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E300TD restoration

5K views 57 replies 7 participants last post by  MAVA 
#1 ·
Well, sister bought a new car and I finally got my E300 back from her....whew. The car is seriously clapped out, and it needs major service (injectors) and complete suspension overhaul.

I have about a page and half of things to replace...Kajtek1, when you last replaced the radiator, did you also replace the water pump too? I'm thinking of doing the water pump while I have the radiator out to do the lower support bracket.

So far, I have...

  • Rack and pinion -- it has 30 degree of slop before any steering occurs
  • Lower support bracket -- old one is bent in. Will need to cut and weld replacement
  • Expansion tank and cap -- leaking coolant
  • All PCV hoses, leaking oil
  • Valve cover gasket
  • Injector rebuild with new nozzles and sent in for pop testing/calibration
  • 4 shocks all around
  • Flex discs
  • Driveshaft bearings and carrier bushing
  • Front wheel bearings
  • Sway bar bushings and links
  • Lower ball joints
  • Lower control arm bushings -- its creaking under load
  • Thermostat + coolant
  • Transmission oil change
  • Belt tensioner -- funnily enough the shock and springs are fine. Its just that the actual tensioner pivot broke off, so its just rattling
  • Tensioner shock and spring -- only $30 for OEM, why not?
  • Fuel line O rings
  • Fuel thermostat -- possibly source of air bubbles?
  • Get #2 GP out, its broken and do #6 GP
  • Change oil filter housing gasket, it's weeping
  • Investigate if I need to replace the fuel lines from tank to engine
  • Headlight polishing
  • Investigate subframe bushings?
  • Rear suspension overhaul
  • Turn the rotors, car shakes under braking

This means I need to buy the special tools for the LCA bushings and the MB spring compressor.

Swapped the ECU with the stock ECU, currently driving it so the readiness monitors complete and then I can smog it, then the car goes in for service.

Pictures will be up.... This is going to be painful.

Current mileage as of this writing: 304,749.
 
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#2 ·
Incidentally, does anyone know of any company that rebuilds the rack and pinion? I'm not opposed to replacing it with a used unit from a newer W210, but I dislike waste. Would rather repair than replace.
 
#3 ·
Water pump was replaced when DW drove the car on limp and original plastic impeller did not survive high rpm. Don't remember the mileage, but looks like by now it might be 100k miles old.
I also remember replacing 1 of flex disks short time before selling the car (was it 4 years ago?)
You should know you can't turn MB rotors?
Have fun with the project, we'll drive to Alaska in that time :D
 
#4 ·
You should know you can't turn MB rotors?
Shhhhh, you can't, but I can. :p Actually the rotor is just fine, I just dislike the vibration under braking, and the brake pads still have some meat left. I would say maybe 60%....which is unusual, because that's the same brake pads when I bought the car from you....4 years and 60k miles ago. So I'm going to turn it a few thousands of inches, enough to make it smooth and that's it. It still has enough meat left for that at least.

You also said that you replaced the radiator 4 years before purchase, so at this time it would be 8 years old. I'm just trying to track down the age of the parts, and seeing if it warrants replacement or not.

It still starts perfectly, no check engine light, it is weeping coolant when it gets too hot, and coolant temperature climbs when under heavy load...I'm trying to limit all that, so perhaps if water pump impellers are gone or the bearings are squealing, maybe time to change it anyway. The engine is so loud that I can't hear any bearing squeal, and I'm of the opinion that my car should be ready for a 3000 mile road trip on drop of a hat with zero preparation.

Are you going to take the truck with camper to Alaska? Have fun there! Take couple chains with you just in case.... :D
 
#5 · (Edited)
I remember putting at least 60k on those pads, so after 120k they still have 60% left?
Aren't Akebono wonderful?
I think rotors might be original.
When the engine overheating start? I had it with no engine fan at 114 and temp never went above 95C, so wonder what might happen?
Even LA traffic is no good explanation.
Yeah, truck to Alaska. Should get us there in a month, or 2.
Good to be retired ;)
 
#7 · (Edited)
I will check on the rotors, I will have to take them off anyway to do the wheel bearings, so might as well turn it, do bearings and do the rack and pinion plus suspension overhaul while I'm there. A classic case of "while I'm there...."

Really, the engine isn't exactly overheating per se, it never goes above 100c...but that concerns me. Diesels shouldn't get that hot that quickly, even under full throttle uphill for what, 30 seconds?

There is this freeway bridge over a river/channel near my house that is pretty steep...it's no grapevine pass grade, but it's close. I use that place as an opportunity to floor the car uphill. A poor man italian tuneup, if you will. The whole stretch is maybe 0.5 miles, and it takes me about 20-25 seconds to reach from bottom to the top of the bridge at full throttle.

In that time the temperate goes from solidly under 67C to around 90C.

20 second of full throttle and the car heats up by 20C+?!

This is the part I'm concerned with. None of my other cars do this, not even the frankensteined AMG and I keep that one under full throttle pretty much all the time.

Year ago I went to Zion national park, which is in Utah. Whole place was flat, and I had no problems with temperatures. However as the freeway sometimes had loooooong uphill slope, and as the car is under more load going up the slope, the temperature climbs very quickly. On the return trip there was a massive accident and all four lanes were slowed down, so we were in gridlock for about 2 hours or thereabout...and the car did touch 100C idling, but no further.

I don't know. I might put back the fan.

Are you going straight to Alaska, or are you going to make a lot of little stops on the way there?

I looked up the distance to Anchorage, AK, and didn't really appreciate how far it was until google maps showed the whole earth. :D That's a quite trip.

What injector nozzles are you going with deplore?
Going with Monarks, since original Bosch injector nozzles are pretty much all gone. I am planning on keeping my original injector nozzles, see what I can do with them.
 
#12 ·
Well, I will have to check that after.

Today the car got dramatically quieter when driving toward smog shop....Found out why.

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Hmmmmm...... Good thing I was about to take it out of service anyway. Might explain the heating issue? It's probably not absorbing the shocks all that well....well, not at all anyway.

Regarding paint: well, paint is okay now. Doors and trunk are good, its the front bumper and hood that have a lot of rock chips and otherwise pitted. Also, sister dearest played bumper cars quite often with the E300, so its scraped and has paint damage nearly everywhere. I don't even know where the dent in the fender came from.
 
#16 ·
I abhor body work. I refuse to do it. Maybe down the line I'll have the other guys in my shop do it for a couple lunches and beers. :p

That size dent in the fender, I was actually thinking about how to fix that...was thinking of removing the fender liner in front wheel and then use a pry bar or something and pop the dent out.
 
#17 ·
body work not my thing either. I attempted a few motorcycle gas tanks and decided anything bigger I would have to lighten the wallet. Despite the damage it still looks like its a keeper. Hard to beat the om606. I'm doing the ip seals, supply and return lines, balancing injector pop pressures when I get my tester welded up and 32 point socket comes in tuesday. Keep the updates coming, helps to know I'm not alone;)
 
#18 ·
I did push some dents in my life but with so-so results.
The deal is to make wide pad and push it without wrinkles or making additional dents with pry bar.
So in this case a block of padded wood placed bellow painted line and pushed from inside would be my first try, but again, I never made it without additional marks.
It is a skill.
 
#19 ·
Ther easiest thing is to replace with with a fender with the same color and taken from a pre facelift W210 from a JY. You can also get an aftermarket fender for around $70, not the same quality but it should be fine. Painting will take more time than removal and installation.
 
#20 ·
It's been a while coming, but now I finally started to work on the car!

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Sent the injectors to Greazzer over in pelican parts, and he did a great job. He also found out that #3 was weeping pretty much all the time, that might explain the high gas consumption. I had to replace two injectors, because two of them were so tight that when greazzer tried to open them, they just bent. So I went to the local PnP and found a NA OM606 (97 E300) and pulled all injectors, and sent it to him. He picked two good ones, uprated it from 115 bar to 135 bar, and plopped it in my set. You may be able to spot the NA injector among the set above if you look closely. :p

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Removed valve cover to get to the broken piece of PCV hose inside the VC, and saw this. Timing chain is still very tight, everything is spotless and bears no damage, etc. Lovely 305k valvetrain, still looks pretty. The eagle eyed among you may notice that the #4 is full of diesel....and that's because I left the return line loose. I need to tighten it up later.

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Kajtek, this one is for you. This is the same akebono pads that you installed... as you can see, it still has some significant meat left.

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Removed rotor to replace the bearings in the front. That little screw retaining the rotor was a pain in the ass, so I used an impact turner. Worked very well.
 
#21 ·
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My lovely impact screw set. I got out all four rotor retaining screws in 5 second flat. Cheap too, $40 at snap on!

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You can spot the factory grease, but the blacken stuff....yeah that's totally chooched. Had metallic flakes in it and was sorta gritty, but surprisingly enough, no noise at all, and it still spun smoothly. But since I plan on removing the spring to do the suspension and rack and pinion on that corner.... why not do the bearings at the same time? So off it went.

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Both spindles were scored, but it's still smooth enough, and my fingernails can't catch on any groove. Good enough for me, since a new spindle is stupidly expensive. I'll stay with this one.

Tomorrow I'll be working on the rest of the car. Stay tuned.....
 
#22 ·
Sweet! Glad to see some progress on the diesel. What did you decide to for the lca bushings? Buy lca complete or press out old ones? Not sure if you added motor mounts to your list but with the mileage, it couldnt hurt. Also might wanna give the turbo impeller the old wiggle test. Thanks for taking the time to document the progress. I get in work mode with greasy hands and totally forget to snap and post things I know might help someone. I'll try to stop being lazy;)
Nate
 
#24 ·
Yeah I saw that thread. I don't mind some competition, but then again I'm not looking for replies. :D

Mrkrab, I'm pressing out the bushings and pressing in new ones. Bought the LCA tool for it, and I plan to keep it for future jobs. It was cheaper with the tool and OEM bushing than entire LCA with new bushing.
 
#26 ·
Well, today not much happened.

As to the LCA tool.....well, as it turns out, I didn't exactly "buy" the proper tool -- turns out I forgot that I didn't bought it. So had a slight oops moment and then had to ghetto rig my way through. Surprisingly it worked!

I even used the tool to remove the subframe bushings and it helped out.

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A hammer with chisel got out the two bushings in front, and a combination of subframe bushing, oversized bearings (seriously, why do Toyota have such massive bearing races?), shop press and hammer got out the other. And then we used a jack to press in the new bushing! Works ridiculously well.

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Replaced both front bearings, packed it.
Replaced front ball joint.
Replaced shock.
And lastly (not visible), replaced the sway bar bushings and link.

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My "LCA" tool. :p


I tried to turn the rotors, but as it turns out, the front rotors were so badly warped that by the time I got it completely flat I had gone over 4 thousands of an inch (on both side) so when I measured it, it was under 20mm thickness. Yikes.

So ordered new rotors, wasn't too bad. $48 each front and $21 each rears, ATE brand. Zimmerman were a few dollars more, but eh.

Tomorrow I hope to install the valve cover, redo the fuel return lines (properly, so it doesn't weep out), and then turn the car around and drop the rear subframe to do everything.

I bought the rear suspension kit, so I'm replacing literally all suspension component on the rear except for the sway bar bushing. We'll see what happens.... it'll be fun!
 
#29 ·
Put new rotors on. Nice and shiney, compared to old one that looked like it came out of deep sea.

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Installed up the valve cover gasket, all fuel lines, replaced fuel inlet hose, fuel thermostat, fuel thermostat gasket, intake manifold gasket, cleaned the valve cover and intake manifold, new oil cap and put it back together. Looks nice and shiny....except for the dirty IP part.

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Buttoned everything up, jacked up the rear of the car and cranked it over. 15 sec of continuous cranking before she fired up. Tons of misfire due to air bubbles, but after a few minutes cleared up.

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Tomorrow rear suspension/subframe.
 
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