Quote:
Originally Posted by legion
My (sold 13 years ago) 1985 300D is the only car that I frequently dream about. It had such an elegant stance. The engines are bullet proof.
They are tanks. IIRC, it weighed around 6,000 lbs..
Some stories:
When I was taking mine to Drago's for service, I met a woman with the same model. She had had the car for 14 years and loved it. She was so proud that when she was rear-ended in it, even though she broke both of her legs, the car only needed a new rubber bumper strip. (Seems to me that it didn't have "crumple zones".)
When taking my now-wife (girlfriend at the time) out to dinner, I noticed that it was pulling ever so slightly to the right. When we got back to my apartment, she exclaimed: "Chris, you've got to see this!" The right rear rotor was glowing red. I had it towed to Süd's. They later told me that the master cylinder had failed and they whole car was stopping on the right, rear rotor.
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Actually about 3500 lbs., road ready. They definitely have crumple zones, we dismantle crashed w123s all the time. I could show you pictures that look like an aluminum soda can that a giant stepped on.
The failed MC is a serious thing, I've seen the cars burst into flames on the freeway, (once), when the owner did not realize that the brakes were being applied constantly from a defective MC that acted like a "check valve", only allowing hydraulic fluid to move in one direction. If your car was only cooking one rotor, it was a bad rubber brake hose at that wheel, not the MC. The hoses can also swell shut from old age and bad maintenance, (dirty fluid that's never changed and contaminated with moisture), causing the brake hose to act as a check valve. There is no way that a MC can only apply braking to one rear wheel, both are on one common line from MC.
Unless you had a rear line junction plugged with gunk and you only had one rear brake all along, either way it was terrible maintenance along the way somewhere. That's hardly an endorsement of the cars.
