Hi guys,
Just bought a W124 1987 300D Saloon. It´s a manual car and displays the following behaviour:
When the car is in gear and you are (very) gentle in pushing down or lifting off the gas, the car accelerates or decelerates nice and smoothly. However, if you change the throttle position without careful planning (either sudden lift off or suddenly press it a bit) the whole car judders back and forth (similar to clutch judder) and the lack of constant velocity is picked up through the speedometer (unfortunately rev counter doesn´t work).
2 mechanics had a quick look (but i live in Spain where they aren't too thorough) and they both said it was just the engine being old and wasn't worth investigating the problem further - just drive it smoother!
As a novice could someone tell me the following as i´m trying to piece together next course of action:
1) Could severe juddering be caused by a drivetrain problem (my possibly incorrect thoughts are if any part of the prop shaft or diff is this loose to allow such judder it would have broken altogether)
2) Could it be caused by the clutch even though the clutch doesn´t cause juddering when starting unless you release it suddenly during a gearchange. any definitive test to rule out clutch?
3) Assuming we can rule out 1 and 2 as the main cause and it is the engine, what could be done? I´ve greased all the throttle linkages. it needs a air filter fuel filter oil change and thermostat but mechanic said none of these were likely to solve it? The engine takes a few seconds to start on all cylinders from cold. From hot it´s instant and idles/revs smoothly in neutral.
I´d like to add im not fussy and my previous W124s were workhorses and had their faults...but they were atleast very smooth and easy to drive. I bought this very cheap as it hadn´t ran for a while and has done 200kms in a year and a half and have got all the electrics working smoothly and want to service it, but can´t justify servicing it if this problem will be unfixable as not sure i can live with it (and assume it must be putting a lot of wear on the whole drivetrain even if that is OK now!).
Any advice appreciated!
Just bought a W124 1987 300D Saloon. It´s a manual car and displays the following behaviour:
When the car is in gear and you are (very) gentle in pushing down or lifting off the gas, the car accelerates or decelerates nice and smoothly. However, if you change the throttle position without careful planning (either sudden lift off or suddenly press it a bit) the whole car judders back and forth (similar to clutch judder) and the lack of constant velocity is picked up through the speedometer (unfortunately rev counter doesn´t work).
2 mechanics had a quick look (but i live in Spain where they aren't too thorough) and they both said it was just the engine being old and wasn't worth investigating the problem further - just drive it smoother!
As a novice could someone tell me the following as i´m trying to piece together next course of action:
1) Could severe juddering be caused by a drivetrain problem (my possibly incorrect thoughts are if any part of the prop shaft or diff is this loose to allow such judder it would have broken altogether)
2) Could it be caused by the clutch even though the clutch doesn´t cause juddering when starting unless you release it suddenly during a gearchange. any definitive test to rule out clutch?
3) Assuming we can rule out 1 and 2 as the main cause and it is the engine, what could be done? I´ve greased all the throttle linkages. it needs a air filter fuel filter oil change and thermostat but mechanic said none of these were likely to solve it? The engine takes a few seconds to start on all cylinders from cold. From hot it´s instant and idles/revs smoothly in neutral.
I´d like to add im not fussy and my previous W124s were workhorses and had their faults...but they were atleast very smooth and easy to drive. I bought this very cheap as it hadn´t ran for a while and has done 200kms in a year and a half and have got all the electrics working smoothly and want to service it, but can´t justify servicing it if this problem will be unfixable as not sure i can live with it (and assume it must be putting a lot of wear on the whole drivetrain even if that is OK now!).
Any advice appreciated!
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