Ruby&JoW123
New Member
Good day all,
Following my desire to be poor and happy rather than poor and unhappy, I parted with my previous old banger (10yr old Peugeot 306) and rather than spending my money on another clapped out modern car I bought my 1982 230CE W123 in Nov 2009. I love classic cars and driving and not knowing too much about mechanics and car maintenance in general my thinking was that here is a car with good sound mechanics, simple engineering compared to modern cars. So far the ride has been great! This is a beautiful car, owned by the same owner for 25 years, then two more owners, one of whom thought it was a good idea to lower the suspension, which I had restored straight away. Unfortunately this owner also lost the entire history of paperwork grr and I eventually bought the car from a dealer who had owned and driven it himself for a year.
The car has a few issues that my boyfriend (he's a jag lover!) and I have enthusiastically been trying to identify and are trying to manage but I do need to find a good independent (& not too expensive) local-ish mb mechanic quite soon.
Can anybody help? I live in East Sussex, boyfriend lives in Thanet.
The 2 main issues that we need to address immediately are:
driverside front wheel has a camber on it - to the point that after a drive to Devon last week, checked the tyre and it was scarily worn to the metal on the inside edge. When we changed the wheel it now has an even more pronounced camber and this tyre is already wearing.
Sorry for the complete beginner speak, but when we looked at the wheel fitting, it looks like the track(tyre?) rod end bush is completely worn - we could see metal - So I need to find someone who can change these and also fix the camber issue (looking at the car from the front the top of the wheel is leaning in, the base leans out).
Water getting into passenger footwells front and back: We have located the main point of entry and it looks like the passenger side sunroof drainage pipe (?) has failed. Water runs into the drainage hole and then pours inside the car at the top front corner above the front corner of the front passenger door. We have checked the pipe is not blocked by inserting a foot long plastic tie down it. We also found rust where we think the drainage channel has a hole in it. We need to fix this before 'rainy' season, lol!
I have read lots of your threads in these forums and appreciate that it is defo not a case of taking the car to a 'tyre' place to have them check the tracking and balance etc so I decided to ask for your advice and recommendation as we would like to find a good and enthusiastic mb mechanic who we can ask to fix the wheel issue and hopefully go on to ask them to work with us on the water ingress and for general servicing for as long as we have the car (a good many years I hope).
Can anyone also recommend what manuals etc are out there for this model that are worth trying to get hold of?
Sorry for such a long post, there are further issues but this post is long enough as it is!
Many thanks for any help and advice you can give. Jo
Following my desire to be poor and happy rather than poor and unhappy, I parted with my previous old banger (10yr old Peugeot 306) and rather than spending my money on another clapped out modern car I bought my 1982 230CE W123 in Nov 2009. I love classic cars and driving and not knowing too much about mechanics and car maintenance in general my thinking was that here is a car with good sound mechanics, simple engineering compared to modern cars. So far the ride has been great! This is a beautiful car, owned by the same owner for 25 years, then two more owners, one of whom thought it was a good idea to lower the suspension, which I had restored straight away. Unfortunately this owner also lost the entire history of paperwork grr and I eventually bought the car from a dealer who had owned and driven it himself for a year.
The car has a few issues that my boyfriend (he's a jag lover!) and I have enthusiastically been trying to identify and are trying to manage but I do need to find a good independent (& not too expensive) local-ish mb mechanic quite soon.
Can anybody help? I live in East Sussex, boyfriend lives in Thanet.
The 2 main issues that we need to address immediately are:
driverside front wheel has a camber on it - to the point that after a drive to Devon last week, checked the tyre and it was scarily worn to the metal on the inside edge. When we changed the wheel it now has an even more pronounced camber and this tyre is already wearing.
Sorry for the complete beginner speak, but when we looked at the wheel fitting, it looks like the track(tyre?) rod end bush is completely worn - we could see metal - So I need to find someone who can change these and also fix the camber issue (looking at the car from the front the top of the wheel is leaning in, the base leans out).
Water getting into passenger footwells front and back: We have located the main point of entry and it looks like the passenger side sunroof drainage pipe (?) has failed. Water runs into the drainage hole and then pours inside the car at the top front corner above the front corner of the front passenger door. We have checked the pipe is not blocked by inserting a foot long plastic tie down it. We also found rust where we think the drainage channel has a hole in it. We need to fix this before 'rainy' season, lol!
I have read lots of your threads in these forums and appreciate that it is defo not a case of taking the car to a 'tyre' place to have them check the tracking and balance etc so I decided to ask for your advice and recommendation as we would like to find a good and enthusiastic mb mechanic who we can ask to fix the wheel issue and hopefully go on to ask them to work with us on the water ingress and for general servicing for as long as we have the car (a good many years I hope).
Can anyone also recommend what manuals etc are out there for this model that are worth trying to get hold of?
Sorry for such a long post, there are further issues but this post is long enough as it is!
Many thanks for any help and advice you can give. Jo