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 was told that the RHD part is different to the LHD part, so when I saw a reasonable deal on the RHD part, I purchased it.    The part number (at least for my car) for the W124 centre vent is A124 830 08 54.    From looking at the new part, it had screw holes on both sides, so I assumed that it would require the instrument cluster to be removed.   Turns out that the right screw hole is not used, so the vent can be removed without removing the instrument cluster.  On seeing that, I looked in the EPC, and actually I don’t think the RHD and LHD parts are different.  And I think that extra hole proves it.

There are four things holding the vent in.   A screw on the left hand side which is accessible with the glove box door open.    Then there is a small bolt holding the vent onto the flap behind it.   This is removed with an Allen key, 4mm if I recall.   It is accessed from the right hand side of the vent, near the centre (pictured above).   Finally there are two clips also on the right hand side of the vent.   One of mine was broken, but the other I could get up with a long thin screwdriver.    It helps to have the new part on hand to see where they are.

Finally, there is a small bulb that fits into a slot in the back at the bottom centre.   This was blown on my car.

I was able to get the old vent out pretty easily.   And generally putting the new vent in is the opposite of removal.   There were two slightly tricky aspects.  The first involved changing the bulb.  I bought a bag of these dash bulbs about 10 years ago when I had my black 560SEC.   I used the final one one for this repair.   Firstly, I couldn’t get the bulb to work at all.   Then I noticed that none of the dash lights were working.

I realized that the instrument cluster must be installed and plugged for the dash lights to work.   This also explained why the light for the outside temperature gauge wasn’t working.   I re-installed the instrument cluster, and then found that while the bulb wouldn’t work when fully inserted, being out about 1mm had it illuminated.

It took a few goes to get the bulb holder into its socket, and the wire fed into the wire holder at the bottom of the vent.   On the first few tries, the bulb pushed all the way in and stopped working.    Eventually I had it in and was greeted with a properly illuminated dash.

The next part was to push the vent in.    That was trivial.   Lining up the allen bolt with the plastic connection for the flap was harder, but I found it easiest with the flap and vent wheel in the closed position.

It was all going well, until I tightened that bolt too far and snapped something.   I’m pretty sure its the plastic piece that goes onto the flap.   This is really frustrating as fixing this was the primary reason I was installing the new vent.     I can’t see that plastic bit as a separate part, so I suspect I will need to get a flap from a wrecked car that has a good plastic part and transfer it.     I’m really annoyed with myself, I was being careless screwing in that bolt.

I still have a slight improvement, as the bulb works, and I can at least direct the air left and right.    But the main reason why I spent about $250 and an hour of my time is a big fail.

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In researching what was possible, options were not extensive for the S124.   The front speakers are both an unusual size (12cm) and an unusual mounting system.   The rears are are a more common 10cm size, but mounted in the door handles.   I personally don’t think much of the speaker setup in the car.   There is room for some larger speakers in the front, and the door handle speakers are just silly.   It would have been possible to come up with a much better way to mount door speakers in a much larger size.  Certainly in 1990, the W126 in some markets (Not Australia) already had much better door mounted speakers.

Given these idiosyncrasies, I there were not a lot of options for the car.   I found a German car audio store that was selling a kit for the S124 that included the four speakers and adaptors for the Becker plugs.   I bought this, and also the correct speakers for my 560SEC to combine shipping.  These were the Crunch speakers pictured above.

I started from the rear.   The rear speaker grilles are very fragile, and its likely ham fisted speaker installers have damaged them over the years.   There is a screw on the underside, and then the grille lifts up.   Unfortunately some owners have put screws in the top which is highly unsightly.

My car wasn’t that bad, but the clips on the top of the drivers side rear were broken off, so some kind of glue was holding them in.   Removal of the cover revealed a decent looking Alpine speaker.   I prefer to have all four speakers in a car the same make and model family, so I still changed them.

The new Crunch speakers went in quite easily.   I didn’t need to use the adaptors, as the Alpines had normal speaker plugs.    It was fairly trivial to plug them in and put the grilles back on.   The first part of my 300TE speaker upgrade only took about 30 minutes to do.     I thought I had photographed the new speakers in place, but looks like I didn’t.

At this stage, its hard to determine the impact as the rears are less important than the fronts.

The post 300TE speaker upgrade – Part 1 – rears appeared first on Classic Jalopy.

Turns out, for this era of W124, with the transmission interlock, they still are.    They are now NLA for the earlier cars such as the, W107, W126 etc.    I got one of the last ones for my old 300SE for example.    While I still could, I ordered one plus two new keys for the 300TE, matched off the data card.    I would encourage anyone who has a W124 of this vintage to order one while they are still available.   They won’t be forever.    The club price for the tumbler plus one key was USD$92, and an addition USD$30 for the second key.  This is obviously before shipping.  These prices are very reasonable.   I bought all this at the same time as the fan clutch a few months ago.

I thought this would be a very good solution.  Swap out the tumbler before I have the same problems on the 300TE as I did on my old W116 280SE.    After that, I would have a brand new tumbler, two genuine keys to use and the copy as a spare.

At this point I assume its going to be a very simple matter to swap the W124 ignition tumbler over.   I’ve done it a few times on the W126, and since it wasn’t stuck yet, I didn’t think I’d have the same issue as the W116.   Turns out I was wrong.

The later W124 tumbler is slightly harder to remove than the W126 version, as there are two tabs that must be unlocked on the tumbler.   This means two metal rods at the same time and then the cap should pop off instead of screw off.    I tried all sorts of different rods, but could never get the cap to come off.   As I persevered, I was often able to feel the tabs push back, but I’m not sure if the cap was stuck somehow, or the tabs were not quite releasing enough.

I went back to the factory manual a few times, re-reading the text each time to make sure I was not missing anything.   I even went to Bunnings (large Australian hardware store) to buy metal wire in the exact diameter specified in the manual.    Didn’t help.

I tried on and off for the next two months, thinking maybe a fresh try would yield some different results.  It didn’t.

In the end I had to conceded defeat and send the car to the professionals.     I hope it would be a less painful result than with the W116, as that required major surgery.

In the end it took my mechanic about three hours to get it out, but unlike me, he was able to get it unstuck.   A good example of how experience counts.    I’ve now got a new W124 ignition tumbler in the car.  I also feel confident that I won’t have a problem like with the W116.

The post W124 Ignition tumbler appeared first on Classic Jalopy.

I’ve been surprised how many classic Mercedes are still on the road and in daily service.    I see a lot more of them than I do in Sydney.   On most days I’ll see a couple of W123s and a bunch of W124s.    Most of them a clearly doing daily use, but there are also a few that have been nicely done up.   I’m sure it takes real effort to keep these cars on the road as the climate (which is very humid for much of the year) is not kind to the cars.

The cars I’ve seen on the road have all been saloons.   I’ve seen a couple of coupes in various stages of repair, but not wagons.     Seeing an S-Class is also very rare.

The car culture is also very different here in Surat Thani than in Sydney.   Most of the cars are modified in some way – normally wheels, steering wheel, radio and even bumpers, complete interiors and sometimes body kits.    I was also told about one that had an Isuzu motor and gearbox.

The W124s are mostly the final facelift models, predominantly E220s, but with some E280s in the mix.    The pre-facelift models are mostly 230Es, but I’ve seen a couple of 260s and a 300.    The wiring harness issues that scare off buyers in Australia off the final models are probably less of an issue here as labour is cheaper than parts.

I read somewhere that there were a lot of UK delivery Mercedes exported to right hand drive countries in this part of the world during the 80s, 90s and 2000s.   This seems to make sense, as all the W123s I could see past the tint had their instrument clusters in MPH.  Back then, they were basically worthless in the UK, but fairly valuable out in Asia.

On the first day I noticed a mechanic shop with a bunch of classic Mercedes out the front.   I was able to stop buy a couple of days later to take a few photos and have a chat with the owner.   There were a lot of nice cars in there, including some other models I don’t normally see on the roads here.

These included a W116, C123, C124, W201 and a /8.  There was also a C107 shell that had just been painted.    The W116 was badged as a 450SEL, but it had a manual transmission, and looked like a short wheelbase.   The /8 model was a 200 petrol.    The C123 was a very early UK model with the burl wood interior.   The seats had been redone in modern pattern like a W126 SEC.     Regardless it was great to see these cars still on the road.    They probably wouldn’t be if they had remained in the UK.

I also stopped by another mechanic shop that had a couple of W123s  in the lot.    The only other marque that is even close to as well represented on the roads is Volvo.  I’ve seen a couple of 7 and 9 series models driving around.

Both mechanics indicated they find their parts mostly from Bangkok or overseas, but that old Mercedes were popular in the Muslim areas in the south of the country and its sometimes possible to get parts from there too.

In addition, the city buses seem to be old Mercedes from the 60s.   Most of them have Mercedes badges on them.   However, a couple have Hino badges, and look very similar.   They seem to be front engined, which according to wikipedia doesn’t seem to make sense for Mercedes buses of the era.    They all have W123 turn signals!    Possible they were older chassis, or even truck chassis locally bodied.  Or perhaps they are all Hinos and the Mercedes Badge just has more cache.

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Below is a Mercedes-Benz Australia price list from July 1991.     There are a couple of interesting things that can be seen from this list.    Firstly, the 190E 1.8 which is still quite expensive.  It was replaced by the Australia only 180E that slotted in below a luxury car tax threshold making it an attractive proposition.

The second is how expensive the high end models were at the time.    I was driving my 560SEL the other day and trying to work out what the extra $50,000 got you on top of a 420SEL.    In the end I came up with the following for 1987:

• A more powerful engine (180 vs 150KW)
• Power reclining rear seat as standard.
• Limited slip diff as standard.
• Fanfare horn.
• Cigar lighters in the rear.
• Becker CD player (vs Becker Cassette player).
• Memory electric seats for driver and passenger as standard,
• 260km/h speedometer.
• Dual snorkel air cleaner.
• Anti-squat/Anti-dive suspension.

The 420SEL as sold in Australia had most things as standard including self leveling rear suspension, sunroof, leather, alloy wheels, leather steering wheel, power seats and so on.  A fair number of the features above could also be optioned on a 420.   While in today’s used market the small extra premium to own the 560SEL makes a lot of sense, that $50,000 would have bought you an apartment in Sydney.      One can only presume that most of that $50,000 was pure profit for Mercedes-Benz.

In 1991, you could buy a new large (1100+m2) block of land in Western Sydney (Penrith) for $60,000 or a house and land package for $99,950.   The same house and land would now cost around $1m.

Looking at the tax alone on a 560SEC – it is almost enough to buy a 190E 1.8 pre-tax!    The combined original price of my three W126 cars was over half a million dollars back then and 30 years later they were worth pennies on the dollar.

The other big change since 1991 is that nobody leases a luxury car at 16% anymore.

Comparing to today, the price for a 2020 500SL is $292,500.     An S560L is $309,900.    An E300 is $129,600.    These examples show how much cheaper in real terms the cars are today.    The Mercedes-Benz Australia price list from 1991 is certainly an eye-opener.

The models sold in Australia were all highly optioned, as evidenced in the original spec sheets (pictured below).   This was one way Mercedes-Benz Australia justified the high prices as compared to other countries.   Local rules also meant Australian models could be quite different to those sold in the rest of the world.

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I’m really not sure how that extends to the late 60s models such as the W108/W109.  So far I have not had issues with my W111.   This may be because that car was subject to an extensive restoration in the late 90s.  My other cars are survivors with more parts needs.

I understand minor trim pieces and the like being NLA.  The issue has now extended into core parts that effect either the working of critical systems of the car or even the ability to use it at all.   In this case I am referring to the W126 climate control pods and self-leveling rear suspension parts.    In some cases, these parts can never come back as the tooling has been destroyed.   This is apparently the case with the self-leveling struts – A senseless act of vandalism.  From what I understand it is also the case for some ignition lock tumblers.

I am going to start maintaining a list on this site of parts I discover as NLA and ideally people who have found an alternative source can comment.  I will update this article with the link once done.  From what I have read, The Mercedes-Benz club of the UK were able to pressure Daimler AG to re-instate the production of a part that would prevent owners from using their cars.   I seem to recall it was for the R129.

As Mercedes used to do a good job of this in the past, the aftermarket parts supply is not as good as it is on some other vehicles.   This situation seems odd as there is increasing interest in these classic vehicles and the profit margins on these parts would appear to be pretty good – the R&D was all paid for decades ago.

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