The New Guy looking for some good advise

[jay-sa]

Hey All

Thank you for accepting my application to the forum, I promise not to be to much of a nuisance

I am in the market for a replacement car.

So I thought before making any stupid mistakes I should find some people who have honest truthful opinions about one of the two brands of cars I think my be a suitable car.

Let me explain, I am 14k Mi away from most of you that are reading this from this forum.

So the plan or idea is to find myself a suitable form of comfortable transport to get myself from A to B and if life permits from here to where most of you the readers of this forum are.

Just so I do not blunder later, the other car is a E39.

So back to what I think would be far more suitable form of transport.

The options I have looked at are the 270CDI, 240D. C250TD Saloon, Vito 112, Maybe an older model ML something. To be completely honest my only requirement is the car has to have AC, if the concept of power steering means waking up early every morning and doing 50 push up to steer the car, not Unimog, then I will do that, also diesel is not a absolute must.

Out of my selection which would be the worst option or is there something better that I should be looking at? If I do select one of these car what should I be looking out for and what are the regular check and fixes I would need to do to ensure long levity out of the MB?

I am Technically inclined, I am Equipped with my own large selection of tools, I went through the process of rebuilding a VW T25 bus to decide at 80% that it is not suitable for my requirements

Also the serious down side is that unless there is a specific purpose for the car to get from where I am way down below to well up there, the car that I would be driving may be the most disposable asset I would be traveling with, so please take that into account when giving me suggestion, I do not want to be forced at some time to leave a great gem in some African country to rot away.


Thank you to all that reply.

 

[John]

Welcome to the forum.

I guess your location is related to the "SA" part of your forum name...

I can't help on the MB models you've highlighted, although I understand the 270 5 cylinder oiler is a great engine but the demise was due to emissions. I've owned a W211 E class and they are great cars! So an E270 would be my pick of that lot or an E240, as you say it doesn't have to be a diesel.

However, I have a soft-spot for the E39 having owned an Alpina B10 V8 just over a decade ago.

Only today one of my guys and I were outside as he was having a smoke and one of our colleagues has a 2000 523 with LPG conversion. It just does not look like a 17 year old car to me and it isn't even the facelifted version.

Goes without saying but I would get the example you can - some ropey ones around. On this vintage, I would avoid the 525d and 530d as I don't think they were all that great when they were younger. Much better a 520i/525i/530i I would say. 535 and 540 V8s are probably a bit too juicy although the 540iA is a peach!

 

[a111r]

240D. No electronicals!

 

[AMGeed]

Wlcome to the forum Jay.
SA = South Australia?

 

[Flyinspanner]

More likely to be South Africa if its destination based?

 

[grober]

The younger the Mercedes the more you have to forget spannering and get your laptop out instead! Less camshaft more canbus!

 

[John Jones Jr]

As per Grober.

Get yourself a 1990's Jap motor. Something like a Toyota Camry 2.2L.

 

[jay-sa]

South Africa, I have not found a Merc that drive on the ocean yet.

 

[jay-sa]

Thank you for all replying.

JohnEBoy - Thank you for your honest reply, exactly what I was looking for, I have taken a MB 270CDi 2002 and a E39 for a test drive, I have been looking at the 530d, sounds like a truck from the outside, but inside I would have to say other wise.

The only issue I have with the E39 is that I have some terrible jokes about the people who own such cars, so on that statement, I would have no issue leaving it somewhere in Africa to rot away if forced to.

One of my primary reasons that I would prefer diesel are, when I did ex-pat work in Africa 15 years back at times filling stations would only have diesel if you were lucky and they always had something that they called kerosene, it works but 10 tank fulls and your engine could be wrecked for life, the other reason and no I am not proud to state this, but if for some unforeseen reason I get stuck with out fuel somewhere out there, it would be easier to come by diesel than petrol.

a111r - I also like the 240D, so simple and yet so effective, and everything just seems to keep working well, there is a great barn find out here by me, but I do not have the heart to even buy her for the proposed purpose, if I was in the market to buy and keep, then yes sure.

grober I have no issue with the idea of the laptop and diagnostics, sometimes computers make our lives easier, I have diagrams of how I could build an Arduino ODB2 monitoring system that could plug in and collect stats every x seconds, it is a long drive and there are 55 countries in Africa.

John Jones Jr thank you for your opinion,but if I wanted a Toyota, I would have joined the Toyota forum, and if I was going to downgrade my options, then I would settle for a Golf 1, with a complete engine and gearbox rebuild/redesign. Please do not miss understand me, I have a healthy respect to all great designed machines, I just do not like the drive in a Toyota.

As for the Vito 112, would it maybe not be a better option with the fueling options I may have available at times?

and yes I do not like new cars, I do not have the heart to destroy a new car and I think I may still be a little irresponsible to own a new car, so I will continue to play till I find a reason to grow up.

 

[grober]

Kerosene is also known as vapourising oil or paraffin. It was widely used in variety of engines post 2nd world war. Engines needed specific modifications in able to run on it . It needed a hot engine to "vapourise " properly so these vehicles had two fuel tanks one for petrol to start with till the engine heated up and one for continuous running. The key was to switch back to petrol before switching off so the fuel lines etc were filled with petrol for the next cold start.
Kerosene required a very low compression ratio due to an octane rating of 40-70 so engines were often increased in capacity to compensate for the power loss. I remember driving an old Massey Ferguson Combine harvester with such an engine.

Engine modifications
Compression ratio

Because TVO has a lower octane rating than petrol, the engine needs a lower compression ratio. On the TVO version of the Ferguson TE20 tractor, the cylinder head was re-designed to reduce the compression ratio to 4.5:1. This reduced the power output, so the cylinder bore was increased to 85 mm to restore the power.[2] The petrol version had a compression ratio of 5.77:1 and a cylinder bore of 80 mm on early versions..
Vaporiser

In practice TVO had most of the properties of paraffin, including the need for heating to encourage vapourisation. As a result, the exhaust and inlet manifolds were adapted so that more heat from the former warmed the latter. Such a setup was called a vaporiser. To get the tractor to start from cold, a small second fuel tank was added that contained petrol. The tractor was started on the expensive petrol, then – once the engine was warm – the fuel supply switched over to TVO or paraffin. So long as the engine was working hard, as when ploughing or pulling a load, the TVO would burn well. Under light conditions, such as travelling unloaded on the highway, the engine was better on petrol.
Radiator blind
Some tractor designs included a radiator "blind" that would restrict the flow of air over the radiator which led to the engine running hotter, which could help with starting. If the radiator blind was left shut, though, there was a risk of engine damage, especially in warm weather.

 

[grober]

SOME TVO BACKGROUND HERE.
https://web.archive.org/web/20050418203640/http://tractorbits.com/infofiles/TVO.asp

 

[John Jones Jr]

Thank you for all replying.

is a long drive and there are 55 countries in Africa.

John Jones Jr thank you for your opinion,but if I wanted a Toyota, I would have joined the Toyota forum, and if I was going to downgrade my options, then I would settle for a Golf 1, with a complete engine and gearbox rebuild/redesign. Please do not miss understand me, I have a healthy respect to all great designed machines, I just do not like the drive in a oyota.

You're welcome. So, it's a diesel and either a Merc or a BMW, that's tough call imo and your budget will have a major bearing on what car you actually use and what preparations you can carry out. Maybe a W124 250/300D with a suspension and coolant system refresh?

Wishing you well on the journey and hope to hear about your exploits.

 

[grober]

Sorry to have diverted the thread with TVO. As above diesel would be the way to go. In hot climates petrols can have fuel vapourisation problems and of course ignitions can be susceptible to water ingress if any wading is envisaged. Another factor can be dust for cars with distributors as some dusts have a high enough iron content to short ignition components. While older Mercedes have separate subframes fore and aft latterly this was confined to the rear. Quite a few mid 90's on Mercedes suffered from front spring perch failure making this one area to play close attention to. Later strut cars seem less effected by this issue but then you are into the electronics era. So a good late 80,s early 90's diesel model would perhaps your best bet. Finding one that hasn't already got mega miles on it may be your problem.

 

[AMGeed]

More likely to be South Africa if its destination based?

It was the 14k miles away that made me think South Australia
I thought South Africa was a lot closer..........like 7k miles

 

[John Jones Jr]

It was the 14k miles away that made me think South Australia
I thought South Africa was a lot closer..........like 7k miles

Yes, the Op did say 14k miles, I think he meant kilometers?

 

[merc85]

W124 300d?

 

[a111r]

Ssang Froid Rexton 4x4 with the OM602?

cheap, well capable, and easy to walk away from (that face!)

Or a Musso.