[evo]

What does a newbie convert to an old church need? A copy of the old dog eared hymn book and perhaps a drink with one of the loose tongued parishioners to know who's on which side and which pews to sit on and who to be aware of.

For the church of W126, the two aforesaid items - hymn book and loquacious parishioner have conveniently combined themselves into one easy to read and easy to hold volume.

I'm thrilled and have forsaken my usual cocktail of Wodehouse, Autocar, Forbes and some (auto)biography to shift my leisure time reading to Nik Greene's handiwork.

More from this book later on. Till then go on, judge this book by its cover.

[.HEM]

Originally Posted by evo

Tonnes of W124`s on OLX and a nice one in Chennai too. Suddenly theres a deluge, maybe great time to pick up.

I saw 3 W124 on OLX, Out of which one is close to my house, but not so great condition. Another is a petrol, singhle owner, but only 48K kms done in 23 years, I'm skeptical about it. But need to speak with the owner yet. Third is a diesel, single owner, 86K kms. Need to check these this week

[evo]

Originally Posted by .HEM

I saw 3 W124 on OLX, Out of which one is close to my house, but not so great condition. Another is a petrol, singhle owner, but only 48K kms done in 23 years, I'm skeptical about it. But need to speak with the owner yet. Third is a diesel, single owner, 86K kms. Need to check these this week

Lovely, my two cents will be to check out all three. As far as the odo reading , check for a disconnected meter. My car has apparently done 32000 km but the odo may have stopped working before Lady Gaga was born. I drive a W124 220 often that I bum off a friend, it's a nice fun car.

Some nice cars in Mumbai too.

[evo]

Sweet sounds anyone ? Serendipitously managed to get hold of a Becker Mexico stereo which was the OE fitment on the car. Interestingly the owner had a cool old style sanyo answering machine too.

Are Becker and Blaupunkt related ? One uses names of countries and the other uses names of cities.

Looks to be in decent nick. Now it remains to be seen whether it works !

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by evo

Are Becker and Blaupunkt related ?]

Other than they are both German brands, I do no think so. I hope it works. These are pretty sturdy radio's, often outlasting the cars they were put in.
Simple electronics, simple to fix. You will find quite a number of specialist in Europe who sell and service vintage car radio's.

I still have a 1986 Grundig (also German) radio cassette player my wife bought me for Christmas that year. It founds its way to many family cars and has been fitted to my 1982 W123 for the last decade or so. No Becker, but still "period" I would like to think.

Jeroen

[evo]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Other than they are both German brands, I do no think so. I hope it works. These are pretty sturdy radio's, often outlasting the cars they were put in.
Simple electronics, simple to fix. You will find quite a number of specialist in Europe who sell and service vintage car radio's.

I still have a 1986 Grundig (also German) radio cassette player my wife bought me for Christmas that year. It founds its way to many family cars and has been fitted to my 1982 W123 for the last decade or so. No Becker, but still "period" I would like to think.

Jeroen

Thanks!

Aha. Then the nomenclature business must be just a co incidence.

Nice. I hope it works. Theres some mention of a 'code' to make it work, so early days as yet.

Wow, 1986 sure is period, Becker or not! For context, the oldest car stereo that I have apart from this becker is a 2003 sony in the Zen Carbon.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by evo

Nice. I hope it works. Theres some mention of a 'code' to make it work, so early days as yet.

Yes, you might need a code. Theft of car radio's was absolutely rampant in the 80-90's in Europe. So radio manufactures started to introduce anti theft measure. The most commonly used was to equip the radio with a code. The idea being that without the code, the radio would be worthless, so would not be stolen.

My Grundig has a code and also a detachable front. Both ant-theft measures.

If yours has a code you need to find somebody who can disable it. Certainly in Europe not a big problem, not so sure about India.

The older the radio, the least likely it is to have a code.
Power it up, see what happens.

Good luck
Jeroen

Out of curiosity, I googled Becker code, lots of website that can help you! Here is just one

http://www.avtobiz.fws1.com/Calculator.html.

I have another radio on which I wanted the code removed. I required the change out of an eprom. But apperently, a lot of these codes are derived from the radio serial number through a simple calculation.

Lets hear if you need one and if this works for you

Jeroen

[Doc_nikhil]

Wow, man, I gotta say, over the past week, TBHP hot threads have really lit up. First the Mojo build and now, this! (That’s the order I read them through, in case anyone’s wondering). What a way to start the day. Evo, that’s some fine writing. Your subtle humor is well placed and the car looks a million bucks even if it doesn’t fetch that much. Congrats on getting a slice of old school luxury. The class and opulence of yesteryear is something that can never be matched by any amount of WiFi / reverse cam / parking sensors / LED headlamps / plastic and fiberglass panels. Enjoy!

[evo]

This Sunday, I went out for a glorious drive in the glorious car. Very glorious, till she stalled.

Does'nt move. Not an inch. When I try to start it, it just clicks, rather mockingly I may add. The battery is ok since on ACC position, the power windows and the fan works.

Managed to jump start and take her back home and there it awaits the mechanic. Electrical gremlins or pre historic goblins I have no idea. Though calling the 80's people pre historic may be pushing it a little.

[karanj]

Congratulations,Beautiful Car!
By the way,i had called the same seller who sold you that Becker Stereo,for my w126 280s which i got two days back.

[evo]

Originally Posted by karanj

Congratulations,Beautiful Car!
By the way,i had called the same seller who sold you that Becker Stereo,for my w126 280s which i got two days back.

Wow, which one is this, what year? I feel theres a kindred spirit, share pictures !

[evo]

I wish I could say, that after a whole week of driving her around, I now know what I want to fix. But in reality its been more of watching her stand either in my garage or some petrol pump (once stalled) such as here :



Nonetheless, I have two lists. One is the Running Shorts list, items will be fixed without grounding the car (any more grounded than stalled and still, that is).

The other list is the Naked List. Which is when she shall be brought to her bare state and stuff could be done.

The Running Shorts List


Driver's side electric headrest repair
Passenger side electric seat base adjust repair
Hazard switch repair
Wobbly steering
Rear reading lamps
Intake pipe replace
Deep clean & the steamy stuff
Gear boot fixing
Star right side on steering wheel
Driver's side seat mechanism
Temp gauge
Number plate change
Star on bonnet
Star on bootlid
Odo and speedo
Stereo revert to Becker Mexico
Leather to be conditioned
Rear left side lock
Boot floor plywood

The Naked List

This primarily would entail a real nice, delicious paint job with all the body work, that will deal with the numerous scratches, small dings and some body panel work where Mr.Rust has taken up residence.

Leaky sunroof fix /Sunroof Operation Fix/Sunroof not opening
The sunroof is currently dead, once the car goes in for a full respray, the headlining etc will be removed and this will be the time the (probably) rusted sunroof channels will get replaced or whatever is required will happen.

Leaky bootlid
The mafia spec boot currently has a watery Luca Brassi sleeps with the fishes kind of smell. There will be some cutting off of the rusted portions and subsequent replacing with the new metal.
This is inspite of the work which happened at the pune garage.

Leather to be repaired
The leather is both faded and ripped. When the seats come out for the paint, I hope to get the leather up to scratch, literally.

Set of carpets
This is more clothes, but wont want new carpets on the old interiors, would I, so this will wait.

What do you think ? Is a full respray after a complete strip down a better idea, or an over spray is less ambitious and more realistic?

[evo]

New Tyres

So, she moves now.
Since she moves, she needs new shoes.
Since she needs new shoes, they need balancing.
And so it goes. 185/65/14 like they came from the factory.
She was wearing light truck tyres all this while.