 

That's the back half of the switch clearly not connected to the front half (the part that turns and routes power to the appropriate contacts. Okay, mystery solved! Surely I can just cram this back together? Based on a quick google I determined that the advice across the years (it's kind of wild to read peachparts forum posts from like, 2001 about these cars) has been to pull a new switch out of a junkyard car (not happening in W. PA), or buy a new one. Looking at the components, I figured it was worth a try to see if I could get it back together. Here's what I was dealing with:

Basically, that right bit has to slide down into the left bit, but it has to both be indexed properly so the lower contacts go where they're supposed to AND have a ball and spring detent holding tension. That is not possible with the left bit still fully assembled and so:

I disassembled it. Use a drill to take the head off the brass rivet and then force the white plastic piece out of the bakelite piece. This allows you to insert the ball and spring detent from the outside with the spinning bit in place and then insert the whole assembly back into the bakelite. This is fiddly work and took a few tries to get right. Definitely one of those situations where you need three hands, but I got by with two. Once complete, this makes the final problem apparent. You can not join the assembled switch to the cover piece without the spinny bit jumping up and off the contacts due to the foglight detent spring. So how can it be assembled again? More drilling!

Here you can see a hole I drilled close to the axis of the switch, but not close enough to mar the cast detent ramps inside. This allowed me to run a long pick down, hold tension on the switch assembly, slide the cover on, and seat the two together. Finally I placed the whole thing in the vice to keep it clamped and peened the cover back in over the bakelite. I used a chisel of proper size and made sure the peens were nice and deep. Result:

Okay, a little anti-climactic (and I just realized I'd left the driver's side unplugged from when I was checking voltage) but we're back in business. Headlights, taillights, plate lights, marker lights... it's working. 

So there you go; the W123 (and earlier I believe) headlight switches ARE repairable. 

Man I love it when you can just fiddle around with something and get it working again. Hard to do that now with even 100k cars being made to throw away after 100k miles.

brad131a4 (Forum Supporter) said:

Man I love it when you can just fiddle around with something and get it working again. Hard to do that now with even 100k cars being made to throw away after 100k miles.

Agreed and I found myself thinking about just that as I was fixing it. It's funny but I think at this point in my life these problems that need to be fixed are more fun to me than actually driving the cars.

I remember cleaning the contacts on my w126 window switches. Everything can be serviced in this era Mercedes. 

In reply to orthoxstice :

I have a current project like this, now that most of the hard stuff is done, and I've heard it run a dozen times I'm a lot less interested in it. 
 

It's great you were able to service and save the switch. I bet the satisfaction level upon completing it was quite high. 

Great work! Post a few glamor shots on the "wagon elitist jerks" Facebook page, they'll eat it up lol.

I'm supposed to be back to work this week but the contractors did not finish re-carpeting the office on time so we're fully remote this week AND since the students haven't even returned from break yet, there's not much to do. Some parts had arrived in the mail this weekend so I took an opportunity to do some maintenance. First up: change the power steering fluid and filter. Yes, the Mercedes of this era have a power steering fluid filter; can't say I'd seen that before. Fluid quality at the beginning of the day: 

Black as molasses and with some visible goo in the reservoir. First step was to drain the system via the steering box. Some on the internet recommend sticking the return hose in an empty container and running the engine while filling with fresh fluid, but I'm by myself and did not want to risk running the pump dry or some other disaster. Plus, I figure if Mercedes put a drain there it was for a reason: 

System empty-ish, how's the filter look?

Not good at all. These filters are pretty neat, and I had no problem getting one off the internet but it does make me wonder about what ownership of these cars looks like into the future. For how much longer is it cost-effective to produce these things? Anyway, one new filter fresh from the Mann Filter mothership in Bosnia-Herzegovina: 

And in place. My car is old enough that it uses the spring clip to hold the spring in place. Return fluid is forced through the filter element and then can pool up through the center into the reservoir or go back down into the supply hose. I bled the system by jacking the car up and going lock to lock slowly and topping off. The fluid looked a nice amber hue... and then I started the engine and it went back to being (much less) black. I'll probably flush again in a little while just to see. 

Tomorrow should be front and rear brakes (assuming all of the calipers are free) and hoses. Then a trans filter and fluid change. Then I really need to pony up for some new tires. My usual scheme of searching marketplace for decent used ones doesn't really work for 195/70 r14. 

Took a stab at brakes today and it did not go all that well. Driver's caliper was seized, so I grabbed a local reman. Reader beware; the W123 chassis came with either ATE or Bendix front brakes so pay attention! Reader be double aware; the lower caliper bolt is positioned very close to the bolt that holds the steering arm to the steering knuckle! Double check before trying to beat the caliper off with a mini-sledge only to realize the caliper is still bolted to the knuckle!

Anyway front brakes are now rebuilt with fresh hoses attached. I went to bleed them and my Motive bleeder somehow overpowered the fluid level sensor in the reservoir and turned it into a geyser of brake fluid. I was quick with the brake clean and rags, but looks like I'll have to replace the sensor, or the reservoir? I'm not sure as of yet.

Nothing kills motivation to work on a car like winter weather. I have a two car garage and yet can't seem to figure out how to get two cars into it. 

There is a lot of moisture getting into this car I've noticed. We've had lots of melting snow and rain the past week and the interior is downright humid. I suspect sunroof drains, but I've yet to get the sunroof to unlatch to find out. Just another thing on the list!

Making great progress. Do these have rear disc brakes?