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Jan 19, 2011 19:21:53 GMT
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I have to agree on the LPG point. I am currently looking at a sub 6 year old car, for work purposes, and, having been down the LPG route previously, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience, I'm looking at doing it again.
My first foray into the world of LPG was a 2000 Vauxhall Vectra 2.0 CDX, which I bought at just 4 years of age (the newest car I have ever owned!). At around 90K miles, I converted it to run on LPG, 60 litre torodial tank and a Romano N sequential system.
Drove it for 30,000 miles and reaped the rewards, at the time, gas was 29.9ppl at the outlet I used, so, £14 equated to 365 miles!.
I sold it in the end, to my step dad, who still owns it, though, she has now racked up 203,000 miles. Gas burns far cleaner, with far less hydrocarbons, so, is actually very good for an engine. I had to replace the cam cover recently, as the old one had warped. Not a spot of anything on the internals, they looked shiny and new, plus, no wear.
LPG, even with the higher prices, it's still the way forward imho.
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Jan 19, 2011 20:33:38 GMT
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Agreed. And more octane means that you could possibly have a much wilder engine, if you build one. LPG or ethanol. SVO as it is might be OK - but I can't see too much benefits. And if you burn palm oil that's cheap but originates from plantations that have been made by burning down rain forrest... Not realy a nice thing... A mate of me who too owns a W124 estate has a 120l gastank in the boot ;D Plus the large capacity 90l petrol tank - talk about milage between fuel stops ;D LPG prices are on the up - but it's still the cheapest stuff & easy to fill up with. Bit more on topic: I just purchased a welder Which means: I can crack on doing the sills and some patches and try to get a fresh TÜV (MOT). Yay! I found a guy who makes the sill/jacking point repair panels, for 10€/piece. Just found out that he also delivers them to Mercedes. Who sell them for 6-7€ more ;D Cheers, Jan
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good work on the 124, like that becker! super nice 123, why did I part with mine
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Jan 24, 2011 21:26:08 GMT
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Good work on the welding!! The nice thing about Mercedes, is they still seem to supply whole panels for the majority of cars they have built. I remember being able to easily source entire repair panels for the 123 series. I agree with the above though, that Becker does look pretty awesome .
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Mark
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 2,097
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Love the merc and the 250D is a great engine. Have you thought about whacking the turbo from the C-class version on?
On the issue of LPG.. I've had my first experience of LPG recently. I've done 10000km's in the last 2 months in an dual fuel 4.0 straight 6. On Petrol, I get about 10l/100km. On LPG, I get about 16l/100km. The amount of LPG I get in seems to vary every time, anywhere between 50-68l. Apparently this is due to different stations having different filling pressures and also due to how warm it is on the day.
Fuel prices are hostile here at the moment, but it isn't the huge saving that I'd hoped for originally, saving me about 1c/km if I fill up rurally and 3c/km if I can fill up in big cities. The handy thing is 1200km between refills of both tanks.
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Jan 27, 2011 21:52:17 GMT
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Love the merc and the 250D is a great engine. Have you thought about whacking the turbo from the C-class version on? Hi Mark! Yes, I actually had lots of thoughts about that ;D But I think it would be more straight forward to just swap the whole engine over... The W202 diesels (pretty much all old diersels realy) can be had very cheap ATM as they're more and more banned from the citys (Low emission Zones)... But then... We went to Venlo yesterday to buy a Grand Cherokee 5.9. OH BOY DO I NEED A V8 NOW!! ;D ;D [ [edit] this being my 427th post - that must be a sign!! ;D ;D ](unfortunately no deal was made - very dubious seller, dubious car, exploding rad hoses, crunchy and damaged transfere box... Total Bluff bucket. Shiny on the ouside, no rust - but worn out, broken and un- or badly/wrongly maintained mechanicals. A800km drive for nothing... But "Car is 100 percent" - 100% my ass!!! ) Anyway; back on topic: I recently had to learn the hard way, that 4 cylinder steering pump hoses of a 4 cylinder are just that little amount too short to use them on a 5 cylinder... ;D (they'r a bit leaky and need replacing) Apart from that... Nothing to report... Except the engine had a little hickup on idle after I put a pre-filter in the fuel line - I guess it was a bit of air in one of the fuel lines as it sorted itself. Collected a bit of spare metal today to start and practice welding. Collected the welder on the weekend, but haven't had time to try it yet. Cheers, JAn
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Jan 29, 2011 12:55:11 GMT
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Hi! As I've mentioned, I've purchased a welder... Today I had a go at it for the first time. Ever. Ok, I've done 2-3 seconds of welding with a eletric welder & rod before, but that doesn't realy count. First I got lots of popping, but it got better when I played a bit with the settings. I'm quite happy with that. What you guys recon? The welder has a 30 to 200 amps rating, 8 steps and 'stepless' wire feed speed (05-99). I used 2 and set the wire feed to 23. Gas is 100% Argon. What I don't know is if the weld beads are supposed to come through or not? Any comments? Cheers, Jan
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Jan 29, 2011 19:31:46 GMT
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Jan 29, 2011 20:43:56 GMT
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Neat! Thanks a lot!! I'll have a read through that...
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Feb 12, 2011 17:16:07 GMT
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Hi! Done the first bit of welding on the car today. Not too chuffed with it, I put too much heat in the panels and they warped a bit. And I wasn't accurate enough at making them fit. But oh well... After all there's fresh metal in and no more rust. And my welding was getting better and better towards the end How it looked before.... And then I started grinding away the underseal and... OH. Big hole there... As you can see, the inside of the sills is heavily coated with wax and looks like new (apart from a bit dirt). It's only the metal that surrounds the jacking points that rots like hell... Probably due to microscopic cracks that occure when jacking the car up... Water enters and rust eats away the metal. At least that's the common theory amongs Mercedes enthusiasts... Indeed - it looks like it's rusting from the outside! curse word welding dressed up, primer applied - looks still terrible... ;D jolly pain in the backside. I hope it looks better when covered in underseal... However, what I DID enjoy was my new breathing mask. No crunchy teeth, no smell & still easy breathing. Didn't even smell the brake cleaner - which is awesome!! 3M 7500 series mask, if someone's interested... Please ignore the fuzzy hair... ;D If you can get hold (hope your still reading after that picture ;D) of one of those grinding discs; they are great for dressing up welds! They wear a bit faster - but you can see exactely where you are grinding... Cheers, the guy with the mask...
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Feb 13, 2011 10:47:27 GMT
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Yeah, it is really classic, my sills were in very nice condition except for around the jacking points, and since there was no holes in them yet, I can say that they do rot from the outside.
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194? Willys Jeep MB 1965 Volvo 544 Special 1968 Opel Rekord 1975 Opel Kadett Estate 1985 Mercedes-Benz 230E 1985 Datsun 720 King Cab 4x4 diesel 1997 Volvo S70 2.5SE (ex. "Volvo544special65" - changed to more reader friendly username. )
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Feb 14, 2011 14:42:04 GMT
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Yeah, it is really classic, my sills were in very nice condition except for around the jacking points, and since there was no holes in them yet, I can say that they do rot from the outside. Interesting! So my observation was correct. Wanted to continue welding today - but couldn't get any gas... Attention; here comes a rant. The bottle I got with the welder is a property bottle. You buy it and own it, but you can exchange it for a filled one. There are countless distributors which all do have theyr very own exchange-systems/bottles. Now the nearest retailer for my bottle is 40km away. No problem. Problem: the flabby guy at the counter is not willing to exchange me a 18% CO2 bottle for a 100% Argon bottle - says I have to throw it away and buy a mixed-gas bottle for 120€ + 31€ for a 10l fill....... No Argon 'till mid next week. So I went home again with my empty bottle. That's 80km for nothing. And most annoyingly; I phoned the main distributor who confirmed to me that they DO exchange Argon for mixed-gas bottles And even worse; the retailer I went to is the closest to me, the next one is 150km away... And they have by far the cheapest prices... All others want 6-10€ more for a fill and 150 to 160€ for a (empty) bottle. F**K!! I'll see if I can get my bottle refilled localy... It's still got a valid pressure test date on it... But hopes are low... What a mission for bit of welding gas..... [edit] Nope. No refill possible.... AAARRGH! I'm going MAD! And to make my day perfect, the only jacking point I assumed OK turned out to be just as rotten as the rest of them... Ordered a 4th repair panel... That's half a day wasted... I hate when things don't go to plan... Cheers, Jan
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Feb 15, 2011 13:49:40 GMT
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Result: 1 done, 2 1/2 to go. But it's rainy - and rain means I'm not in the mood to work on a wet car with everything wet and cold and dirty and... Naah... And - oh wonder - theother guyatthe hardware store told me it's actually no problem to exchnage different bottles and he doesn't know what his colleagues problem is... Latest MPG monitoring shows a whopping 50MPG! So long, Jan
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Feb 28, 2011 15:47:42 GMT
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Soooo - winter had a short return. But today the weather was finaly worthy of welding Finished one more jacking point. The 18% CO² welding gas is much better! Got instantly better result, almost felt like I could weld ;D My camera'S akku died - so only got this realy crappy spy cam shot... Underseal, paint - and shoud be good to go to the TÜV/MOT station. Ah no, wait - still need to do the passenger side jacking points... *D'oh!* Cheers, Jan
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Sooo - finished one side. Finaly ;D The others is halfways done too. Leaves the rotten through wheel arch and then I'm going to risk a visit at the TÜV station... The car needs to be sold ASAP now... As... I'm going to collect this tomorrow: ;D ;D Cheers, Jan
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I'm starting to like the satin hubcaps btw... looking' sinister!
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194? Willys Jeep MB 1965 Volvo 544 Special 1968 Opel Rekord 1975 Opel Kadett Estate 1985 Mercedes-Benz 230E 1985 Datsun 720 King Cab 4x4 diesel 1997 Volvo S70 2.5SE (ex. "Volvo544special65" - changed to more reader friendly username. )
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Mar 24, 2011 17:21:35 GMT
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It's on eBay now... After I got feed up with people who hardly spoke the same language as I, telling me what a piece of junk it was. And that it was never worth what I'm after... Yeah, #**< off and kiss my @$$! Before I put it on eBay I had a very lazy attempt at fixing the fender... I shouldn't have put my hands on it, as I actually had not the slightest desire to make it good. And it did turn out exactely like that. Not good. At all. Meeh... My thoughts were allready with the W123... And the paper thin japanese donnor tin was nightmare to weld... Meeeh x2. Would've looked better left alone and with the old rust hole in it... But oh well... No effort, no love - no result... Paint didn't work either and the particles formed some great looking dark lines... My mojo for this car is totaly gone and I hope it's sold soon. If it doesn't meet the reserve on eBay I'm going to break it and sell it in parts. I'm fed up with the stupid talking and bargaining........ Selling a diesel Merc is no joy... And if I get a single more offer for the Mini or W123 I'm going to SHOOT the person asking! ;D Cheers, Jan
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Sooo - my good old trusty diesel Merc-enary is SOLD, gone and away. Seller phoned me, came imediately - and after a bit of bargaining we agreed on a good price, he put dealer's plates on, handed over the money and of they went... I'll miss it. But then I'm looking forward to the W123. Mixed feelings etc. So, well - that's this thread come to an end Thanks for reading, commenting - you'll find me over here from now: retrorides.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=readersrides&action=display&thread=99494Cheers, Jan
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