Looks like Mercedes content is scarce lately, so I'll tell a story. In the summer of 2013 a friend of work told me about his carpool partner who had "an old Mercedes diesel" sitting in his driveway, unused, leaking fuel that he was ready to get rid of since he was tired of doing work on it and he went to a Nissan Leaf for his commute. I looked and found a gold 1995 E300d non-turbo with about 220k miles, that I purchased for $2200 and drove home. Over the next 6 months I replaced fuel lines, injector nozzles (Bosio, damn noisy at idle) heater motor brushed, Climate control temperature sensor fan, some transmission stuff to make it shift half way normal, and generally get everything working and turned it over to my wife as her primary vehicle and sold her 1998 Volvo S70 (not a popular move...). The E300 ran for over a year and then in September 2014 while on the highway it lost most of it's power and when we got it to an off ramp would not idle and was leaking oil from the front. I called the kid and his truck and we strap towed it the last 3 miles home, where it sat for a few months before I had time to look at it. What I found was pretty strange, the timing chain had jumped at least one tooth but the intake and exhaust cams were no longer in time with each other, even though the gear mark was lined up. The ultimate culprit was the vacuum pump, of course at 240k miles. I pulled the cams and found that the intake cam gear is pressed to the cam with no index marks or locating pin (?) I pressed the gear off and heated it a little and got it timed correctly withing a few degrees of the exhaust cam. When I got the head off there were impressions in the carbon aligning with the intake valves, they were not obviously bent but after lots of debate and pricing valve jobs, I ordered valves and Neway seat cutters to do the job myself. When I pulled the timing cover I found a crack where the bar that sticks below the crank timing sprocket comes out of the back side of the timing cover I believe this holds the chain in time when tension is removed. I had this welded at an aluminum boat dealer that I used to work at (yes I'm cheap). I ordered timing chain, all guides and headgasket set at this point and began re-assembly. For the vacuum pump, I cut the damaged lever off of the mechanical pump and went with a Hella electric pump. This saved me about $700+ for the mechanical pump and injection timer assembly. I did final assembly a few weeks ago and got the vacuum system finished on Sunday. On first analysis I may need a better vacuum pump, this Hella gets pretty hot during normal use. Wife is actually pretty happy with it as the standby vehicle she was driving was a 1989 Chev G20 van :-). I did the job so cheap because the car just does not have enough value to spend what it would take to do the job right. I really like the OM606 but, damn, when buying parts I really wished it was a OM603.
DaveL Lynnwood, Wa. 1973 GMC 23' motorhome 1982 E300CD daily driver 1995 E300d "Gilda" 1989 Chev G20 _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
