A brace of 124s
Discussion
As revealed in the Bargain Barge thread, I've recently acquired a brace of W124s, as they came from the same home and share a few issues they can share this thread too!
The S124:
It's a 1991 200TE, in Smoke Silver. This one is currently in storage due to a lack of tax and test. It has a cold starting issue and needs a good valet and service to recommission it. In the last two years it had a full respray from the original Signal Red, a cream leather interior fitted and lots of welding done.
During the work:
The C124:
A '94 E220, this has become the daily driver. It suffers an idle issue (which apparently the S124 suffered before the cold start issue reared its head) where the revs will try and rise to about 3000rpm for a few mins when idling. It looks rough as but underneath is a different story with a full back end rebuild 6 months ago, lots of welding done, properly undersealed and generally taken care of. Plan is to get the bodywork sorted, then sell it on to fund the estate being returned to working order. I'd like a set of 15" 8-hole Mercedes alloys to replace the steels, but it's not a desperate issue.
The rot (well, some of it! ):
And after:
First job on both will be to swap the OVP relays out and check they're not causing the running issues (known to fail apparently and cause all sorts of problems), so acquired a couple this morning from MercMan in St Erth. Coupe done and no issues so far, won't say its fixed for sure until I've done a few hundred miles without any problems.
Torn at the moment deciding whether to keep the very cool OE Pioneer radio/tape unit or fit a modern CD player - the tape unit has sections layered with the same wood finish as the dashboard and works very well with a tape to aux plug adaptor for my iPhone, but a modern unit will also deal with the huge amount of CDs I own. Of course I could just rip them all and store them on a dedicated MP3 player....
Cheers for looking, feel free to comment or suggest things...
The S124:
It's a 1991 200TE, in Smoke Silver. This one is currently in storage due to a lack of tax and test. It has a cold starting issue and needs a good valet and service to recommission it. In the last two years it had a full respray from the original Signal Red, a cream leather interior fitted and lots of welding done.
During the work:
The C124:
A '94 E220, this has become the daily driver. It suffers an idle issue (which apparently the S124 suffered before the cold start issue reared its head) where the revs will try and rise to about 3000rpm for a few mins when idling. It looks rough as but underneath is a different story with a full back end rebuild 6 months ago, lots of welding done, properly undersealed and generally taken care of. Plan is to get the bodywork sorted, then sell it on to fund the estate being returned to working order. I'd like a set of 15" 8-hole Mercedes alloys to replace the steels, but it's not a desperate issue.
The rot (well, some of it! ):
And after:
First job on both will be to swap the OVP relays out and check they're not causing the running issues (known to fail apparently and cause all sorts of problems), so acquired a couple this morning from MercMan in St Erth. Coupe done and no issues so far, won't say its fixed for sure until I've done a few hundred miles without any problems.
Torn at the moment deciding whether to keep the very cool OE Pioneer radio/tape unit or fit a modern CD player - the tape unit has sections layered with the same wood finish as the dashboard and works very well with a tape to aux plug adaptor for my iPhone, but a modern unit will also deal with the huge amount of CDs I own. Of course I could just rip them all and store them on a dedicated MP3 player....
Cheers for looking, feel free to comment or suggest things...
The Mercs' are awesome, I particularly like the estate 
Don't be taking a nice original head unit out to replace it with a tacky cd player and fill the glovebox with CDs though
. The dash will just look wrong, you will damage your music collection and you already have a perfectly viable workaround! Keep it retro!
Don't be taking a nice original head unit out to replace it with a tacky cd player and fill the glovebox with CDs though
. The dash will just look wrong, you will damage your music collection and you already have a perfectly viable workaround! Keep it retro!That radio:
It currently resides in the coupe, the estate has a modern CD/USB/Bluetooth/everything else/etc unit. The wood in the estate is slightly darker, if it were the same I'd be tempted to swap the head unit into the estate when the coupe is sold.
The ashtray won't shut - I'll screenshot the job list on the coupe when I finish it...
It currently resides in the coupe, the estate has a modern CD/USB/Bluetooth/everything else/etc unit. The wood in the estate is slightly darker, if it were the same I'd be tempted to swap the head unit into the estate when the coupe is sold.
The ashtray won't shut - I'll screenshot the job list on the coupe when I finish it...
The S124 lives 
The estate was delivered to me as a non-runner - it would turn over but not fire. The fuel light was on, so today I filled the jerry cans and took some jump leads to where the car is stored. The fuel cap was almost stuck to the filler neck by vacuum pressure, having run the coupe from full to empty with minimal vacuum forming I suspect the tank vent is blocked. I also swapped the OVP relay and re-attached a vacuum pipe from the inlet manifold to the MAP sensor. Stuck the jump leads on and the car fired up with minimal effort, and idled for over half an hour without hesitating or cutting out. [br][br]However, after about 15 mins the gauges all failed. Interestingly the speedo tripmeter still counted the 0.4 of a mile that I did driving around the private land where it is stored, despite the needle not moving.
Looking in the fusebox all the fuses appear tired and the clamps corroded:[br]
The blown one in the middle is the heated rear window and was blown when I got the car. Tried a different fuse but no joy - the numberplate lights are on the same circuit and have also failed. There is 2.5v being fed to the fuse, but nothing the other end, so first off will be a new set of fuses.[br][br]The idle needs adjusting really, and when a gear is selected it doesn't compensate for the extra load. I do wonder if this unit is at fault:
The vac pipe heading into it is the one from the inlet manifold that was loose.
Anyway, a good day, even if its thrown a few more faults to clear!
The estate was delivered to me as a non-runner - it would turn over but not fire. The fuel light was on, so today I filled the jerry cans and took some jump leads to where the car is stored. The fuel cap was almost stuck to the filler neck by vacuum pressure, having run the coupe from full to empty with minimal vacuum forming I suspect the tank vent is blocked. I also swapped the OVP relay and re-attached a vacuum pipe from the inlet manifold to the MAP sensor. Stuck the jump leads on and the car fired up with minimal effort, and idled for over half an hour without hesitating or cutting out. [br][br]However, after about 15 mins the gauges all failed. Interestingly the speedo tripmeter still counted the 0.4 of a mile that I did driving around the private land where it is stored, despite the needle not moving.
Looking in the fusebox all the fuses appear tired and the clamps corroded:[br]
The blown one in the middle is the heated rear window and was blown when I got the car. Tried a different fuse but no joy - the numberplate lights are on the same circuit and have also failed. There is 2.5v being fed to the fuse, but nothing the other end, so first off will be a new set of fuses.[br][br]The idle needs adjusting really, and when a gear is selected it doesn't compensate for the extra load. I do wonder if this unit is at fault:
The vac pipe heading into it is the one from the inlet manifold that was loose.
Anyway, a good day, even if its thrown a few more faults to clear!
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