SKcats fleet. Full weeb spec on the GS300.

[ProgRocker]

Nice Prelude!  Interesting dashboard in those models - very sci-fi.

I was gutted when Honda discontinued the Prelude. 

[Skcat]

1 hour ago, Rust Collector said:

Nice purchase on the Prelude! I miss driving mine, they're fantastic cars. Those DOHC VTEC engines are pretty indestructible too - back when I was at the main dealer I got a Civic VTi on 220k miles in exchange for about £30 worth of kebabs, it smoked a bit on crossover but was still a rocketship and never let me down in the time I had it. I still see it driving around after selling it to a local lad. 

In terms of rust, keep an eye on the seam where the rear inner arch and the rear quarter meets, from memory there should be a rubber trim on that with sealant inside to stop water wicking in via capillary action and rotting the panel out from the inside. On my one the windscreen frame started to bubble up as well, and I ignored it as the car was laid up which resulted in the windscreen cracking pretty spectacularly!

Is yours a BB4 chassis with 2 wheel steer or a BB1 with 4 wheel steer?

The car already seems to have had some surgery. But I can't tell the extent of it so far. They seem to rust very badly. And mines got a cracked windscreen too! 

Its a BB1, But the 4ws only seemed to working when I first picked it up, stopped working shortly after. 

The blower motor got delivered today so hopefully I can get that sorted tonight! 

[Skcat]

Blower motor is now fixed! Pulled the dash out to find the 4WS and abs bulbs have been pulled, replaced them and thankfully the 4ws is not playing up. But when the abs system faults it disables 4ws.

The abs turns on a few seconds after heading off so I would assume its a wheel sensor. Will need to properly diagnose it either way! 

[Skcat]

So I figured out the ABS sensor on the rear right wheel was bad and bought a replacement for £50, that solved the first fault code. The second code then came up, "motor overrun". The abs pump motor has failed basically and they are like gold dust. 

I've disconnected the ABS ecu and now the ABS is "disabled" rather then "faulty" the four wheel steering works. 

Its amazing fun! Especially in a multistory at 10mph, but you can feel the rear end turn in at higher speeds. 

[Skcat]

Will be at japshow at santapod this Sunday. If anyone is interested in the car they can take a look as I'm looking at ever more cars now! 👍

[Skcat]

I saw this montego estate in the wild and asked the owners about it. They said they would sell it if they price was right but let me have a good look around. 

Mot has recently ran out but it looks solid in the right places. Just a shame its sat around doing nothing. 

[Skcat]

Montego guy got in touch with me, he wants £1700 as a minimum. I don't think that will quite work out for me but hopefully someone will get it and use it! 

[Rocket88]

6 minutes ago, Skcat said:

Montego guy got in touch with me, he wants £1700 as a minimum. I don't think that will quite work out for me but hopefully someone will get it and use it! 

 

[Skcat]

Went to look at another W123 OM617 yesterday! Seems fairly solid, any thoughts? 

Needs a bit of work to get it back on the road but mechanically it was healthy. Although scabby and welded in a few places it looked like all the metalwork was original or at least very well repaired. The last w123 had some drastic surgery! 

A little fabrication is needed here but it's not gotten out of hand yet. (I gave everything a good poking) 

It was at least a lot Cleaner then the prelude. 

Its the right spec being a om617 auto saloon. I'm not a fan of the green exterior, lots of overspray! 

The interior carpet where Missing and a lot of trim was damaged. The wipers did not work but I think that was due to the weird after market wiper stalk fitted. 

Will need to give it some thought

[Zelandeth]

Beware missing/damaged trim.  That sort of thing for these cars is fscking expensive.  The number of little bits and pieces like that my S123 needed to fully tidy it up and the price of them was one of the deciding factors for me moving it on.

[Nullzwei]

Did you have  a look at the underside of parcel shelf area by poking your head in the boot? Just like in a 190 they can rot out their rear screen surrounds badly, an expensive repair. Other than that it depends on price. If it was around what the Montego owner wanted then get it bought. Very veg oil friendly once filters changed.

[goosey]

I like these, I saw this Tuesday parked on a drive in Aston in Birmingham, I just looked the address up on google earth

[Skcat]

On 5/27/2022 at 12:04 PM, Nullzwei said:

Did you have  a look at the underside of parcel shelf area by poking your head in the boot? Just like in a 190 they can rot out their rear screen surrounds badly, an expensive repair. Other than that it depends on price. If it was around what the Montego owner wanted then get it bought. Very veg oil friendly once filters changed.

The last w123 had a rotten parcel shelf! So I practically climbed in the boot of this one and it's all clean, same for the bulkhead and rear of the battery tray! 

I went for a second viewing and offered £3000 but he was keen too let the auction run out which is fair. Says he can put it in storage and sell it when it's 40.

The auction is now up too £3601!!!!

I wonder if this is a silly price for a W123 or if prices are just on their way up for usable classics that are soon to be Tax/ulez/mot exempt. 

The issue I'm finding is LHD automatic om617 saloons are really uncommon now, so even when they are naff people seem to buy them up for a high price. 

Finding a manual om617 estate or a auto or manual om616 saloon is not nearly as hard! 

[Nullzwei]

4 minutes ago, Skcat said:

The last w123 had a rotten parcel shelf! So I practically climbed in the boot of this one and it's all clean, same for the bulkhead and rear of the battery tray! 

I went for a second viewing and offered £3000 but he was keen too let the auction run out which is fair. Says he can put it in storage and sell it when it's 40.

The auction is now up too £3601!!!!

I wonder if this is a silly price for a W123 or if prices are just on their way up for usable classics that are soon to be Tax/ulez/mot exempt. 

The issue I'm finding is LHD automatic om617 saloons are really uncommon now, so even when they are naff people seem to buy them up for a high price. 

Finding a manual om617 estate or a auto or manual om616 saloon is not nearly as hard! 

Looks like a nice car from the ebay advert. From the number of vehicles the seller has for sale they appear to be a car dealer. For that reason alone i would imagine they probably expect far too much money for the car.

You never know your £3000 offer may be accepted when the usual ebay bullshit bidders do not follow through with the sale.

[Talbot]

28 minutes ago, Skcat said:

Finding a manual om617 estate

Where would that be from then?  A manual OM617 Estate would be my ideal spec.

[Skcat]

2 hours ago, Talbot said:

Where would that be from then?  A manual OM617 Estate would be my ideal spec.

Here, Here and Here. 

The last seems to be a OM602 though, which after doing a lot of looking around appears to be a real thing but they don't seem so common.  Probably a good match for the W123 though. 

2 hours ago, Nullzwei said:

Looks like a nice car from the ebay advert. From the number of vehicles the seller has for sale they appear to be a car dealer. For that reason alone i would imagine they probably expect far too much money for the car.

You never know your £3000 offer may be accepted when the usual ebay bullshit bidders do not follow through with the sale.

He is a dealer, he was very happy for my too poke around the car twice. Let me take my time and just let the car do the talking.

[Nullzwei]

43 minutes ago, Skcat said:

Here, Here and Here. 

The last seems to be a OM602 though, which after doing a lot of looking around appears to be a real thing but they don't seem so common.  Probably a good match for the W123 though. 

He is a dealer, he was very happy for my too poke around the car twice. Let me take my time and just let the car do the talking.

The blue s123 down in Newton abbott is  a good price. The 5 spd manual gearbox mated with the om602 is a good combo, same as in my 190d. Plenty of torque for a n/a diesel so you can change up early and manuals have less rpm's at motorway speeds. Hydraulic tappets in the om602, earlier om's would need manual adjustment. Been welded a bit though but havn't they all by now. Suppose that is the problem with w/s 123's. They are getting on a bit so body wise may be a bit needy.  The ability to run on veg oil should offset this possible rolling resto expense though and it is a good opportunity to learn to weld. 

Good luck in your old diesel mercedes search. 

[Skcat]

33 minutes ago, Nullzwei said:

The blue s123 down in Newton abbott is  a good price. The 5 spd manual gearbox mated with the om602 is a good combo, same as in my 190d. Plenty of torque for a n/a diesel so you can change up early and manuals have less rpm's at motorway speeds. Hydraulic tappets in the om602, earlier om's would need manual adjustment. Been welded a bit though but havn't they all by now. Suppose that is the problem with w/s 123's. They are getting on a bit so body wise may be a bit needy.  The ability to run on veg oil should offset this possible rolling resto expense though and it is a good opportunity to learn to weld. 

Good luck in your old diesel mercedes search. 

I suppose these are good cars to learn on as the metal is relatively thick! 

The blue one seems a little odd too me, get all the welding done the get rid of it immediately after. But it's worth a look if I find the time to go down that way. It's just very rare too see a 602 in a 123 chassis car.

I've seen a few om603 swaps from back in the day though. 

[Six-cylinder]

I love the look and feel of a W123. I used to work for a company that had a 15 years 280TE and when the new C230K pool car was out I was asked to use that instead. I really liked that and I did not mind at all having the old car. 

I nearly bought a 250 saloon but the heater matrix was leaking.

I have then over the years watched the prices rise and realised that they were climbing beyond what I was willing to pay. 

When Zel put his 230TE with issues up for sale at a very reasonable price I grabbed it with both hands. I am now driving it regularly and enjoying it.

My question is why a diesel?

 

[Talbot]

34 minutes ago, Six-cylinder said:

My question is why a diesel?

I prefer how a diesel drives.

Had a look at the links above.  Yah.  I'm not going to be affording one of those at the moment.

[Skcat]

On 5/30/2022 at 9:53 PM, Six-cylinder said:

My question is why a diesel?

I'm not really sure, my first one (w124) was a diesel and I did a lot of reading up on them and always kept interested in those. I've always loved seeing the huge mileage. 

I suppose I could just wait for a 200 to crop up for a cheaper price  and try that out.

[Six-cylinder]

11 hours ago, Skcat said:

I'm not really sure, my first one (w124) was a diesel and I did a lot of reading up on them and always kept interested in those. I've always loved seeing the huge mileage. 

I suppose I could just wait for a 200 to crop up for a cheaper price  and try that out.

I am glad you have had an early diesel before and understand in spite of @Talbot waxing lyrical about them, early diesels are slow noisy machines and not particularly economic. And yes the 300TD  turbo in the W210 propels it along well enough, but there is no joy.

The same company that had the W123 280TE also had a W124 estate diesel. This was a 1995 3.0 24v non turbo diesel, beautifully refined and so smooth but utterly useless at accelerating up a slip road or overtaking . The lady who normally drove it thought the same and it did not last long before being replaced by a Saab 900 Turbo convertible.

If you are ever passing near us Buckingham/Milton Keynes you would be most welcome to try our W123 230TE petrol (not for sale).

The photo is the company 280TE, along with C230K and my own daily a 280CE.

[Skcat]

35 minutes ago, Six-cylinder said:

I am glad you have had an early diesel before and understand in spite of @Talbot waxing lyrical about them, early diesels are slow noisy machines and not particularly economic. And yes the 300TD  turbo in the W210 propels it along well enough, but there is no joy.

The same company that had the W123 280TE also had a W124 estate diesel. This was a 1995 3.0 24v non turbo diesel, beautifully refined and so smooth but utterly useless at accelerating up a slip road or overtaking . The lady who normally drove it thought the same and it did not last long before being replaced by a Saab 900 Turbo convertible.

If you are ever passing near us Buckingham/Milton Keynes you would be most welcome to try our W123 230TE petrol (not for sale).

The photo is the company 280TE, along with C230K and my own daily a 280CE.

I will need to take your offer up in that, I'm only up the road in Northamptonshire! 

[Nullzwei]

9 hours ago, Six-cylinder said:

I am glad you have had an early diesel before and understand in spite of @Talbot waxing lyrical about them, early diesels are slow noisy machines and not particularly economic. And yes the 300TD  turbo in the W210 propels it along well enough, but there is no joy.

I would recommend you try a w201 190d 2.5 or another Mercedes with the 5 cylinder n/a indirect injection om602 diesel engine in because they are far from noisy engines. In fact they were dubbed the whispering diesel by the press when they were current. In comparison with a om613 straight six diesel (w210) a far quieter engine at load. 40-50mpg as well in my manual 190d 2.5 version. Slow yes but decent torque compared to petrol equivalents and maybe modern diesels are far too fast and too complicated for their own good thanks to successive Euro emissions standards.

 

[Skcat]

After almost a month of only having the one car I went out and got this;

A 1994 (rover) montego countryman estate. It's a O-series which is rarer,  most the estates I see come up now are diesels. It must be one of the last o-series engines ever fitted, I can't think of a later car that had that engine.

Picked it up on Thursday and went on a trip for the weekend with zero prep work or checks. 

Even went over a chain ferry which was odd. 

The car seems good, I need to look at the blower motor but from the look of the stack of paperwork it's not worked since 2000. It's possible the dash needs to be removed and no owner has had the confidence too do so yet.

Windows, original radio, sunroof (although very slow), both mirrors and switchgear all work. 

The rear doors Don't work on the central locking, I will need to take the cards off and even see if they have solenoids.

The tailgate loom is damaged so everything electrical in the tailgate does not work. 

Unfortunately the rear wheel arches are full of filler as is the lip of the tailgate. Will require some surgery and maybe some donor panels to sort it out, seems to be the way with these cars. A little bit of the boot floor also needs cutting out. Will need to inspect everything further. 

The shocks are a bit crap so it bounces around a lot on the road. I'm having a hard time figuring out what shocks I need to buy for it.

It returned around 38mpg. I was probably doing between 60-75mph most the time. If you guys want some a photo of anything ask me. I need to give it a clean up though. 

We even came across another montego on our travels. Just the other type, the driver did not seem as interested in us as we were as him and his car! 

[Ian_Fearn]

I saw this for sale but couldn’t get my arse in gear quick enough. So glad it’s ended up on here.

[brownnova]

I saw that pop up for sale and was tempted too! Very happy it’s now on here and we can follow its progress! 

[HMC]

Great! I knew of this after @BorniteIdentity put a link up for it. Love it, especially like the  look of the later models with the front bumper with the deeper chin to it like this one.

[Noel Tidybeard]

take the long pipe off the air cleaner housing that goes across to the drivers side and giggle like school child at the intake gurgle! 🤣

i'm guessing being that late it will be a MEMS system with one ecu

[Skcat]

13 hours ago, Ian_Fearn said:

I saw this for sale but couldn’t get my arse in gear quick enough. So glad it’s ended up on here.

 

10 hours ago, brownnova said:

I saw that pop up for sale and was tempted too! Very happy it’s now on here and we can follow its progress! 

I knew someone would snap it up. Its not in the best of shape but these days finding a roadworthy Montego is a challenge. Whenever they come up they have always been laid up a few years. It just so happened to be relatively local to me. 

I've just been interested in these as I'm just young enough to miss out when they were common. 

Maestros seem to have a much higher survival rate. It feels like a lot of montegos were fleet cars and were driven into the ground almost immediately while maestros were bought as a car "to see someone out" and were garaged and cleaned after every outing. 

10 hours ago, HMC said:

Great! I knew of this after @BorniteIdentity put a link up for it. Love it, especially like the  look of the later models with the front bumper with the deeper chin to it like this one.

I love the chin on it, but I can't understand why they made it from two pieces and put that silly lip in the middle, adds to the oddball charm I suppose. 

10 hours ago, Noel Tidybeard said:

take the long pipe off the air cleaner housing that goes across to the drivers side and giggle like school child at the intake gurgle! 🤣

i'm guessing being that late it will be a MEMS system with one ecu

Why does the Intake pipe span across the whole engine bay? I did think it was odd. 

It appears to have the single ecu, I did not know they used MEMS on these. I don't see a fault light on the cluster, I wonder how it tells the driver their is a fault, if it even does.

Today I took the tailgate trim off too poke at the rust, it kind of feels like the best option would be to cut the entire lower lip off and start fresh on it. 

Took the dash apart too change the bulbs behind the buttons and clock. The buttons now work but the clock never lights up even with the new bulb, maybe it has a dry joint somewhere in it. 

I took the heater controls out and found the bulbs that I need for those but I forget the name of them. Will need to do some googling. I have some but in the wrong size.

And I replaced the old bubbling with rust wipers with brand new bosch ones... That came with the car but were not fitted for some reason.

Will order up some parts and hopefully get some more content up soon! 

Sadly it's feeling like I need a offside rear quarter panel.  I might get away with a arch on the nearside by the look/feel of things but I've got no idea what I'm talking about!!! 

Edited June 21, 2022 by Skcat
Bulbs are a T4.7 I only have T4.2! Ordered some!