MBCA & Pierre Hedary Present: Guide to Buying a W108 or W109

and hold on to your questions either into in the chat or hold on to the end that would be fantastic again i have everybody muted for now um we will get to the point of asking everybody's questions and um then we will unmute you so you can answer any questions that pierre has for you and as soon as pierre are you ready to go i am excellent well thank you everyone for joining us i'm going to make pierre the spotlight and we are ready to go when you are okay good evening everybody so this is going to be just like we did a buyer's guide for the 123 and 107 series cars this is going to be our mbca insiders buyers guide for the 108 and 109 chassis cars and so to help you guys understand better what models are going to be covering we're going to be looking at the 250s and se the 280s and se and sel the 280se 3.5 sedan and the 280se 4.5 sedan as well as their long wheelbase versions and that is the 108 series and with the 109 series we're going to be looking at the 300 sel with the m189 engine the 300 sel with the 2.8 liter m130 engine the 300 sel 3.5 4.5 and the 6.3 which i think they're more than a few of you on here who want some information about the 6.3 so the primary reason that i felt a sense of urgency to do this buyer's guide is because i think we need a permanent record discussing the strengths and weaknesses of these cars in a more in-depth first-person encounter sort of point of view spotlight so that more people who are shopping for these cars understand where the details on the cars are that can set you back thousands of dollars i find that most sellers of these cars whether they are dealers or private owners do not have a comprehensive understanding of the car and its needs and they will look at a car like a 280se sedan and say oh the car runs good it stops it breaks you know it doesn't have any major rust the interior looks nice the paint is presentable um and you know the car seems to present as a decent car so therefore i can go out and price it at 20 grand you know and that's that's something that's becoming more and more common especially in the overhyped bring a trailer market which you know fortunately or unfortunately has at least for the foreseeable future altered the price of these cars dramatically so in this insider's buyer's guide we're going to discuss not so much deal breakers you know basic stuff like how much rust the car should have but we're going to look at nuanced items that can affect a what you're going to pay for a car and b what you're going to spend to actually sort the car out going down the road so the first category that i want to look at on the 108 and 109 series is the front subframe then we're going to go to rear axle then we're going to talk about air suspension which is on the w109 and then we're going to talk about some of the interior details we'll get into climate control systems such as hvac and air conditioning because those are all very important items that help one enjoy their car and then we're going to talk about market value so hopefully some of you will find some very useful information in this presentation so the 108 and 109 have a front subframe that holds up the engine and transmission and the front suspension bolts up to the subframe so the subframe is a pretty important part i would say that the front subframe is singularly the most important structural member of the car that can actually be removed so if you have the unibody which is just the body shell you know passenger compartment engine compartment trunk well etc with none of the fenders bolted on you have this giant heavy metal bracket that's suspended between the left and the right front fender and also suspended at the front of the car just below where the radiator mounts and where the bumper mounts so this subframe is key to the structural integrity of the car now what a lot of people don't look at or discuss with the 108 and 109 are the front subframe mounts these subframe mounts are mounted literally in board of the shock absorber inboard of the fender they're mounted on unlike the um inner fender and i should probably i should probably i don't know anne marie do you think you could google a picture of 108 front subframe mounts and pull it up for us sure by the way i am so lucky to have anne-marie because she is the she's probably the only person that can like deal with like my ridiculous spur-of-the-moment requests so i really would not be able to do this so efficiently if it was not for her so you know they're all there's like only there are there are not very many anne marie's in this world anyway um uh let me know when you find it but these subframes over the years they have a metal mounting bracket with four bolts that suspends the subframe to the body and then they have these um these 19 millimeter bolts that suspend the mount to the subframe but of course the core of the mount is rubber you have a metal cone and metal mounting plate then you have a rubber core and then you have another metal member and of course the rubber disintegrates over time causing the subframe to become instead of one piece two pieces now when this happens effectively what it means is that at its most critical mounting point your front subframe is not connected to the body of the car anymore and this is a really big problem because a lot of people don't check these both when they're buying and they're selling and they're they're expensive to replace and they're a little tricky to replace we'll touch on the subframe mounting procedure shortly but in order to properly replace your front subframe mounts i'm not talking about doing it you know like a barbarian you have to suspend the engine in the engine compartment and then drop the front subframe onto the ground so that you can not only change the subframe mounts there we go so that's the rubber part that disintegrates leaving the the inner metal cone and the outer metal cone completely detached from each other and but anyway you not only want to change these but you want to do motor mounts there are subframe mounts that are associated with the front sway bar at the very front of the car these can't totally detach but they're like a flimsy leaf spring so you want to do those mounts as well you want to do front shock absorbers there's a stabilizer bar that connects the front subframe to the right side of the chassis you want to at least do the bushings in that bar and then while you're in there you can do things like a steering coupler or if you have a 6.3 the alternator mounting bushings so my my message here is that it's very important to check these subfront these front subframe amounts and see when they were replaced last because you know i would say like the the bigger the rule too is the bigger the engine on the car the shorter the subframe out life and you know if you're buying a 6.3 or 4.5 or 300 sel 3.5 they're going to be much harder to replace and there's going to be more work involved and and you know you have air suspension lines the subframe mount oh am i am i back yet emory just give me a thumbs up if i'm back okay good all right the um thank you the um the subframe amount if you have it's it's 8 to 10 hours of work minimum you know on a 6.3 it's more like 20 hours of work because you've got so much extra stuff to do when you're in there like hey why don't you pull the ac compressor and reseal that while the subframe is out it's much easier um but you're gonna pay four to five hundred bucks or a subframe kit from mercedes and if you use a phoebe kit and actually i have nothing bad to say about the phoebe mounts themselves febi as in phoebe bilstein you know for under 200 you can buy a phoebe kit and it will deliver what i think is reasonable service life um some of the hardware in the kit is made in asia and that's usually the part that i discard but the mount itself from them is made in poland and in some cases it's actually the rubber and it's actually proven to be stronger than the mercedes stuff so i don't know explain that to me i'm still not sure why but um the um the all the parts of this job could you know set you back around let's say around 850 or so and you know with labor depending on what the shop you deal with is going to charge you you know at minimum like eight hours if you have a 250 and you really want to get the thing cleaned up and then if you have suspension grease fittings that haven't been greased in a long time you have to go into suspension parts you could add hours and parts on top of that so when you're checking one of these cars that it's a good idea to make sure that those subframe mounts are in good shape and you don't have any other major suspension issues now we're going to go to the rear end of the car where we have the back axle and the back axle has its own set of rubber mountings that are also often neglected and the 108 and 109 series cars use a low pivot swing axle what it means is that your right axle or right axle 2 rather pivots and then the left side is fully integrated into the differential now connecting the pivoting right tube which needs its own fluid supply and the center differential which is where all of the gears are and most of the fluid is kept you need some kind of sealing measure to keep the fluid inside the differential it's moving from the right side to the left side of the left side to the right side so mercedes decided that they were going to make a boot a rubber boot and uh this rubber boot is a a uh a very tough part we see and service a lot of these cars that have their boots that were installed in the 60s and 70s that still look good and they're doing exactly what they're supposed to today in the present day which is amazing but still some on some cars the boots are bad they get gummy or they start to leak or they get ready to rip or they get to be so bad they tear open at the top particularly in cars from extremely dry climates so um anne-marie do you think we could pull up a photo of like a maybe a 113 rear axle because it's the same type of axle this axle by the way was used on 108 109 111 110 113 very similar to the axle and w120 and 121 series cars w180 series cars so this axle design was not a new design in fact it was on its way out because mercedes felt that you know they could come up with a better suspension which was phased in in 1968 on the one on the 114 and 115 series cars but this suspension has proven to be incredibly tough and robust and so we're going to talk about oh here we go okay super so you guys can sort of see the axle layout and right right there you could sort of see this boot now i'm sure most of you are looking at this photo and you're wondering how would we replace this boot if it is bad and there are two options there's the half assed way to do it with a split boot and then there's the right way to do it with a full boot now people ask to ask me they go but pierre when when is it appropriate to use a split boot and what is it appropriate to use a full boot well it's appropriate to use a split boot if you're driving somewhere and your boot shits the bed sorry and and ruptures and leaves oil all over the highway and you've got to get a boot on there that's what the split boot is for it is for emergency repairs uh or situations where you don't have the time to pull the axle out and put a boot in that's what it's for the split boot unless you're a real genius is known to leak it never seals a hundred percent unless you use this amazing product that's very hard to get called worth bond and seal um you know yes you can make a split boot work with bond and seal and i've done it before but the ideal way to do this repair is to pull the whole axle out and knock this giant pin out that holds the right supporting tube on and install a complete boot and when you're in there you might as well do axle bearings and upper and lower differential mounts and differential centering bushings and maybe rear shock absorbers and you should change all your spring pads and most 108s and 109s need all of that rubber stuff in the back so at minimum 85 to 90 percent of cars with this axle that we see have blown out uh have blown out upper diff mounts and lower diff mounts and sometimes if the boot's still good you can just change these two mounts and pull off the rear pinion seal plate and pull all the rear springs out and you can sort of kind of leave the axle in the car sort of you know i mean it's not it's pretty close to removing it you know you're almost like at that point where you're like i might as well do this but you know if you're trying to expedite things a little bit and you know that that boots going to be good for 10 more years or something like that you have a lot of confidence in it then you could just change these amounts but of course nobody changes these amounts and that's what i find ironic these 25 30 000 280 se 4.5 that are selling on bat and in some other places usually have these worn out rear axle mounts and um it's starting to become very evident to me that um that uh uh most mercedes shops don't even understand that this is a problem you know a good example of this is um a friend of mine when we were on our way to star tech 2011 in milwaukee we uh we drove up to a um we drove up there and the axle boot was leaking in his 280 sc 4.5 and of course 2011 how old was i it was 10 years ago so i was like 26 i was not that well versed in these rear axles and um the uh the cars started leaking so much diff oil we went to a well-known shop north of madison that's not black forest in case some of you are wondering but this is another shop and they put on a split boot which was the right thing to do but the owner of this car was complaining about excessive negative camber on the rear wheels which is a good way to spot an extremely worn out diff mount and what i have learned about these cars is that if you see a problem like that there's usually an underlying cause of the worn out component you shouldn't try to correct it by making up a repair so this shop as well known as they were they decided to put uh literally air cells in the rear springs that were pressurized at 20 psi to keep the car up stupid at the time i didn't understand the problem but years later when i had a chance to service the car i learned that the rear diff mounts were blown out and i pulled the whole rear diff out i put a continuous boot in i put new rear diff mounts in and i guess it was a you know a fool me fool me once and both the shop owner and i because i was responsible for serving the scar i had no idea was wrong either you know i was no better than they were about diagnosing the problem but you know this just goes to show that even even those of us that are continuously around the cars sometimes don't understand this issue and so that's why when somebody says oh i have a great mechanic you know he said the rear axle mounts are fine no you need to inspect them yourself and so what you're looking for is when you get under the car with the lower diff mount there's this big triangular arm if you pull up the picture of the difficult anne marie i'd like to point out where the um where the lower diff mount is so what you're going to see in the middle is this big triangular thing here you fro you lost audio and what happens the rubber it squishes out so if you see no rubber if you see old rubber squishing out if you see um if you grab the thing with like a pry bar and you see the inner tube moving and the outer tube staying in place you know this mount is bad but usually if you see rubber starting to squish out of it it's collapsed and and you put 500 miles in that thing and start using the car regularly diff mount's done you know uh a lot of people like to ask me what these parts cost the upper diff amount is uh lists for 296 dollars the lower amount list for exactly 400. if you happen to have be the owner of a w110 chassis a 180 chassis or one of those earlier cars they have a much cheaper lower diff mount it's like a hundred and something bucks but for a 108 and 109 car it's 400 dollars if you have an air suspension car the upper diff mount lists for i think like 480. wheel bearings are about 135 each these cars use a special swivel race rear wheel bearing called a tonen lager or a a barrel something i don't know it doesn't really make a lot of sense when you look at the german translation but it means the outer race of the bearing can move meaning they're quite expensive to manufacture and they're not easy to install and all of the 108 and 109 cars use tone and loggers or swivel race bearings on the left and right axle tube so in the ends of those axle tubes there are two wheel bearings of movable races because of the movement of the axle shafts and um there are some other things that you can get into like 6.3 there's an internal uh the the well i should put it this way the 108s have an internal u-joint inside that axle about where the boot is and the 109s have an internal cv joint and both of those assemblies the cv joint can get fractures in them from you know years of being beat on by owners particularly in 6.3 liter cars so if you get a weird vibration back there that nobody could see to diagnose you might have to go into the rear axle to find the cracked uh to find the cracked uh cv uh housing and that's what the right axle shaft fits into another thing that can happen is when they get super high mileage the gear housing where the spider gears that turn the turn the axle shafts are located the the housing can get worn out where the gears are anchored into the housing and so this can cause clunk clung clung you'll usually find this on cars where if you put the parking brake on and you put the car in neutral and you try to turn the drive shaft you'll get 40 to 90 degrees of free drive shaft rotation which is a lot of free drive shaft rotation but we'll put it this way on these axles you're either going to have very little like less than 5 degrees or you're going to have a ton of it like 50 degrees 60 degrees so you're either going to have very little or you're going to have a lot of extra free rotation that means that the diff has to come out be opened up and take it apart i remember on one car in particular before i understood this issue completely because you know i'm young i'm learning about these cars too you know every every day i learned something new about them i had a 280 se shipped to my shop and i missed this issue and i had to fly up to long island with all my tools and pull the diff out of the back of the car and take the differential apart completely in the owner's garage and replace the center gear housing and put the diff back together and that was probably the worst labor day weekend of my life but i got it done i mean i didn't so much mind the job it was more the fact that i was thinking to myself i'm such an idiot you know of course i charged for the work but i it could have been a lot easier with my lift and everything instead of having to load that entire axle assembly into a 280se in the guy's garage so you know learn from my mistakes right um now we're going to go into air suspension so unless you have a receipt for air suspension valves preferably preferably from martin worminghausen at 600 air suspension because he's my favorite you're probably going to need to do air suspension valves and if the bags have really deep cracks in them like you can see cords in the bags you're probably going to have to replace airbags too this is all 109 cars now some people ask me well can i just convert my w109 to springs no if you feel that you're in a a situation where it's cost prohibitive to you know do fixture 109 the right way sell it you know you don't get if you can't afford it don't play with it you don't deserve to own it sorry you know and this is coming from somebody who has who who used to have a 6.3 and would make some stupid sacrifices to be able to keep the 6.3 going which ultimately i issued it for a 67 300 seo which was a decision that i i felt much more comfortable with but um the the biggest problem with um the air suspension systems is the fact that the air valves wear out and they start to leak down does this mean they're unreliable no but if you're if you think that the air suspension car you're looking at is a really good car and the owner says oh and it holds there for a week everything works great no no they should hold air add infinitum they should not lose any air pressure the light can be on but the height should not come down you know they really should not be losing height so you know if you're looking at a 108 or a 109 car or if you've got a pigeon for w112s or a w100 you know you never know who's watching um the air suspension valves need to hold air pressure and again this shouldn't be a deal breaker but it should be a negotiating factor and that's what all of these are they shouldn't make you walk away from the car they should make you negotiate harder and buy more prudently you know these are questions you should ask before you hit the bid button on bat or you send the dealer a deposit without looking the car over okay now that we've talked about air suspension and axles and rubber suspension parts that fail let's talk a little bit about hvac systems heating ventilation and air conditioning systems so that those of you who would like to have a more thorough understanding of the hvac system and this card know what to look for so these cars had for the most part an ac system that was not fully integrated and that's where i'm going to begin because most people who want these cars want to know that in the summer when they're using their ac is going to work so uh almost all of these cars except the 3.5 and 4.5 liter cars had their ac driven by a york uh twin piston compressor and a lot of people say oh the york is so awful let's replace it with a sand in i know that at star motors their long-standing policy was put a sand in rotary compressor in place the york compressor you know uh just get that clunky old thing out of there well they're wrong as usual the mercedes engineers at the time were a little bit ahead of the ball they still kind of are now why am i making a case for a power sapping 50 year old ac compressor design that everybody else craps on in the industry and it's for one reason because it is good capacity and it makes good cold air and it's dead reliable and so your compressors work best with r12 or an r12 substitute such as envirosafe or freeze 12. their biggest virtue is that for 80 bucks you can go on ebay and buy all the parts to reseal them their bearings rarely go bad anne-marie do you think you could pull up a picture of a york ac compressor sure okay thank you they they tend to be mechanically robust and although they do cause some vibrations and they're not great for super high rpms they do their job incredibly well most of my customers who have these cars with your kc compressors have told me that they are impressed by how well these 50 year old ac systems cool so if you're not getting cold air and you do have a functional york compressor what else could be going wrong well the number one problem that goes wrong with these cars is the expansion valves get blocked and apart from early you know 65 66 and some early 67 model year cars almost all of these cars have expansion valves that live inside the evaporator case so the evaporator is not terribly hard to pull on these but it's located in the right passenger compartment under the dash and you have to pull it out which could be you know there can be a little bit of pain involved but you have to pull it out to be able to replace the capillary tube type expansion valve if you can't flush it out sometimes dryers will collapse internally especially the bare dryers um that were used on on like the front mounted dryers right on the condensers but some dryers are extremely good like the old aluminum drives oh here we go okay so this is a this is a a real york compressor and this is about what you're going to find in like a 280se or similar car and if you look at the top where the service valves are these are the types of service valves that i like because they screw on there was another version of the york where the service valves bolted onto the top of the compressor and um uh these service valve these types of yorks that have service valves that bolt directly on with like two half inch bolts these are the ones that are most prone to leakage when they sit whereas the type that have what are called rotor lock service valves that bolt onto the top with the roughly 30 millimeter screw-on fitting those are the better compressors because they once they're sealed they stay sealed you don't have to go back every eight months and find that you're low on freon or something like that so let's you know anyway so with the york compressors i guess their biggest advantage is that when you're driving and it's 95 to 97 degrees outside a york with r12 or an r12 substitute is going to keep making cold air whereas the sand in starts to give up at around 90 degrees when it gets to about 90 or 91 degrees and 100 humidity you you might as well you know i'm not saying you might as well shut your ac off but you're going to develop this impression if you've switched to a sand and compressor that the ac just doesn't perform and um you know here in florida people are extremely pushy about me getting their ac right so i've had to learn all of this through attrition now um going back to the internals of the hvac system the rest of the system is pretty robust you don't get a lot of hose failures i mean if you have original hoses in your car keep them until they're proven bad we've had a bunch of these cars come into our shop with original ac hoses and the owners think oh i got to replace the ac hoses now they're very tough you know eaton or parker or whoever made these hoses back in the day in the 60s and 70s they built a hose that lasts a lifetime as a suppose these like cheap thin aluminum fitting things you get from your you know local cold air distributors or whatever now inside the car you've got heater levers that are prone to breaking off and this is a really painful job and i know that george murphy and miller's and some other place to sell a dural lever kit where you could replace your lever with a hard plastic lever also on euro market cars they used a harder heater lever if you can find harder version heater levers and install those that's my first choice the dural levers are a good option the rubber handled levers are okay but it's a good idea to replace your heater valve o-rings which are behind the glove box and also not fun to get to usually if the heater core has been blocked off that's why but nothing on this job pales in difficulty pales am using the right word maybe i should use the word compares nothing no no job in the hvac system compares to the difficulty of replacing a heater fan because the heater fan on these cars is buried between the dashboard and the heater box and according to air and householders a good friend of mine who's done a bunch of these jobs when you get good at it it's like a 22-hour job so again not a deal breaker but a great place to negotiate you know because if you can live without a heater fan so be it but some of you who are in cooler climates who really need a heater fan um some of you who really need a heater fan should know this now the ac fans are super robust and really easy to get to they're right in the passenger for five minutes ac fan out you know and they're both fans are actually rebuildable too which is nice now um let's go into some other areas people usually don't touch on with these cars when when we're you know and when people are trying to buy them so i'm sure some of you want to talk about engines and transmissions which is a very important thing to look out for um we're gonna go through the weak points of the six cylinder eight cylinder and m-100 eight-cylinder engine so starting with the uh with the 2.5 and 2.8 liter m1 m108 and uh m1 30.92 carbureted engines we find that the biggest weaknesses with these engines are premature wear to cylinders and valves and carburation issues usually with the carburetors if you saw my zenith 3540 presentation they're actually very good carburetors i know that there's some idiots out there who've installed webers or hollies or whatever i don't i don't personally find that the cars run very well with webers they run but they do not run well they don't run as intended also they get horrible gas mileage also so much gas gets in the oil that you're eventually going to ruin your your bottom end bearing so a weber is the fastest cheapest way to an engine rebuild we can say that i think with great certainty the most probably the smartest thing you could do is if you can't handle your own carb rebuild and a lot of people think they can but they can't farm out your carburetor rebuild to somebody who knows what they're doing i like using elmar rodriguez but there are some other people um who can do this job as well you know i know my friend jamie kupchinsky is very good at it jamie might be watching i know there's some people out on the west coast like bob gunthorpe who are very good at it too you know it's it's just a matter of finding somebody who understands us carburetors and sometimes you have to make parts for them too so you may also want to talk to somebody who has the ability to cad cam engineer things like a diaphragm or a float ventilation valve um as far as the engines go worn valve guides are the number one thing we see usually characterized by profuse blue smoke and somewhat high oil consumption that means the head comes off and that affects all of the engines from the sear we usually replace them with hardened silicone bronze guides and silicon bronze guides should be installed at room temperature with the head at room temperature no freezing and heating none of that stuff they have to be installed at room temp and they need to be installed by somebody who knows what they're doing we also see a lot of worn out valves so if you need valve guides plan on replacing your valves too this can get expensive on m100 engines but in general in the six cylinder engines it's not too bad you'll spend about 600 in a set of valves valve stem seals and guides and then the machine work is usually about 800 to 1200 bucks depending on who you use now removing installing the head is a different story if you're good at it it's like three hours off and six hours on on a carbureted car on a fuel-injected car there's more time involved especially if you're detailing the engine but try to be wary of cars that have valve needs now bottom ends are a different story you want to do a compression test on these cars if you have any suspicion about the health of the engine i'm not saying you have to do it all the time but you should do a compression test what you're looking for with compression tests or consistency and who's ever doing the test needs to do it with a strong battery and the valve's adjusted and they need to know what the heck they're doing you can't do a good compression test with a weak battery here's a good example we had a 69 280 s come into our shop that was overheated severely it was so severely overheated that it ran poorly and it had lost a valve guide and it was smoking like crazy but i said we should compression test this thing just to make sure well the shop didn't worked on it before because people only send their cars to me now i guess when they're desperate but um the shop that had looked at it before said that all the cylinders were toasted and had a weak compression i said that doesn't make any sense so i pulled compression readings in all the cylinders with the weak battery and of course they were low then i put a good battery in the car and i had compression numbers sitting at 140 to 155 psi which is fine considering the issues at the valves that was very good compression so we pulled the head rebuilt the head put the whole thing back together car ran great so again don't necessarily ride off a car because you think it might have low compression or because somebody did a compression test on it and they were so so about it collect the data for your self you should probably be there when it's being done if possible or at least face time or something with the mechanic i mean we could do virtual inspections now you know we're in the 21st century um the uh the other thing about the bottom ends of these engines is that they have very poor tolerance for bad and machine work so if they said oh the engine's rebuilt and you as the buyer go ah oh it's got a rebuilt engine this is going to be great sorry doesn't work that way either you have to vet the person who rebuilt the engine because you know you have to ask three questions that the engine rebuilds why was it rebuilt who rebuilt it and uh [Music] who rebuilt it and what parts did they replace typically when you do an engine rebuild the right way on these cars pistons and either boring the cylinder first over size second oversize maybe sleeving the engine you know you're going to have to do some of that stuff now sleeving on these motors is generally not the best option because according to my machinist jim dean it weakens the block but some engines do have to be sleeved so if the engine was sleeved the person really needs to know what they were doing now some engines have factory sleeves but not any of these engines so you know this is just something to to keep in mind now going to the v8 cars the 3.5 and 4.5 have super tough bottom ends they rarely wear out i know when i bought my 280se 4.5 and the nose of the crankshaft failed where the woodruff key that holds the crank gear goes on had stripped out i took my original pistons and rings out we measured everything the original pistons were good we put new rings and we were good to go and the thing had 180 psi of compression i mean it was just literally you know it was amazing um same goes for the 6.3 6.3 from what i understand when they sit they do suffer from ring fractures uh now the question now is what do you do if you need pistons made well mercedes does have a lot of pistons there are a lot of used i'm not used new old stock piston sets on ebay but if you can't get a piston you go to a company called vol special colbin and felbach germany that's w-a-h-l-s-p-e-z-i-a-l-k-o-l-b-e-n vol spezel colbin and they make pistons for mercedes classic so you know that they're good and i've had val make pistons for me before and they were wonderful they were like little jewels engineered works of art you know i can't say anything better about them and all for 2 000 euros for eight oversized pistons for an m117 engine what more could one ask for so that's what you do if you need pistons but again bottom end issues camshaft wear issues always pull the valve covers of these engines check for ward cam lobes cams could be expensive thank you anne-marie it's like you read my mind uh and um i i have become so frustrated with the you know with the fact that people don't adjust valves on these engines so you see valve wear rocker wear etc etc you know nobody looks at these things and and um you know if you're really paying the big bucks for a car it's a good idea to vet the condition of the camshafts on the v8 cars always look at the right cam it wears out first also on the v8 cars look at the timing chains because they tend to wear out now we're going to talk a little bit about a special problem that all of the aluminum heads have but this is particularly bad in the 6.3 so it can affect any of any of the gas mercedes engines but it seems to affect the 6.3 in a disproportionately high number where the fire ring in the head gasket seals to the cylinder head there's also a coolant passage and coolant corrosion occurs between the fire ring and the surface of the cylinder head and eventually intrudes into the cylinder what does this cause it causes coolant consumption without the symptoms of a blown head gasket so you'll end up using coolant wondering where it went finding coolant vapors and coolant sludge in your breather you know and this you know but engine doesn't run hot you might get some pinging which is a good sign that there's an issue but again engine doesn't run hot you're like what's going on you know you don't get excessive pressure in the radiator you keep asking yourself this question then finally the answer comes to your like must be burning coolant and that's what 6.3 is due so when you get the 6.3 heads off and you find there's coolant corrosion on the surface of the cylinder head where the fire ring um is uh you have to get the heads deck welded and again you need a knowledgeable machinist and you should also do valves and guides then too especially because that cylinder is going to get a little bit beat up i'm toying with the idea after our baby is born in the middle of february when things normalize again doing a workshop called all you need to know about m100 engines um i think that would help dispel some of the myths surrounding the m100 engine it may have to be a two-part workshop but um you know i get so many requests for information about these engines that i think it would be it would be fun but this is something to be aware of so the 6.3 how do you detect this issue you pull all the plugs you pressure test the cooling system and you sit there and wait and look for a pressure drop and if you see a pressure drop make sure the radiator is full and wait for coolant to start coming out of one of the spark plug holes hint it's usually on cylinder four and cylinder eight which are the two rear cylinders but it can affect any cylinder okay so um i should talk briefly about body corrosion and then we're going to talk about interiors and we're going to talk about value so body corrosion um always check rockers for bondo especially inner rockers the more time you spend crawling around under the car the better these are the areas we see rust out on 108s that should be checked with more than just you know a magnet maybe a screwdriver the front bumper support replacement of this bumper support can cost up to eighteen thousand eight thousand dollars parts and labor with a knowledgeable um uh with a knowledgeable shop that is a spot welder so somebody doing it right you've gotta um uh you've gotta actually pull the the um the front fenders off to do this job so it's quite a job and there's a lot of spot welding involved number two um the inner rockers and outer rockers towards the front so you have to get the car in a lift and look at the inner rockers and make sure that if they are rusted it's a tightly contained area towards the front what you don't want are inner rockers that are rusted all the way down because that can be a bit of a deal breaker you especially want to make sure that this was not concealed number three what are called the dog legs that run inboard of the rear wheels these are like a structural rail that runs directly inboard of each rear wheel they can rust out and in order to replace them right sometimes you have to pull the entire back axle number four cars that have sunroofs you want to check for sunroof pan rust rust inside the roof that can be a real pain and then of course number five um try to make sure that you don't have a rusty firewall so where the where the grills are those pretty chrome grills where the heater uh and air intake is you want to make sure that you don't have rust lurking in that compartment that can be a real detriment if you have a rusty firewall because there's a lot of work involved there anything else is generally pretty easy to deal with if you have the right body shop as far as interiors go original is always better i know we don't have original on every car now but original is always best i think that some of the replacement leather from like 10 15 years ago really did not feel right it looks like a cheap michael kors handbag fortunately the leather industry is improving so you have better leather coming from german auto tops from hyde's leather from suppliers in germany from arista leather that's actually surface dyed thick hide um vegetable dye based leather that's actually the right stuff instead of the stuff that you know looks okay kind of the pattern looks okay but you start looking at the leather acrylic and like wait a second this feels really cheap and synthetic and that's really the beauty of an original interior i was gonna say if you have an original interior preserve it at all costs you know don't say oh i have a tear in this thing oh i've got to redo my whole interior oh my driver's seat's going i've got to redo my whole interior no don't do that don't be one of those people the um uh the envy interiors are super hard wearing sometimes the palm fiber pads inside wear out you can get these pads either from mercedes or gah and the gaa h-o-n's are okay you just need a knowledgeable interior shop to put them in because sometimes they have to be shaved a little bit but mbtex is super durable and also relatively easy to replicate so you know the mbtex is kind of a blessing because of its durability some other difficult jobs that you should be cognizant of when buying one of these cars headliners front and rear window gaskets door seals while not difficult cost about sixteen hundred dollars a set um of course you know you want to make sure that if you have a 3.5 and 4.5 liter car the djetronic injection system is working well we did a whole talk on djetronic injection a few months ago so if you want to you can go to our events and member resources page to check it out now we're going to talk about values so a lot of the items i gave you are negotiation points they're not deal breakers per se i always tell people try to focus on a car with a sound engine a nice body a nice interior a decent transmission no weird rear axle noises you know try to find a nice original car but there are cars you should run away from in cars you shouldn't run away from so 108s typically present in three different states um really well kept original cars kind of like worn in or tatty drivers and three cars that i like to call sleeping beauties because they've been parked for 20 or 30 years and haven't really seen the light of day or good care you know um and so in in this category the cars that i tend to favor the most are sleeping beauties really a car can only go through the sleeping beauty stage once or twice and um the um the the whole thing about these sleeping beauties is that they represent a good opportunity for people that are very hands-on and dedicated to learning about the car to buy a car like this at the right price to work through its issues and end up with a very well sorted final product now the really nice original cars um or sometimes cars that have had like a cosmetic restoration you know like they've had paint maybe they've had some interior work a lot of the time but not always those cars tend to be priced towards the top of the market especially in their hand in the hands of dealers now i'm not going to come on here and um crap all over the idea of buying a car for dealer but i am going to come on here and crap all over the idea of buy car from a bat auction i think it's a horrible idea especially when you're dealing with the w108 or 109 because there's so many layers of complexity and detail to these cars so i don't recommend being under the gun when you purchase one there are a lot of these cars are tough cars and robust cars you don't need to go on you don't need to go on hemmings or bat or whatever and buy a car because it presents is a nice car you know you really should vet the car carefully um and that goes with say you know whether you're buying a nice original car from a private owner or an individual you know now these cars are going to need some things even the best car where people you know people always go to me and i get so sick of hearing i don't want a project here i don't want a project you know i'm like what can i tell you even the best car in the world is going to need some stuff you know they're going to keep needing stuff their cars you know they they break you have to pull up roll up your sleeves and deal with it i personally um have never seen a 108 or a 109 car that didn't need at least 3 500 worth of work and it's mostly because parts of the cars are expensive and because labor is in intensive you know now some of this stuff is optional some of you could put off and do now and some you could do later but at the end of the day you know you have to accept the fact that when you're buying a mercedes sincere they are labor intensive um i don't you know i don't like to buy super tired drivers unless the price is right so this is where you roll up um you you you roll up the you roll up your sleeves when you're dealing with one of these cards because usually the sellers may be a little bit pie in the sky whether they're used car salesmen or individuals in facebook marketplace this is where you take the knowledge you've learned in this presentation and you bring negotiating power to the table by saying well your front subframe mounts are bad your rear axle mounts are bad the car needs door seals you know here's the list of things i have to do let's get off that 12 000 asking price and see if we can make a deal at six or seven thousand and i think that part of the reason these cars have gone up in value so steeply is because uh there has been a a hole or a gap in this knowledge that i'm presenting with mercedes shops where people assume just because the car runs and drives and it looks good that it's worth 20 grand and that shouldn't necessarily be the case so again you want to watch out for sort of like the tatty tired drivers that need sorting you don't want to overpay for these cars and a lot of the time these cars are brought up and on the internet and their photos are photoshopped and their presentation is tarted up to sound like ad copy to make it seem like they're better cars than they actually are and you really don't want to overpay for those cars so uh one of the things that um one of the things that i get so frustrated with when people you know look at these cars is they go for the easiest most visible car they don't want to do any work when they're hunting for the right car and when you're hunting for one of these cars you need to talk to private sellers and mechanics and people who might know somebody because buying like the easiest car to purchase um or acquiring a car just because it's low hanging fruit and you see one and you think oh i've always wanted one of these you know it's only 20 grand you know i could break into that 401k and get my dream car um i don't necessarily know if that's the best idea and um i'd say never be in a rush to buy one of these things now let's look at values um six-cylinder cars 250 s's and ses i i would say try to avoid paying over 15 000. for even the nicest 250s or se most of the time these are like five six thousand dollar cars for like a running driving car that needs some work maybe 5500 for like a nice sleeping beauty when you get to the 280s at se again about the same price range for a nice driver five six grand they're a little bit more common so maybe even a slightly lower price you know the best cars out there like a nice 71 with a sunroof you know unless it's some weird low mileage time capsule i try to avoid paying 20 i'd try to get you know 15 16 17 you know when you may be 18 for an extremely well sorted car with one owner history and and zero rust and like under a hundred thousand miles but mileage is really not that important of a category now when you get into the uh air suspension cars you know because the cost of maintenance is higher you're going to find that the project cars sell for less money and the fully sorted cars sell for more money so there's going to be a bigger financial gap so with air suspension cars figure like you know 10 to 15 for a decent driver 300 sel six cylinder 3.5 or 4.5 to up to you know 40 grand for a very nice 300 seo 4.5 and maybe 5 000 for a solid project car with a little bit of rust that hasn't run in a few years you know or a decade or so um 6.3s tend to have their own market so with 6.3 as i say don't overpay for a car with a bunch of needs but it's okay to overpay a little bit for a car that doesn't have any needs as long as the repairs in the car document you know there are a lot of shops out there believe it or not that have customers with these cars that are like established mercedes repair shops like morris motors and in walnut creek california or um you know another good example would probably be um uh um [Music] larry digeev or bud kloniger shop mb motors in phoenix arizona you know usually shop owners like this know at least one person with a nice 6.3 so with those cars it's more about the car rather than the price but i'd say like a 6.3 that needs some work is 40 to 60 000 and one that doesn't well it just sort of goes up from there you know into the 70s and 80s for for the right car um i don't i don't think that there's anything i haven't covered but in case oh yeah walnut grove not walnut creek i'm sorry morris motors is in walnut growth i think i've covered most of the areas that people don't discuss openly i mean you should be looking at things like dash pads right they're right there in front of you but um what i would probably say is that these cars tend to be a little overvalued in the market so you might have to fight hard with a reasonable seller to get the right one at a fair price um if there are any areas that i have not covered adequately i will now take questions to cover those areas so anne-marie let's let the questions roll okay our first question is from ernie and as we go through these if there are any other questions anybody can put them into the chat either to everyone or to me directly and i will add them to our list so the first one is from ernie what angle should the split be mounted at regarding the rear axle the split should be mounted at um it should be facing the side pointing towards the back of the car so the idea with the split was that it was supposed to be done in the area where it would be easiest to install and you get the best window when it is facing you directly there's going to be if you're installing any axle boot there's going to be a script on the on part of the boot at each end on one end that says oben oben and that's german for top and that should always face upward and that will orient the split if you're looking at it sort of like a clock that'll orient the split at about 3 o'clock or so next question the next question we have is from john he he says i'm reading that putting a 108 109 110 111 or 112 on a two post lift will allow the sub frame to hang and with the weight of the engine and transmission it will tear the mounts for this reason do you recommend not to put these cars on a two-post lift this is a very this is a very funny question and john i'm glad you asked actually if they're going to tear let them tear because it means they are weak so if the subframe is if the subframe mounts are in good shape they should not tear they should be fine if they're weak this is actually how you inspect subframe amounts you put the car in the cheapo slip there the chances are they didn't tear from going in the lift they tore from uh they tore from being uh old and they were probably torn before they went on the lift so time for sub frame ends okay next question next question is from gary any hints on freeing up a distributor my 6.3 distributor won't move wow so the question is how did that happen i've never heard of that happening before well you need to determine whether it seized from sitting on a shelf in a humid environment or um whether it's seized from a mechanical failure so if it's seized from a mechanical failure you really need to find a good machine shop with a distributor machine um i should have been more specific when i asked that it the car runs but i can't time it because i can't rotate the distributor to time it really i see so your distributor is stuck in the housing are you loosening the five millimeter allen bolt is that what you're referring to when you loosen that bolt you can't rotate the distributor yes well have you how have you tried to remove the distributor have you used like a brass hammer to try to knock it upwards out of the out of its hole no i haven't done that i've just tried to knock it in a way that it would turn and it won't do that yeah i've run into this problem before so you have a couple of options i think the best option that you have if you remove the entire five millimeter bolt you know the distributor and its gear fit into a housing on the front of the engine your worst case scenario is that you'll have to remove that housing with the distributor but um your probably your best case scenario here i i'm thinking what probably happened is somebody found an o-ring that they thought was the right size and it ended up being too big and they forced the distributor in anyway your your best bet because these are cast iron distributors is to go from the bottom with like a long two by four an anchor it seat it firmly at the base of the distributor and you use a brass hammer to try to destro to drive the distributor upwards now the good news about these distributors is they have a little two-legged gear on the bottom and you can't lose the timing orientation if you do it this way so uh that's that's um that's probably your best bet but that's really the only advice that i can offer you i've run into stuck distributors and 189 engines before which is a lot worse but in this case um you're going to have to resort to some sort of force from below you know well applied directly and accurately applied force from below to drive the distributor out of its housing okay thank you good luck you're gonna need it all right next question our next question is from rick his mechanic recommends that he install rear rear axle gears from a 3.5 or a 4.5 car into his 1970 280 se 6 cylinder is this a common upgrade um yeah rick actually it is it's a good upgrade to um i like doing it a lot so the 3.5 liter cars had a 3.69 ring opinion and the 4.5 had a 3.27 ring and pinion and um the threes the the thing about these rings and pinions in your 1970 280 se is that the the pinion gear is not going to be an exact fit you actually have to machine out part of the differential case to get the pinion gear to fit and when you're done you're going to have to recalibrate the speedometer but if you live in an area that's not like extremely mountainous and you have lots of flat roads for cruising the 369 or 327 differential provides useful lower rpms a meaningful increase in fuel economy and less engine wear and tear and so i personally do recommend that upgrade um if you're buying just the parts for mercedes the 327 uh ring and pinion is about with with like your wholesale discount because you're an mbca member at classic it should be about 2100 bucks but you're gonna have a lot of other parts and labor usually borders on the 40-hour mark but personally i think it's worth it and if you could find used parts all the better although the supply of used parts is pretty sparse so keep that in mind thanks a lot good advice you're welcome next question is from ernie he wants to know a little bit more about glass separation oh my gosh yeah that's a real problem ernie especially on the east coast well you know one of the one of the problems that we see a lot with these cars is that when on the front and rear windshields the outer and inner pain were um were two separate pieces that were sort of glued together and when moisture gets into the corners where the two panes are glued together it starts to separate the inner pain from the outer pain this usually happens because windshield seals deteriorate and start letting water in and this particularly happens in the corners now is this a good reason to get rid of an original windshield absolutely not but it is a good reason to make sure that your windshields are actually sealing in the corners and maybe change a window gasket so you know something to think about all right next question our next question is actually our last question is from ernest he wants to know where he can find the footwell light for his 280 sel 4.5 yeah so those footwell lights are you know they're you're probably not going to necessarily find one in the united states um i'd probably look with uh knee muller in germany n-i-e-m-o-e-l-l-e-r they seem to have just about everything and they have some very nice um uh they seem to have some very nice additive packages that you can um i'm not sorry some really nice parts that are not available for mercedes anymore that you could purchase but um there there seem to be more and more reproduction parts popping up so authentic classics may have this too but i think that knee muller is probably your best bet and you may even have to call them and inquire about it so keep in mind they're in germany so there's like a time difference knee muller is usually where i go to all of my hard to find for all my hard to find items whether they are battery cables or wiring harnesses or chrome trim parts that are in la so um i would try them first um okay i think we had a question about fuel additives yes do you recommend using any kind of fuel additives to the 6.3 octane boost marble mystery oil yeah actually it's do and i this goes for all mechanically injected cars um i like to use marvel mystery oil or a one percent mixture of two cycle oil and all of the mechanically fuel injected cars to lubricate the injection pump and the injection nozzles on the carbureted cars it's critical if possible that you either use ethanol free fuel or an anti-ethanol additive the anti-ethanol additive is not as effective as ethanol free gas but i know in some states that are you know regulated by idiots like gavin newsom you get to you get no choice about what kind of fuel you're using and basically what happens is ethanol over time does rot the uh the gaskets in the carburetor so you want to use something to protect them but you know increasing the fuel lubricity on mechanically injected kit engines um is extremely important and uh you shouldn't neglect it at all so there you go um do we have another real question i see a lot i see the chat is buzzing with interesting comments but i want to see where the questions are mario wants to know if you should buy a 108 now mario has my email address i'm sure we can work it out over a couple of emails and then uh ron would like to know how often do drive shaft carrier center carrier bearings go bad and are they hard to replace not very and they're not super hard i mean it's more hard work than technical skill but what does go bad is the drive shaft support bushing which is a giant rubber donut they do develop some extra play and this bushing can occasionally collapse leading to some drive shaft vibration that might be a little hard to detect but it's still an issue so you should always look at the front flex disc in this rubber this rubber boot as far as drive shaft carrier bearings go in these cars though i only usually replace them if the boot has an excessive amount of play but i rarely run into an outright failure with the carrier bearings that is all the questions that we have all right great well i want to thank everybody for coming i'm going to do one more q a that's going to be a live event on youtube concerning technical questions and questions that are on people's minds and they're shopping for a particular mercedes um and then after that particular event i'm going to go radio silent for a few months because my wife and i are expecting a baby sometime in the middle of february so i will be available via email for those of you that need to contact me but i can't promise when the responses are going to come and again this is going to start sometime in the middle of february when our baby gets here but i'm very pleased to see almost seven i saw 70 people or more on this chat and some of you are people that um i know own these cars and some of your people that might be looking the thing that i want to emphasize before i go is that we're basically you know the last bastion of hope for these cars if we don't buy them preserve them and restore them they're going to end up turning into um minute youtube videos on hoonigan where some idiot has ls swapped a 280se because he thought he was cool and you get in a car like that it runs and drives like garbage nothing like the mercedes engineers intended so really is the mbca we have to make a concerted effort to preserve these cars and for those of you that are doing it um you know whether it's a 108 or a 116 or a 123 or 107 or whatever i i really am pleased about all of this and um uh i think that um i think that this is a good sign that you know there's a lot of interest in our club for classic cars so um remember if you have any um comments you can email them to uh what's what's their address or web our email address for the social media committee it's nbc our email for the social media committee is social media mbca and that goes to the chairman of our committee andrew who will forward it on to the person who needs to see it so we welcome your comments suggestions uh volunteers who would like to present a future class we would definitely like to hear from you especially since we will be losing pierre for a little while yes i would really love for somebody to at least temporarily step up to the plate and fill my shoes so if you guys have undertaken some big projects on your own classic mercedes that's the kind of information that we would love to see here anyway um good night everybody happy new year and um i'll um we'll announce one more presentation that will be on a weekend sometime i think it's going to be the last weekend of january so i look forward to seeing some of you there okay have a good night and thank you and marie thank you everyone for joining us everyone presentation uh do you want to see our upcoming schedule it's nbc.org upcoming hyphen smc hyphen events and this uh live stream along with our prior live streams are all on our youtube channel um i put the link in the chat but if you would like to search it on youtube it's nbca events and member resources all of our prior live streams are on there and again our if you want to contact us our email is socialmediambca.org thank you so so very much for joining us

Channel: MBCA - Events & Member Resources

Views: 599

Rating: 4.8333335 out of 5

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Id: NY7IXDomUOE

Length: 75min 10sec (4510 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 22 2021