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One is red with 234,000 miles on it, the other is blue and has 160,000 miles. The man selling does not care which he sells, he is just trying to sell, each are $3300.
The red was the one he was actually driving, when I saw it it was already warmed up. The interior looked flawless, the speedometer was wavering on acceleration and the tach seemed to stop at a certain rpm. The engine was clean and it was certainly a faster drive than my ol' 240D. My grandfather thought the red looked nice simply because it looked nicer, even with more miles. Though while driving he found that it had at least four owners before and it had been donated to cars for causes where this man bought it a few weeks prior for little more than a thousand. Skeptical we took it back and tried the other.
The blue started up just as well, though the engine looked a little dirtier and the interior was maybe not as nice. There was a slight knock in the engine, just cold or could it use a valve adjustment? The speedo and tach both worked. When flooring it it seemed to not shift and when releasing the accelerator it would roughly shift jerking the whole car around. When stopped and idling the whole car seemed to shake. It was actually kind of cool but I don't know what it means, are the engine mounts bad? He said he would have the engine pressure washed and he would try to find better tires for it. It looked like it hadn't been driven for awhile. When I used the blinkers the gas gauge would jump with it. Is that just an electrical problem?
They both started right up. The red seemed to run at a hotter temperature. They both started without any glow cycle after they had warmed up. Blowby was minimal for both, though less so with the blue.
The man owns a junkyard and says he has five junked 300's and said I could take any part I might need.
I'm thinking the blue, it has less miles, but I do not know about how it shifts. They both handle nice and up and downshifting with the L and S gears seemed to work. I do like the blue. What do you think?
Also, is it bad to try and manually shift these?
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The blue one does sound like a decent deal. However, 160k miles is extremely low so I would strongly suspect odometer fraud at some point in its history. I'd remove the speedometer and check for signs of gear/shaft tampering like the green backplate screw seal chipped away, tool marks or oddly clean number wheels.
The vibration can be any number of things. Rack damper, mounts, injectors, compression, valve timing (chain), etc. Too many variables to list.
Shifting likely just needs a simple bowden cable adjustment (too tight).
About the red one. Why would he tell you he bought it a few weeks ago for $1 and now want $3300 for it? What did he do to make the value jump 200%?
'85 300D or '85 300D?
