Deustche tat uber allës - my German cars thread.

[mrabody]

After a long hiatus from working on cars due to business and family commitments and a serious black of mono, I finally getting back into playing with various cars. As usual I have a bunch of them, and since they're mostly German, I thought I'd stick them on one thread. So over the next evening or so I'll introduce them.

[mrabody]

1991 Mercedes 300TE-24

This car has a thread elsewhere but in the interests of keeping things easy to follow I'm moving it to this one.

The old thread can be found here:

retrorides.proboards.com/thread/48058/1991-mercedes-300-das-boot

Unfortunately it has been off the road for the past two years due to a prang it suffered

Here it is in happier days.









And here's the accident damage



And here it is as it sits now.



Funds permitting, it will be going off to the panel beaters in some time in the next month to get the damage sorted and to repair some other bits and pieces.

This is by far the nicest, most comfortable car I've ever driven. It's also onc of the best-optioned I've ever seen having in addition to the 24 valve engine, 5 speed automatic transmission, sports suspension, leather seven seater interior with full front electric seats, orthopaedic driver's seat, cruise control, climate control, electric windows and electric sunroof. About the only obvious options it seems to be missing are heated seats, sports seats, premium sound system and ASR. Colour is Pajett Red which is darker and much rarer than the more typical Almandine Red.

Before the accident it was beginning to develop some niggles, so after it comes back from the panel beaters, there will be a fair amount of mechanical work required to get it where I want it.

[mrabody]

1989 BMW 325 Touring "YAF"

We bought this car a couple of years ago for my wife to drive. It was relatively high mileage then and it's even more high mileage now having gone over 200,000 a couple of months back. It was quite presentable when we bought but has suffered a few dings since then, most recently about a month ago when I parked it in the street and someone backing out of the pub car park opposite our house backed into the driver's door leaving a big dent in it. It's remarkably solid for a 200k 25 year old beeper. It needs both rear arches replaced, and the rear valance repaired, and it needed some welding to the front foot wells for the MOT this year, but other than that it's a good one. It's been pretty reliable for the most part, only having stranded us three times in two years, twice due to failed water pumps.

It's not particularly well optioned having electric front windows, electric sunroof, and headlight washers/wipers. Colour is Lachsilber, and it has the standard cloth comfort interior.

The plan is to keep driving and do a few mods and cosmetic improvements as funds and opportunity allow.

[mrabody]

1988 BMW 320 Saloon "VAF"

I bought this car about a year and a half ago because I needed a cheap driver. It's actually quite low mileage (it had about 75,000 miles when I bought it).
Aside from a couple minor faults it sailed through its MOT and was used for about six months before a combination of factors conspired to take it off the road.


Unfortunately, despite being low mileage it has lots of problems including more rust than the Touring. In particular it had rust in the nearside scuttle which leaked badly when it rained. When I bought it, it had about two inches of water sloshing about in the foot well. Other rust included a hole in the offside bulkhead, both rear arches and both front wings. The Scuttle had been welded up and is now waterproof. The bulkhead has had a patch bonded in so that should keep the druver's foot well dry. It just needs a couple of little pinholes in the driver's floor pan sorted and then I can put some carpet back in.

The engine runs well enough, but the front offside hub has a very rumbly bearing (it didn't fail the MOT on it, but it makes driving very tiresome). The offside front damper has also failed. It currently isn't running as the fuel pump was nicked to keep the Touring on the road.

Truth be told, I'm not sure what to do with it. Earlier this year we were planning to sell our Range Rover, and it was my intention to sort out the problems with this car, drop it on some second-hand lowering springs I got for it and use it for my daily. Now with the Range Rover staying, I'm not sure what to do. I may keep it as an extra vehicle, or I may flog it on.

It's Zinnober Red, with the standard comfort interior. Since I've had it, I've managed to source a colour matched front bumper for it.

[mrabody]

There's one more car that I need to add to the thread but because it will be a lengthy post, I'll save it for another night. So I thought I'd tell you all what I've been up to with YAF, the 325 Touring

The car has had plugs, distributor cap and rotor,but the leads were looking pretty manky and it had a slight miss, so on went a set of Magnecor 7mm. I've used Magnecor before on the Merc estate and have nothing but praise for the quality of their products and their customer service. I also swapped on a new breather hose as the old one was hard and beginning to crack. The combination of these two changes have breathed a little more life back into the engine.

I also swapped on a set of 15" MIM 1900s in place of the 14" TSW five spokes that were on it already. The MIMs have an ET of 13 though and this brought to light another problem - the offside rear tyre was frequently rubbing on the arch, especially with any sort of load in the car.

Truth be told the car has always sat low at the rear and putting any type of load in the boot, made it much worse.

A quick measurement showed the offside arch to be about 1.5" lower than the near side.

Now, I'm of the Rahm Emanual school of thought - never let a crisis go to waste! Clearly this called for new springs. And they might as well be lowering springs. Specifically these, bought off eBay.de for about £145 inclusive of shipping.



And this evening I fitted the rears.



Going in.



Mostly uneventful, though the old offside spring proved much less troublesome to remove than the nearside one. I wonder why?

Oh, that would explain it!



It's about 1" or so shorter than the other side, and appears to be a weaker rate as well. I suspect someone swapped in a saloon spec spring at sone point in the car's past.

So I installed a set of lowering springs and managed to raise the ride height.

Front springs still to be installed, but I'll take it in to the garage to do this week, as I haven't got a lot of time in the evenings at present.

How it looks now. Just need to get that front end down a bit.

[mrabody]

1991 Mercedes 190e 5.0L V8 converion project "Carmelina"

The story with this one began many years ago in my early days on Retro Rides (2007 I think). SWMBO decided she'd like a Mercedes. At the time then-2002gimp (now low standards) happened to have this car up for sale. So we travelled up to Derby and bought it sight unseen. TBH it was a safe purchase being low mileage (around 106k at the time I think) and well cared for. It was a 2.0L Auto, with electric windows, electric sunroof, and the pretty rare MB-Tex (vinyl)interior which while not as fancy as leather, looks much nicer than the cloth interiors that most W201s sport. Exterior colour is 199 Blue Black with a black interior.

We used it for about eight months before the head gasket blew. While the car was in excellent condition and had been well maintained, sadly we had two overheating incidents, the first when the plastic radiator inlet broke, and the second when a heater hose split. Lesson learned from this - no matter how low mileage a car may be and how well maintained, always expect the worst from the cooling system on modern motors, simply because the materials they're manufactured from (plastic and aluminium) don't age well. During the time we were driving it, I swapped up to all new 2.6L spec brakes as they needed doing anyways for the MOT. It flew through the MOT and two weeks later the head gasket blew.

Now with a blown head gasket, the sensible course of action would have been to have popped the head off, skim, it and refit it. The slightly more fun course of action would have been to find a good 2.3L M102 from a W124 and drop it in place. But no, I decided that since these cars came with the 2.6L six cylinder M103, I might as well go whole-hog and drop in a 3.0 M103 from a W124. I mean how hard could it be? So I popped the engine and gearbox out, bought an M103, matching gearbox and read subframe and diff from a 2.6L W201 and started putting it together.

Oops, not so straight forward as I thought. It turns out the 6 cylinder and 4 cylinder cars use a completely different radiator support panel and slam panel. So what started as a pretty straightforward swap was about to become a good deal more complicated. I was going to have to cut off the old bits, source the correct ones and have them welded on.

As it turned out, Mr S from this forum was at that time breaking his 190e which had started life as a 2.6 Sportline car but which he had begun swapping a 5.0L M117 V8 into. So I drove up to deepest, darkest Ilkeston to get the bits I wanted. I scored the correct panels, sportline steering box, anti-roll bar, and rear springs and since he no longer had a use for them, he kindly threw in the V8 motor mount brackets just in case I might want to stick a V8 in it at some later date.

Anyways, I got the 3.0 sitting in the car, but life intervened and I never got much farther than that. And the V8 motor mounts were sitting there and the prospect of cutting up the front end of the car kind of put me off.

And then as fate would have it the aforementioned Mr. S needed some lighting for his garage. I had a bunch of strip lights that had come out of our shop in the course of renovations so I offered to them to him in trade for a Merc V8 gearbox - just in case I decided to stick a V8 in it. For an extra £50 he offered to throw in the 5.0 engine that had been ment for his 190. How could I refuse? As it turned out I had some kitchen cabinets that had also come out of our shop so I brought those up for him as well. And he then threw in a 4.2 M116. I think we came away from the exchange both thinking we'd made out like bandits.

Anyways, I decided at that point that there was no purpose in continuing with the 6cyl swap. The V8, being all alloy doesn't weigh any more, and it's a good deal shorter so there shouldn't be any need to change over from the 6cyl front slam panel. I sold the 6 cylinder and the other bits and - life still intervening, left the car and the V8 stuff sit for the next couple years.

Fast forward a couple of years, a house move or two and I finally got the car down here to Somerset where we're now living. So since I've got the big bits all here and present time it's time to get cracking on with it.

As she sits now





The V8 engine mount brackets. These bolt to a set of Range Rover V8 engine mounts which bolt to the engine cross member and then to the V8 engine ears.



An extremely curse word shot of the engine.

[mrabody]

Give me a "C"
Give me a "U"
Give me a "N"
Give me a "T"

What does it spell? It's German for engine mount apparently.

Before I can put the new engine mounts in, the old factory ones need to come out. You would think this to be a simple job, they're held in by a single hex bolt. And it would be simple if the both bolts weren't stripped. Which meant I needed to get the grinder out. Unfortunately the factory isolators are bulky oil filled jobbies with a wide flat base made out of aluminium which makes them a pain to cut off. If you try to cut them off underneath you end grinding into the cross member. Cut them off from above and you then need to chop all the extraneous material off around the stud until it falls out of the hole which means if you're clumsy like me you end up gashing up the cross member.



Anyways they're out but now I need to weld up a bit of damage to the cross member and repaint it.

Grrrrr, why can't anything ever be easy.

[mrabody]

So after a couple of failed attempts (mainly on emissions, and MOT)the Touring now has an MOT. It still just squeaked through on emissions. I also got the front lowering springs out on as well. It's now sitting like this



Just as I snapped this picture the guy on the other side if the pimp offered to swap me his Audio Coupe.

First impressions are that the ride is a good deal rougher than before. But then looking good usually comes with a price. Hope the missus doesn't complain too much....