When we last left off, I had gone from liking cars but being mostly clueless as to how they worked, to the proud owner of one of the cheapest functional classic cars for sale in Georgia at the time. I figured that learning how to work on cars would come with experience, and that owning a car was a prerequisite for doing so.
It turns out, the real prerequisite was owning a car that you could break only to inconvenience yourself. It didn’t take me that long to amass a well rounded collection of cheap tools and put them to work improving the car. And it needed a lot of improvements. It may have been a totally drivable car, but it wasn’t a totally livable car. It still isn’t, in fact. No A/C in Georgia in the summer is bad, but it was more tolerable after I fixed the windows so that they could roll down.
Despite the many intensive repairs I have completed on this car, the list of things I want to fix just gets longer. That’s what happens when you buy a thoroughly depreciated 40 year old car and run it on a shoestring budget, I suppose. I’ve had to touch just about every bolt in the car at various times, but I’d still characterize it as amazingly dependable despite its idiosyncrasies. It’s never left me stranded, though occasionally, I’ve parked it until a part arrives as a precaution.
Most importantly, I’ve never faced a repair I didn’t feel I could tackle myself. Even for a total amateur who had to look up internet guides for even the most basic maintenance, the W123 chassis Mercedes is a remarkably easy car to work on. I’ve completed a few of the less easy repairs, such as swapping front wheel bearings and races, and I’ve never fell in over my head.
That’s not to say I’ve never had a bad time with a repair. I had an incredibly hard time with pressing in new lower ball joints into the steering knuckles, for example.
There is much more to the story of the 300D, but it deserves its own post.
However, the faithful Mercedes is not the only vehicle I’ve learned to break; I have dabbled in fixing my friends’ cars as well.
By far the most work I’ve devoted to an individual car is my friend’s 1993 Mazda MX3. This poor car has been through a lot in the past few years. Here’s it in happier times cruising with the 300D. A futuristic sporty hatchback with four wheel steering may not have much in common with the simple and sturdy W123 as they came from the factory, but the story runs deeper. Both my friend and I ended up with our cars because they were the cheapest running “fun” cars we could find at the time.
And what a fun car it is. The MX3 is basically a go kart on wheels. Even with the base four cylinder and various age related maladies, including a vague, floppy shifter, it is pure joy to drive. It may be sporty, but it still has a relatively light clutch befitting its 323 origins, so it won’t tire you as fast as a proper sports car.
But since then, while the Mercedes has needed a few minor repairs, the MX3 has lightly self destructed. Every single time we touched the car, a new problem arose. A bad head gasket turned into one of the most catastrophic wrenching projects I’ve ever seen. Then, the water pump had to be replaced twice in the 8 months or so of the car being stuck in wrenching purgatory. The MX-3 was moved to two different parking lots in non-running condition during that time.
During this time, its cosmetic condition degraded rapidly and it suffered at least one significant act of vandalism. It also suffered from an unreasonably large number of greasy fingerprints on its bodywork. I generally worked on the second biggest problem whenever I could volunteer my time and was generally successful at chipping away at the sidelined setbacks. Despite everyone’s doom and gloom predictions, this car eventually did come back to life.
Following the progress and setbacks of a far more intimidating project than the ones I was implementing on my 300D was a significant factor in emboldening me to eventually purchase a sports car of my own.
Buying the cheapest running manual RWD sports car I could find made sense for nearly the whole drive home. It was marked down because the owner had put the suspension back together with such a bad alignment that it was borderline undrivable. I had to take it back apart in the rocky dirt driveway in order to give it an eyeball alignment so I could drive it home.
Unfortunately, the clutch system started losing pressure on the way back, once I got stuck in traffic on the downtown connector in Atlanta. I could barely drive a stick at all at the time; starting from a stop was already hard enough without the clutch pedal occasionally going straight to the floor without disengaging.
And thus commenced a series of mechanical maladies nearly rivaling my friend’s MX3 for frequency and severity. I worked my way through the whole clutch hydraulic system and was still losing pressure. Only replacing the hard line solved my problems. And then the engine started running so badly that it couldn’t be driven.
By then, I was facing down a cross country move and had to choose between my two 300s. The 300D made the cut and the 300ZX did not. Realizing the car was so rough no one would even buy it as a parts car, I figured that selling chances would improve if it at least ran, and started investigating its complicated half-electronic half-vacuum engine systems. I refreshed all the obvious ignition and fuel systems over a couple of months before I discovered it was a fault with the throttle position sensor. By then, I was almost 5 months into my 6 month ownership of the car and got to drive it without it breaking down for the first time. It took a while to sell, but this disastrous experience helped me appreciate my Mercedes’ unshakable reliability all the more.
During my hectic 300ZX ownership, I was called for at least three emergency parking lot rescues. Two of them were related to this rather sketchy Ford Ranger. After getting it running in the parking lot, I managed to fix its terrifyingly high idle with a piece of duct tape as a bonus repair.
I had suspected the high idle was a vacuum leak, so I looked for the location of the leak and discovered it in an unlikely place by listening for hissing. My field expedient repair to fix the idle involved only my own expertise, which was a revelation in its own right. Before, I had basically only ever followed Youtube guides for repairs.
I channeled this confidence into a handful of smaller repairs for my friends, not all of which went smoothly. My marathon evening wrenching sessions on a certain Honda CR-V were chronicled here recently. That saga has a happy ending but did necessitate another emergency duct tape repair after I wrote the article.
So far, I have gotten plenty confident in tackling suspension repairs, had additional exposure to significant engine repairs through the MX3, and have been very frustrated by my 300ZX’s butchered electrical system. But what about body repairs? I had a rather large rust hole in my Mercedes that I wanted to patch before I had it shipped to my new home on the opposite coast. By then, I had the new floors sitting around for two years, but I never got the courage to open that can of worms. Doing it right before an incredibly stressful cross country move seemed ill advised.
I was pondering this when I got a call from the auto transporter company, telling me that they were going to pick the car up two days from then. It was already noon, so I had about 36 hours to either complete the repair or do nothing at all. I chose to finish it at all costs.
I barely slept, but both sides had all new floors riveted in and the interior was nearly fully back together when they picked it up. That was one of the hardest repairs I’ve ever done, not only because of its difficulty, but because of my self imposed impossible deadline ripped straight out of a reality TV show. I worked on it for around 24 hours over the course of the 36 hours.
I moved out of downtown Atlanta, where I could disassemble my car in my parents’ driveway a mere 30 minutes away and could always count on friends for moral support in my self imposed wrenching trials. Now, I am two weeks into living in Seattle as I write this, where I have not yet established myself. I’m paying for a parking space below my apartment that is so abnormally tiny and poorly positioned directly behind a column, the manager of my apartment complex says she’s never rented it out before because it’s considered “impossible” –Well, thanks for telling me that after I paid for it. I made it possible with some practice, but it’s an even worse place to work on a car than it is to park a car.
The Mercedes may be reliable, but it’s still a very well used 40 year old car and things do break or need maintenance. I’ll have to figure out a place to work on it.
That more or less brings us up to date. I have bonded with my faded old turbodiesel enough to drag it with me across the country. Along the way, I had a short lived fling with an astoundingly unreliable Nissan, learned how to fix and break various things on friends’ cars, and even left quite a few vehicles much better than I found them. My love of cars has truly gone from book knowledge to real life. Who knows in what absurd situations I’ll find myself in the future?
For those who missed Part 2 of this series, click HERE.
Wow – you have done what I always wanted to do – master the skills to tackle virtually every job in repairing an old car. I probably plateaued at a place at about 40% of where you ended up, but I could never muster the time/resolve to get the rest of the way. And as years accumulate, my abilities have likely eroded some. Or maybe it’s just declining inclination. You, sir, deserve a gigantic salute!
That old Mercedes is a lovely car!
The W123 is one of the best cars ever made. With proper maintenance, you can have it for the rest of your life.
No matter how many years pass, it will always be a Mercedes (the old-fashioned kind) and will never lose its charm.
Those floor pan rust holes bring back memories of repairing many a Wisconsin-rusted car. We never bought new floorboards though. Old license tags were always readily available, conveniently sized and just strong enough to match the remaining life expectancy of most of the cars we were working on.
With a few basic hand tools, they were easy to form into the odd shapes of various floor pans. We’d pop rivet them to the nearest piece of still solid metal, seal the edges and follow up with a shot of spray from the undercoating gun.
For the bigger jobs that exceeded a couple of license tags, we’d use the torch to cut off an appropriately sized piece of sheet metal from whatever wreck the body shop happened to have sitting around. The larger pieces of sheet metal were never as easy to form as the license tags though. That would probably be different today. A license tag may actually be thicker than whatever sheet metal remains on newer cars.
Living outside of rust country and away from the backyard arts of budget rust repair, I was really starting from scratch.
I want to do right by this car, and besides, a license plate would not be nearly big enough for that monstrous rust hole.
My interim (2 years cough) repair consisted of duct tape and flexible aluminum flashing.
What you’ve done here is prepare yourself for the many curve balls life will throw at you .
A W123 Mercedes is indeed a fine car even when very well used .
I need to find a person like you for my 1982 240D , I’ve gotten too old to wrench anymore .
I hope Seattle is to your liking, I liked it in 1969, not so much when I re visited in the 2000’s .
-Nate
Okay, I have to admit it was seeing “Georgia” in the ‘above the fold’ text that caused me to click through and read the whole article, then enjoyed reading the previous two installments. And to learn you went through the Architecture program at GT, which makes us related in a twisted sort of manner.
I spent two years in the program (’80-81 and ’81-82), then took a ‘breather year’ of only required courses before transferring to the Industrial Design program in ’83. Thankfully, the first year courses were identical in both programs, so it only took me another three years to get my BSID. Frank Beckham was still teaching Arch History at that time – I presume he had passed by the time you were there? I believe the Arch auditorium is now named after him.
I lived with my grandparents down near the airport the first five years (Grandpa passed during the summer after my freshman year, which made me and Granny very close). I rented a basement apartment in Buckhead my last year to be a bit closer to campus, but still ran down to have lunch with Granny most days.
Here’s a post I wrote on one of the projects I participated in while in the ID program:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/concept-car/curbside-concepts-the-universal-car/
At any rate, I owned three different vehicles during my six years at Tech: a 1971 Vega notchback (my first car, which gave me a master’s class in automotive repair), a 1982 Cavalier Type 10, which I modded into my own idea of a street racer, and my first new car purchase, a 1986 Samurai, purchased in late 1985 (we all waved real big at each other!).
The attached pic is from 1985, of the Arch parking lot (now filled with buildings, I believe). My (Mediterranean Blue) Vega is visible in the second row over.
You tube has its uses but nobody has pulled a car like I own apart on camera, similar cars yes but not the version I have, its all good I got it done, nothing to it really, despite it being different to anything else on the road,
But need of a go to work car meant my classic had to be hastily reassembled for daily use so now that is being sorted properly and thats where I’m up to, waiting on a heater valve so I can reassemble the dashboard and solder all the connections this time, the more you learn the worse it gets.
Back when I had no money, I would use appliance skins to repair floors. A little thinner than stock, but definitely doable. And free dead washers, dryers, stoves, etc. were everywhere. And sometimes there were usable parts for my current units.
I learned to fix everything myself out of necessity. Even things that other people would just replace. Tear a window switch apart to fix the contacts. Pull a bearing from a dead alternator to get more miles from my current one that charged but was rough and noisy. Fixing things in a parking lot or rest stop since I was hours from home. I pay attention to how my car sounds and feels, and can usually get it somewhere safe if something is amiss.
I just look at newer cars as more complexity to break. And when it does, I’m at the mercy of a shop.
In my ultra low budget first year of ownership ($4,000 for the car and 1 year of parts and other non-recurring expenses like registration was my budget and I barely hit that target) I tried to tackle the gauge cluster. In the end, I’ve barely cobbled together a working set from four junkyard clusters. It turns out mechanical odometers are very difficult to repair because of the tamper-proofing. My repair lasted for one mile and then the odometer broke again. After that failure, I managed to find a junkyard one that sort of works. It’s easier to throw parts at the problem but it’s not an affordable strategy. Now that I’m in graduate school, I have to unlearn my buying habits from my year of full time employment.
You’re a shade tree mechanic, usually without a tree. 🙂
I admire your fortitude for doing all of that wrenching in parking lots. There is absolutely no way I’d ever be organized enough to do that. Even when I’m working in my own driveway or garage, I spend about half my time walking back and forth between the car I’m working on and the giant toolbox/pile of tools (which in its latter incarnation is often spread over at least 2 floors of my house).
I’m the guy who’d show up in the parking lot having forgotten my 10mm socket back home.
For your situation in your new home of Seattle, I’d recommend a community garage. Sometimes you can find these places affiliated with maker spaces. A quick bit of Googling found: https://www.antscommunitygarage.com/
Or the considerably higher end: https://theshopclubs.com/seattle/ (where monthly fees seem to equal what some people pay for rent)
But I’d think that Seattle would have a variety of options for places like this. They kind of invented the whole community DIY movement I think.
Except for a handful of times I stayed over at my parents house, the car absolutely had to be back together by the end of the day. On those rare occasions, it had to be fully assembled by the end of the weekend. Now that’s a motivator, since public transit back to Georgia Tech to start another week of classes was infrequent and would have involved a loooooooong walk at one end.
Those are good recommendations. Thanks.
Hint: only work on a car (outside) when it’s cold, dark, and raining. Quite the motivator.
If you can’t see what you’re doing, you don’t know what you’re doing wrong. Until morning, that is. I’ve had a few of those.
Bravo young man! Pop rivet sheet metal repairs to floors is much easier than welding -something I’m sure you are heading toward learning. Wrenching in the street and parking lots is for the brave and I commend you. I use scrap industrial metal shelving for my panel “fabrication” with toss off bits of thick wide lumber and might to help shape the panels. A metal brake works much better for neat creases though. Best of luck on your new adventure!
Nothing like a deadline to focus the mind and body.
You have taken some deep dives there. I vividly remember taking my son’s ’81 Mazda 626 dash apart to replace the heater core; brain surgery.
I’m doing a bit of copping out now, as I have a very reasonable-priced mechanic who comes to my house. Right now he’s tearing my xB apart to replace the clutch and a few other parts. That allows me to go backpacking and hiking. Retirement is a thing!
My son and I practice bangernomics, and the key lessons are have multiple vehicles, a usable workspace and the tools and skills to use them. It sounds like you need to find a rental garage or other DIY space.
I’ve had my pickup up on jack stands for a month while I replaced the cylinder heads and my son had his project Corolla in his garage for several months while sorting it out. He also just fixed his Ranger in the driveway, removing the bed to replace a fuel pump and pinion seal. Shop labor rates have become horrendous, so DIY is more attractive, especially when you don’t have to drive to work