| The 300SE has been suffering from poor hot starts. It required a lot of cranking before it fired. On a K-Jet car, this is normally caused by a faulty fuel accumulator. From what I understand it’s the job of the fuel accumulator to hold fuel pressure after the car is switched off. I also planned to change the fuel filter as I didn’t know when it was last changed. I also had the small in-line filter that fits in before the fuel distributor. It will have to wait as I didn’t have time to change it this time. Obviously […] Recently on the 300SE I had to make a decision if I would fix the head gasket or junk the car. To do the repair right was going to cost pretty much what I paid for the car. I had also spent pretty decent money doing the water pump only a few months before. To add to that I probably had at least another $1,000 to spend getting the air conditioning working again. Instead of this being a $3-4000 car, its more like a $9,000 car. Had I the time, I may have attempted the job myself, like the water […] Previously, I had identified that the cause of my A/C problems was the fuse blowing. I have been narrowing down the problem more and more to the compressor clutch. Therefore, I wanted to eliminate everything else as the compressor is every expensive and beyond my skillset. I had already unplugged two other components that are part of the fuse 5 wiring: The monovalve and the Aux water pump. The other component that is part of this circuit is the aspirator fan. This fan is a very small fan that draws air over the temperature sensor for the climate control. I […] The 300SE had a severe stumble at idle. It only occurred when the engine was hot. It never stalled the engine, but felt like it was about to. There was also a miss at takeoff. My initial thought was to check the distributor cap and rotor. However, on further examination, you could see sparking around the #6 spark plug. It appeared that the miss was probably related to the damaged insulation on the suppressor. The suppressors are available for purchase separately and just screw off. I was given a tip on the forums to use a Stanley knife to […] When new, a W126 Mercedes would have come with four keys: Two square headed master keys. One round headed valet keys. A flat ‘wallet’ key. The master keys were designed for everyday use and opened all locks on the car: doors, ignition, glove box and boot. The valet key is similar, but does not open the glove box or boot if manually looked. The premise being you can keep valuables in the car while being parked by a parking attendant. The master key doesn’t have a plastic head. Instead, it has a small flat metal one allowing it to be […] When I purchased my 300SE, the A/C worked well. I assume the overall Climate Control system did too. I never did test anything more than max A/C as the weather was very hot. Everything seemed fine, except for the little aspirator fan which was noisy. Unfortunately 3 weeks after purchase, the A/C stopped working. I was sitting at red traffic lights and adjusted the settings and it went warm. This indicated that it was probably not a leak in the system somewhere. Just to be sure, I had the system checked and it was not low on refrigerant. The first […] My ‘new’ 300SE suffered from a common problem with Mercedes of that era, a non functional odometer. The mechanical odometer is driven by a small electric motor instead of a traditional speedometer cable and associated gears. This is because the speedometer is electric yet the odometer is mechanical. This combination was common in the late 80s and early 90s before cars moved to fully electric speedometers and odometers. The Series II W126 uses a VDO odometer unit shared with many Mercedes and BMW models of the era. There are a number of articles on the internet that already cover W126 […] My ownership of the 300SE had been off to a good start until 3 issues reared their ugly head in the last couple of days. As outlined in the last post, the first issue was the A/C stopped blowing cold. I already knew I had to do a few things for the climate control – I could hear the little aspirator motor rattling away behind the glove box. The aspirator motor is basically a small fan that blows air from near the dome light down to a temperature sensor. That sensor is used for the climate control. I’m a little […] The 300SE didn’t come with much concrete service history. I started a full service on the car to establish a baseline. This will allow the car to be properly maintained to the factory schedule. The service items arrived this week, after a quick call to MB Spares in Canberra. So far I have done the following: Oil and filter change Renewed spark plugs Transmission oil and filter change Differential oil change Power steering oil and filter change Removed the after market chrome wheel arch trims Still to do, is both petrol filters, air filter and to properly flush the […] Today I purchased a 1986 300SE W126. I needed a car that had room for three child seats when necessary and was eligible for historic rego. It also couldn’t cost too much money. Enter the W126. I had originally agreed to buy a 1976 450SE in gold, but that car developed a major engine problem. I had never owned a W116 and finding nice ones is not easy. After that car fell through, I was able to find this one instead, and reasonable W126’s for little money are much easier to find than W116s. The car has three owners before […] | |
