No, this isn’t a Photoshop. I lost my camera a while back, and I’m about to transition to a new device, so I’ve been using Stephanie’s iPhone. And when she handed it to me, I saw a some kind of cursor on the screen, but didn’t know what it meant. Now I do.
Anyway, this cheerfully-colored 300D (W115) obviously did have some kind of problem. Probably the kind that my older brother, who 0nce made a living fixing up old dead Benz diesels and selling them at a good profit, would likely have been able to fix curbside. Some folks who have these cars know what it takes to keep them running; others buy them on their rep for being unstoppable, until they…stop.
Here’s how it looks in real life, unified and whole. And that goes for the tow truck driver too, who has been reunited with his legs.
There’s still a number of these W115s in town; this one is just a few blocks from my house. My hat’s off to them for keeping them going. Or not, as the case may be.
Paul, I’ve got a decent little point and shoot camera I can send you, if you’d like. With iPhones, we never use it anymore.
Thanks. I’m going to have to get a smartphone, finally. I love my ancient flipfone, and they’ve become very hip again, but it just is too much of a pain to carry two devices around.
Are they coming back in style? THANK GOD. I keep getting judged for my flip phone (which shocks me since I have been an adult for what, a decade?) when I keep it because I hate touch screens and I honestly think it make sense to just keep it. There are enough computers around and I like knowing what button I press without looking. Out here in the midwest, we’re generally behind the times, but if you’re indeed correct, I’ll be in ahead of the pack in keeping my old Samsung around.
+1000 From another who is still REFUSING to spend big $$$ when my flip phone does everything I need it to do!! 🙂
+5000 on my almost 10-year-old flip phone FTW!
I usually only have to charge it 2-3 times per week. That alone make it worth keeping. And who wants to steal it?
And NO STUPID GOV’T ALERTS that you can’t turn off on these new so-called smart phones either . . .
Just read this recently:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/27/style/are-flip-phones-having-a-retro-chic-moment.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3As%2C%7B%221%22%3A%22RI%3A11%22%7D
Ironically, just when the fashion catches up with me and my 10 yr old flip phone, I feel like i’m finally ready for a smart phone, mostly for the camera, as well as to check the web when I’m traveling and such.I’m still on the fence. And without a camera, in the meantime.
I had to stop using my flip phone as my phone company told me they were changing to a new software that meant the old phone won’t work anymore. I gave it back when I got my ZTE.
I guess you have the HDR mode on, where it takes two pictures(one overexposed and one underexposed) and combines them. You can get nice results using it in some situations. But only in still or almost still scenes.
bi-focals
LOL!
So, is it too soon to start on a Droid is superior to iPhone diatribe? 🙂
I will be moving from iphone to droid next shift. Tired of everything going to the cloud whether I want it there or not. Then you get bothered about buying more space on the cloud. My apple computer is still safe but I’ve been reading about the models with large screens (bigger print).
Don’t know which is best but the cloud just means forced consumerism to me.
Yes, as long as you don’t claim HTC is any good!
I phones are to damn high tech for a tech dummy like me. I’ll take a regular old camera and a phone that’s only for call any day.
BTW, It looks like that truck has some big problems too. 🙂
I never knew your older brother worked on diesel Benzes. Was this mentioned in an autobiography in a passage I’ve forgotten?
This Velveeta-colored W115 looks a lot like my grandfather’s car.
I’ve not written his biography; I probably won’t 🙂
Yes, for a number of years he would find Mercedes diesels (mostly) that folks probably had gotten big estimates for to fix, buy them cheap, fix them (for cheap), and resell. He got pretty good at it.
My dad had a work acquaintance who did something similar. He was based out of Little Rock, AR where Benzes aren’t exactly plentiful but there are some people ‘in the know’ about them. He spent a lot of time on the west coast where these are comparatively common so would always fly out, buy a nice clean example, drive it back and sell it at profit in AR. Cant go wrong with having a hobby that MAKES you money instead of costing it…And that’s one way to experience a lot of cars you love without breaking the bank (just the opposite, actually) or piling them up like a hoarder.
If you ever get around to it, ask him what he thinks of ALDA-ectomy on the turbodiesels.
Adjusting the Alda is what you’re supposed to do , not remove it as it measures the amount of boost and regulates the fuel injection mixture accordingly .
Removal is a ham fisted approach that simply over fuel the engine at all loads / RPM’s, this is never a good thing .
Older M-B’s like any other older vehicle , were dead simple so those who took any measure of care with them , had little problems and they never left one afoot .
Americans typically drive whatever it is , until it stops then bitch , moan and complain about the resulting high repair bill instead of $pending a few Dollars (far less , always) in Preventative Maintenance .
In addition to being a Journeyman Mechanic in varios Shops and Dealerships over the decades , I also made a very good living buying dead vehicles and returning them to daily service ability then re selling them at a modest profit .
Here in La La Land , home to Fruits , Nuts and Flakes along with a severe criminal element in The Auto Trade , we had a cool if short lived run of hipsters and other jerkoffs buying old Mercedes Diesels from folks who’d get them ‘ On The Cheap ‘ knowing that it’s usually a $100 fix to get it running again then they’d re sell them with out bothering to do any further badly needed delayed Service so naturally these fine old cars stopped running again a year or two after said fools had paid $8,000.00 for a ” !! CLASSIC Mercedes that NEVER NEEDS A TUNE UP and RUNS ON FREE FUEL !!!!! .
My Diesel Sports Coupe came from some of these idiots who ran it on peanut oil and God alone knows what else , parking it sans fuel cap near the beach where the damp air made sure to promote fungus (it’s NOT ‘ alge’ !) growing in the tank until the poor engine ground it’s self to a smoky halt .
Opps , ranting again aren’t I ? .
For what it’s worth , I never once had a come back on the various old vhicles I overhauled and sold , usually below market value so they’d sell to the first person who came to look , mostly Air Cooled VW’s because they’re so simple but I also went through a couple hundred old Pickup Trucks before I gave up and went back to my basic old Chevy base model i6 powered Shop Truck .
So many folks still come up to me out of crowds and tell me ‘ remember me ? you sold me a XXX and I still have it ! ‘ or ‘ I ran that thing for a decade before selling it , never had any troubles out of it ‘ .
So old cars are reliable *if* you make any effort atall .
-Nate
“So old cars are reliable *if* you make any effort at all”
^^^^ THIS, x 10000.
My favorite phone ever was my Motorola Startak fliphone. Fit your hand and pocket so well. It had an antenna. There’s something about pulling up the antenna before you make a call that makes it feel important. Like you are on a stakeout.
Funny. The Motorola Startac was the biggest POS of a phone I ever had. Went through 3 of them in a year for doing weird things. Yet my friend Mike had one too, same carrier, same time, and his was great.
Come to think of it, I didn’t have mine very long. Just liked the way it felt in my hand. This was the late ’90s. I remember it still being novel to call my Dad from a U-Pull-It junkyard (see how I got my post back on car topics?). The phone worked in some spots in the yard and not in others. Kinda miss having a car that I could get parts for that way.
Getting towed off by another Mercedes product to boot; a Class 6 Sterling with Jerr-Dan Carrier.
…those BIG bumpers…are giving an additional charm to the W115! I grew up with these cars on the continental Europe so I found them (as the time goes by) one the most proportionate Benz bodies. The dash has also a kind of a state of the art look. BUT the bumpers are/were far too small here in comparison with the North-Americas versions. I ain’t really like the diesels with manual transmission…that’s what we had in summs here. I never saw anybody’s W115 4-door with automatic tr. And only once I saw one 4-door with the steering column shift from the distance while it was driven away within moments. Could it be a steeringshift automatic? Or a steeringshift manual? Or might be a customization for a disabled person either it was an automatic or manual??? Only the very rare coupĂ©s I saw with petrol engine and floorshift automatic.
Is your 300D an automatic??? I would appreciate an answer… Thanks in advance.
These cars have long been my benchmark for a durable, capable and desirable car.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, my Dad often said “Id love a Mercedes” and this is the car he meant.
Hopefully, it’s being collected to be fixed….
Same here. When people (at least in my neck of the woods) said Mercedes in the seventies then they basically referred to a W115; and later on to its successor, the W123. Certainly not to a R107/C107 or a W116: these were way out of reach, they belonged to another unknown universe.
As a kid I had a lot of rides in both W115 and W123 models, all diesels. These cars were so damn rock solid, so well built. And relatively simple, compared to the W116 for example. Old-school diesels, manuals, no gadgets. They lasted, lasted and lasted….High purchase price, low depreciation.
And when we finally got rid of them they continued to last in Africa or the Middle East.
The /8 were the first Mercedes Benz for the masses…hence MB´s first million seller.
But nowadays its reputation as bullet proof car that can do no wrong has reached almost mythological proportions.
Same thing happened to it´s successor, the W123.
The matter of the fact is, that during their hey day they were relatively easy to maintain and seemed to keep on running forever thanks to their rather simplistic technical components .
Aside from this, the /8 were every bit as rusty as the W123. Their biggest advantage over their contemporaries was, that they were expensive, thus cherished even if they had a couple of pre-owners, which resulted in low depreciation and extended maintenance.
I wonder, if someday people will start looking at the W210 (MB´s so called rust bucket) in a similarily mystified /glorified way.
Strich-Acht ! 🙂
My uncle had one of these during the 70’s and I think it may have even been the same color. It was the last Mercedes he ever owned! His next car was a lime green 1981 Buick Century Limited bought brand new with a 231 V6 and then he traded that for a 1988 dark blue Park Ave with the first year 3800 V6 engine. I remember riding in the back seat of those cars as a kid when my uncle used to take us out golfing. The Mercedes was slow as molasses stinky, idled like a mac truck and it broke down frequently. The Buicks in contrast were relatively reliable, considerably more comfortable and rode so much smoother, especially the 88 Park Ave.
I love that color and hope this Merc is up and running in no time.
’twasn’t the need for repairs. ‘Twas the cost of the parts when you needed one. MB had a sole-source parts racket going on…. If only we’d had the internet then!
My Diesel didn’t leave me afoot, unless you got a sudden cold snap without having
plugged it in. ‘Ya know, like, oh, late September, October, November, December, January, February, March and April in Chicago. Back before global warming. Or before I got rid of mine and stopped caring about tomorrow morning’s temperature.
Maybe not a problem for you folks out on the coast. tho’.
[and yes, it was probably due to a former owner not having change the oil frequently enough, but still.]
That shade of tan was so common in the 70s. Every manufacturer seemed to offer it.
It had a way of pacifying the owner and other drivers.