Given the earlier roofs are far more reliable, I’m not sure the tilting feature is really worth the effort.   The broken arms got all jammed up in the mechanism, and since the roof lining was already out for the roof racks, it was easier to drop the whole sunroof cassette.

Unlike on the W126, the genuine lifting arms were still available for the W124.  However, to get both sides would cost over USD$600, before GST and delivery.  While I prefer to use genuine parts where I can, I couldn’t justify it.  There are quite a few aftermarket options, of varying quality.  The ones from China were much cheaper, but I’ve not heard good things about them.  In the end I went with an AIN kit, that looks like it came from Turkey.  It cost about USD$200 including delivery and GST.

When it arrived it looked quite good quality and was made from metal.  Comparing it against the old one it seemed to fit quite well.   This didn’t solve the complete problem.  Even with the new lifting arms, the sunroof was still binding. In the end, the issue turned out to be a broken rivet in the rails.  This was causing one of the rails to sit a few mm higher than it should.  Its probably why the original lifting arms broke.

The final part was the bracket that holds the sunroof cable to the sunroof had broken.  This is part 126 782 01 40 and is still available new.  It was USD$16 before shipping and GST.   I was also missing a rubber insert for the bumper on the left side – part number 124 885 05 23 which was also $16.  I was lucky to be missing that side, as the right hand side seems to be NLA, although aftermarket parts seem to be available, but more expensive.

Those were the last parts required and from there it was re-assembly.  The repairer made sure to use lots of sealant for the rear windows so water couldn’t get in under the new seals. I’ve now collected the car and it looks great, better than ever.

The post w124 crash repair – sunroof repair appeared first on Classic Jalopy.

Once all the rust was repaired, the next step was obviously paint. Since the whole car was not being resprayed, just the rear quarters and roof the colour had to be blended in. The goal wasn’t to get my car perfect, but to fix any rust and get it looking really good without the expense of a full respray.

While most of the work is in the preparation, it’s when the colour goes on that the car is really transformed. Seeing how much better it was looking when I visited made a big difference.

The car looks really sleek without the roof racks and rubbing strips on the roof.  However, I do plan to put it back to the stock look.

The bumper was painted separately and will go on later.  One of the things that attracted me to this car at the time of purchase was the colour – 888 Beryll.  Its a great colour and looks so much better without the badly faded roof.   By 1990 it was getting rarer for a Mercedes-Benz to be sold in an interesting colour.

I was also impressed with the red XJC parked under the hoist next to my 300TE.  I’m a big fan of the XJC, and red is a great colour for one.

The post W124 crash repair – rust repair and repaint appeared first on Classic Jalopy.

While I was aware of the rust traps in the S124 rear window design, I wasn’t prepared for how bad the rust would be would be without any real external evidence.  I’m really glad I did this repair now, as while it was bad, it was still very much repairable.

Both sides were pretty bad with one slightly worse.   The challenge is that if any water gets under the seal, there is nowhere for it to go.   It sits and rusts away the metal under the seal.  The low point seems to be at the front of the aperture, although there was some rusting at the rear.

Fixing the rust was going to be more effort than I had planned, but at l was getting it repaired all at once.  It would have been quite a shame to fix one side only.

Preparing the roof for paint was more effort than I had hoped.  The strips on the roof are just attached with adhesive.  But the actual roof racks require the headlining to come down.  Seeing the strips off the roof showed how badly the paint had faded from original, the main reason why I was having the roof repainted.

The post W124 crash repair – disassembly and rear window rust appeared first on Classic Jalopy.

The most obvious part was the rear bumper.  Mine was cracked in a few places.  My repairer said worst case it could probably be repaired, but we would get a much better result with a good second hand bumper.  The wagon bumper is different to the sedan.  They are now no longer available new and not easy to find second hand.

After a few calls, I found a friend in Melbourne had one.  It was in good shape, but missing the impact strip.  This wasn’t a big deal for me, as the insert (called the rail, rear bumper in the EPC) is still available new from Mercedes-Benz (124 885 07 21) and cost USD$200.   The cover from my existing bumper was good enough to repaired.

I also needed a few more parts.  The right hand side rear quarter needed to be repainted.  Therefore, I needed the seal for the rear fixed window to the cargo area.  This was still available new (124 670 20 39) and cost USD$160.  This is a very complicated seal which also holds a metal strip in place.  The aftermarket seals don’t have the best reputation so I was very happy to be able to get it new.

Since I needed to have the rear quarter repainted as part of the repair, I also opted to pay my repairer extra to paint the roof and the left quarter.  I therefore also purchased the left window seal (124 670 19 39) out of my own pocket.  Interestingly it was no longer available new, but I managed to get a new one from one of those Benz parts sellers from Latvia.   Due to this, It cost about USD$250.

I would encourage anyone who has a 124 wagon who has never removed the rear windows to get a set of those genuine seals while they are still available.  The biggest design flaw in the 124 wagon is the rust traps behind the seals of these windows.

In addition, there was a small crack on one of my taillights.  The wagon tail lights are also no longer available,  but I managed to find a second hand unit for the right hand side.   My left hand unit wasn’t that great, so I also purchased on myself for the left so they would match.   The new old stock seal was more expensive than the actual light!

The post W124 crash repair – parts required appeared first on Classic Jalopy.

Over time, it became apparent that the issue wasn’t the soft close.  All the electrics had stopped working on the tailgate.  This became obvious when the bulb out warning came on.  The number plate lights were not coming on, the wiper was not coming on and so on.   Since the 3rd brake light is a bit of an afterthought on these cars, it is not linked to the bulb out sensor, but it was also not working.

It was clear that the issue was my tailgate electrics.   As everything was not working, it was obvious the ground wire had broken in the harness.   The ground wire is the thickest and is the most likely to break.

I had a couple of options.  Repairing this wire, or replacing the harness.  I elected to replace the harness.   I figured that after 30+ years and almost 400,000km, I would be playing whack-a-mole with the rest of the wires if I tried to fix them.   The trim in this area is very brittle and taking it on and off wasn’t ideal.  Plus it would end up being more time consuming and expensive.

I purchased a new harness from Kurth in europe and waited for it to arrive.   This job was also an opportunity to fix a few other things that needed doing at the time.   Some of my trims around the rear aperture were broken and I found a much better set for sale.   My 3rd brake light housing was cracked, so I got a reproduction one from OctoClassic.   There is also a long plastic piece that goes on the bottom of the tailgate.  Mine was all cracked, but I was able to buy a complete spare tailgate.  That car had been white with a palomino interior.  I took a piece of broken trim and went to autolac who made me a spray can in the correct cream colour for my car.

I was going to try and do this job myself, but after almost a year of not getting to it, it was time to send the car to a professional.    I’m glad I did as the job took four hours for somebody with experience.  It would have taken me at least double, probably more.

In the end the old harness was ok other than that one broken wire, but I am still glad I did it this way.

Its great to have the soft close working again.  When it is not, the tailgate rattles.  In addition, the broken 3rd brake light cover, aperture trim and the bottom trim all look so much better.   Now the car goes to the panel beaters to fix the damage from the P-plater earlier this year.

The post S124 Tailgate Wiring harness appeared first on Classic Jalopy.

The road I was sitting on had three lanes.  Two through lanes, and a right hand turning lane.  I was stationary in the middle lane, which was the right most of the two through lanes.   The Honda SUV (driven by a P-plater) had attempted to change lanes into the turning lane and been cleaned up by an Audi SUV.  The impact of the two SUVs had taken most of the impact of the accident, but the Honda had pushed into my rear bumper.

The drivers of the Honda and Audi could not agree whos’ fault it was.  I didn’t really care as it clearly wasn’t mine.  I just exchanged details with both drivers and let them continue their argument.   Both the Audi and the Honda were in a bad way.  It would not surprise me if both cars were written off.  It doesn’t take much these days.

My 300TE is insured with Shannons.  Since being integrated more into the Suncorp parent company, I’ve heard mixed reviews on claiming with them.  Having talked about this with a friend who owns a panel shop which does insurance work, his comment was:  “They are all pretty terrible these days, but they are probably still the best to deal with”.   Having said that, my experience was very good and I was able to put my claim in quickly, and choose my repairer.

I took the car to be assessed recently.  The bumper bar took most of the impact, and we’ve found a good second hand bumper cover in Melbourne, minus the impact strip.   There is a small amount of damage to the paint underneath the tail light, so the rear quarter will need to be painted.   The tail light also has a crack.   Still, this should easily be doable in the insured value of the car.

The post 300TE rear end crash appeared first on Classic Jalopy.

In part one, I removed the old W124 blower motor.  I was not able to install my replacement motor, because it did not fit.   I figured the issue was with the aftermarket part, so I ordered a brand new genuine W124 blower motor.

This arrived, and it was much better, but still not a perfect fit.  It was still scraping on the housing somewhat.   I spent a lot of time trying to get it to work without scraping.   After trial and error, I found that the original bracket worked better than the one that came with the aftermarket fan, especially after trimming a little material from it.    I also used only two of the three screws holding it on, with the rightmost screw very tight and the leftmost screw missing.   With a lot of pushing and prodding I was eventually able to make it run with minimal scraping.   The right squirrel cage really needed to be about 50mm further to the right.

I found the easiest way to do it was to leave the fan running while I did the re-assembly.   That way I knew right away of something I did made the fan scrape again.   This was particularly important when putting the lid on the housing and re-fitting the mono-wiper.  I found sometimes I had to push on the housing again to stop the scraping.   I hope that does not mean issues going over every bump or a sharp corner.

Getting the mono-wiper back on was quite fiddly.   When I removed it, I had left the wiper blade on.   In retrospect this was rather silly and it was much easier with the blade removed.   I found it was easiest to position the fan motor first from the bottom, plug in the connector then position the assembly.   There are four nuts plus the clip that go on to secure the mono-wiper.  Two of the nuts are not easy to see, obscured by the rubber trim around the wiper base.   I also used a little grease on the joints of the wiper mechanism, at least those that were visible from the rear of the assembly.

Once I had the mono-wiper back on, I realized that the flap at the top of the blower motor was down.   I was pretty sure this was up when I first started this install.   Sure enough, it was.   This didn’t seem to be right, so I removed the mono-wiper and the top of the housing.

It turns out there is a linkage between the flap and a pivot point behind it.   I’m not sure if the linkage was broken, or had just come off, but I could not get it back on.   At this point I really wanted to get the car back on the road, so I left the flap in the halfway position and re-installed the W124 blower motor cover and the mono-wiper.  I had just wasted two hours.

Getting the rest of the trim back in wasn’t too bad.   The trim on my car is not in the best of shape in a few places, especially the lining of the inner firewall.  I would love to get some better parts from a wreck at some point.    Having the 420SEL parts car was quite a big help here.  I was able to replace a few nuts and screws that were missing (or I dropped).

I was also able to clean out some water drains that were totally blocked up.  In one area, I didn’t realize there was supposed to be a drain it was so blocked up.

I didn’t have time to take the car for a test drive, but everything is now back in and ready to go except for the wiper blade.   I’m glad this job is finally done, and I can use the 300TE again.

The post W124 Blower motor replacement – part 2 appeared first on Classic Jalopy.

I looked into this and found an excellent video from ‘MMWA’ on youtube on how to replace the W124 blower motor.  If you own a W124 and you don’t subscribe to this channel, you should.   Since MMWA does such a good job of explaining the job, I’m not going to repeat things here.     My car is quite similar to his in terms of this job.   Its a series 2 with the manual A/C rather than the full climate control found on US Spec cars.

Based on the video, I ordered the exact blower motor he used.   Some of the motors available from the usual suspects were either brands I hadn’t heard of, or don’t trust.    Since I got busy with work and other things, the trip was coming up and I decided not to do this job.    Since its quite involved I was worried that I would have some issue or break some part and I wouldn’t be ale to reassemble the car in time.

In retrospect, I’m glad I made this decision.

On the way back from Tasmania, the blower finally failed on the last day of the trip.    Since it was the middle of summer, I wasn’t that keen on using the car without A/C, so I set about starting the job.

As is outlined in the video, its quite involved.   It was interesting that the bits on my car that were broken were totally different to on his car.  In particular, he talks about speed nuts around the wiper surround that were totally missing.   In the service history, the motowiper was replaced with a used unit a few years ago.   I guess they were lost then.

After a few hours I had the old W124 blower motor out.   It was a Bosch unit, and it was really hard to move by hand.  No wonder it failed.

The next day I returned assuming that it would be a simple matter of installing the new blower and putting the car back together.   However, the blower I had would not fit.   the squirrel cages were about 1cm offset from the housing.   I tried moving the cages, even lubricating the shaft with WD/40.  They would not move.    I wasn’t that keen on this anyway, as back years ago I bought a motor only blower for my 107 and tried to use the hot water method to transfer the cages from the old motor to the new.   They never really balanced and not long later I finally found a whole blower and replaced it.

My blower motor came in a plain brown box, unlike MMWAs.   At this point I was wondering if perhaps I had been sent a series 3 blower.   The series 3 cars have cabin air filters, and in the EPC, the blower is a little different.   I’ve never owned a series 3 car, so not sure if this was my problem, or I just got a blower that was damaged or faulty.

Since I purchased the blower from a vendor that didn’t ship to Australia, and used a remailer, returning it wasn’t going to be simple either.

In the end, I did what I should have done in the first place.  I looked up if there was still a genuine blower for sale, and there was.  It wasn’t even any more expensive than the aftermarket one.   So now I have a genuine bower on order that should fit correctly.    The car has been off the road since mid January,  since It would be irresponsible to drive with no wiper.

The post W124 Blower motor replacement – part 1 appeared first on Classic Jalopy.

I’m taking my 1990 Mercedes 300TE on this drive.  Now I could have taken my wife’s modern car – a Mercedes E350 Wagon.    However, I far prefer driving the 300TE.   The E350 is not as irritating as most modern cars, but I would still rather drive the 124.   I also think any issues are more likely to be dealt with easily.   An ECU or Airmatic problem is going to end the trip.

In order to reduce the odds of any issues, I had a few jobs to do to the car.    None of them were mandatory, but I think good preventative maintenance.   I have previously covered some other work I did on the car such as refurbishing the instrument cluster, attempting to change the centre vent and changing the speakers.

This trip should take me past 380,000km for the car.

Starter motor replacement

A few months ago, I noticed that when I started the 300TE, the starter motor did not seem to full disengage, and I could hear a bad noise like it was still just touching the ring gear.  It only did this a few times, but I really didn’t want to be stuck with a bad starter by the side of the road.   A Bosch remanufactured starter wasn’t all that expensive and seemed like good insurance.    I had this done at a workshop.

Tailgate soft close mechanism

The S124 has a soft close mechanism for the tailgate.   All you need to do is gently close it, and the motor will latch the tailgate.   Recently, mine has started play up.   The motor does not engage when it should, but there is a sound coming from the back like the motor is trying to work at other times.   This was mostly when I closed it firmly to bypass the soft close, or when I turned off the ignition.

I bought a second hand soft close mechanism, and gave it to the same workshop who did the starter.   They swapped the two mechanisms over, but it was still playing up.   They also did some troubleshooting.   Using a multi-meter the microswitches seemed to register when the mechanism was in a position, but they did not trigger the motor.   When the motor was triggered, it was at extremely low voltage, and the noise was coming from something else in the mechanism.

After troubleshooting for a bit, and getting nowhere, we agreed to simply disable the mechanism for now, so it doesn’t flatten my battery while I am away.   The car still works, without the soft close feature.

Oil and Filter change

As part of my trip preparation, I did a routine oil and filter change.  My hoist is currently broken, so I pumped the oil out manually.  I used Penrite HPR15 – 15W/60 Full Synthetic.

When I do an oil change, I like to remove the fuel pump relay and use the starter until oil pressure registers on the gauge.  I don’t think its strictly necessary, but its something I like to do.

Bluetooth Module wiring

When installed the correct Becker 1402 in the car, I wired in a hidden Bluetooth FM injector.   This had mostly stopped working.  Occasionally it did work, which made me think the unit was bad.

The Bluetooth unit is under the dash wood in front of the shifter.  I removed the dash wood to get to it, assuming it would need replacement.  When I removed the radio, I immediately saw the problem.    In my install, I used a relay to trigger the blue tooth unit to turn on from the antenna trigger wire.  One of my crimp connections was loose.  When I moved the radio, it came out.  To fix the issue, all I had to do was put on a new connector.

New Battery

When I first purchased the car, my battery tester noted that the battery was a bit marginal.   From the service history, it had been installed in 2017.   It probably had another year or so in it, but in November, Supercheap had a big sale.   I got a new battery for 30% off and installed it for the trip.

Auxiliary fan cut in

I’ve never been happy with the temperature of the car in stop/go traffic with the A/C on.   It sits just above 100C.   Since I owned the car, I put in an 80C thermostat and replaced the viscous fan coupling.  Those made improvements, but I it was still hot in traffic.   Given the properties of R134A, I find that it works better if the radiator is not that hot.   I’ve planned to make a fan controller box with a variable resistor like I did for the 560SEC.   However, I’m terrible at soldering, so I have not had time.

For this trip, I just wrapped the resistor around the pins for the fan sensor, and put a new plastic housing around the pins for the wiring.   This is not perfect, but should bring the fan engagement point down to the mid 90s.

Key spare parts

One advantage of driving a very common car, like a Toyota Camry, is that there are parts available wherever you go.   This is not the case in a 30 year old Mercedes.   I packed a few parts that are probably not necessary, but may be helpful on the road.     The first is a new serpentine belt and tensioner.   As a rule, I don’t like serpentine belts.  If you lose an accessory, you can’t just remove that belt and continue.    However, that is what the M103 is equipped with.   This is not something I can do by the side of the road, but having the right belt and tensioner means I can be towed to any garage for a belt change.

I also brought a voltage regulator, and a distributor rotor and cap.   Plus a few standard Mercedes relays, fuses, some wiring, cable ties and basic tools.   I take more when I go on the road trips with my friends, but I have a whole boot available, and we are pushing the cars harder.

I managed to get all this stuff squeezed into the side storage areas in the cargo area.

The post Preparing my 300TE for a family road trip appeared first on Classic Jalopy.

I ended up installing it as part of my failed attempt to change the centre vent.   Even after changing the bulb, the vent illumination was not working.   I realized that it must require the instrument cluster to be plugged in.    This proved to be the case, and also fixed the illumination for the outside temperature gauge.

Before I re-installed the cluster, I added more ATF to the speedometer cable.   This is an attempt to lubricate it and stop the speedometer needle bouncing around at low speed.   I then plugged in all the electrical connections.   Most of them had plenty of slack, so this part of the job was quite easy.    Re-attaching the speedometer cable is more fiddly as there is minimal slack.

I didn’t push the cluster all the way in and did a test drive around the industrial complex.   It was soon apparent that the bulb that illuminates the left hand side had blown.   I had one left in my box of bulbs, so I quickly swapped it over.    If you own these cars, its really handy to keep spares like this on hand.    On the less positive side, I can’t say that the ATF has really helped my speedometer needle a great deal.  It is improved, but not by very much.  It was worth a try.

Given that you are sitting in front of the instrument cluster the whole time you are driving the car, I think is a very worthwhile improvement.  I find these sort of projects really make a big difference.  My refurbished W124 instrument cluster wasn’t all that expensive and only a few hours work.     It is especially apparent when compared to how it was.

The post Refurbishing a W124 instrument cluster – Part 4: Installation and testing appeared first on Classic Jalopy.