Project Chronicle

When I moved to Maryland, I had to leave a few cars behind due to being "in progress" once the moving van arrived. The Isuzu Trooper RS and the Lexus Land Cruiser were among them but had clear expectations of being down south before too long; the Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.3-16 Cosworth was far less certain due to needing a wide range of "finish" work.

I had a trip up north recently where I stopped in and visited the Cossie, as it's been parked at my longtime Rhode Island mechanic's shop for the past year. It received a short burst of work wherein the timing chain was replaced and some other mechanical sorting was done, but it still has fuel delivery issues and needs an assortment of work related to the interior: dash replacement, window regulator replacement, factory alarm troubleshooting, and other odds and ends.

I would very much like to see this car home, but it's been almost six years since it came home from the Pennsylvania junkyard. Since I plan for it to go back to my body shop for some additional paintwork before it comes home, we're still likely six months out from completion. It's a drag, but at this point, a few more months is relatively meaningless. 

My 1986 Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.3-16 Cosworth has left the body shop after being there for over a year. To say the owners of the shop were glad to see it go is an understatement; there is still some finish work left to do but hopefully, if it does go back, it will be in the paint booth for a day or so and then completely done.

Right now, it is back at my mechanic's for the second phase of mechanical work that will hopefully see the car fully sorted out after starting with the basics of getting it operational, which took place over three years ago. The first order of business was to replace the chain tensioner, a known failure point, and completely devastating to the these engines should it fail. 

Upon inspection, there was a good deal of slack in the chain. This was not entirely unexpected, and I bought both the tensioner and the chain when I acquired the Cosworth in 2018, figuring it would not have been done based on who owned the car last. At the same time, the water pump was replaced along with the thermostat. 

Other updates include replacing crushed sections of hydraulic hard lines supporting the rear load leveling system; these were obliterated when the 190E was moved by forklift in the junkyard. In addition, the Cosworth-specific oil cooler that hangs adjacent to the radiator is an obsolete part that was removed in the salvage yard, stripping the threads on the oil lines in the process. The shop made it work on a temporary basis but the cooler was rendered junk when it was removed as part of the radiator removal process. Incredibly, a radiator shop in Rhode Island that maintains a large stash of obsolete components in a warehouse on the Cape had the *exact* replacement part, and OEM to boot. I'm blown away by that ridiculous stroke of good luck. 

A few more things to button up and then it's onto the interior for dash replacement. 

The 190E Cosworth, which arrived in my garage as a soggy, rotten, trash-filled mess from a Pennsylvania scrap yard five years ago last month, is near the finish line. I've lived in three houses since I bought this car, and I'm hopeful it will be a permanent fixture in my garage sometime in the next six months. 

The bodyshop is buffing out the paint and assembling the body kit. The interior is going back together. And those two details are super gratifying considering I bought a complete spare body kit and interior sometime in December 2018, all with the expectation I would someday have a car worth putting them on/in. 

Today, I ordered a wiper blade insert and two pieces of reproduction hardware for mounting the bodykit doglegs ahead of the rear wheel arches. Truly nitty-gritty stuff, and my body guy should have the car fully assembled by the weekend. Or so we think; there's always something that shows up missing. For instance, I plan on having the lenses replaced on the European headlights because - why not? Well, because, the car will be otherwise mint and pitted lenses will be a serious let-down. 

But don't get too excited: there's still a laundry list of mechanical work to be done before we're truly "done." 

When you see a car finally wearing a consistent shade of paint after years of being naked or otherwise clad in shoddy paintwork, it's a big moment. It's as close to being reborn as a car can be. For the 190E 2.3-16 Cosworth project, this represents a major milestone that hits just shy of its fifth birthday in my possession. 

Smoke Silver has never been a particularly sexy color, but it is a staple of 1980s-era Mercedes-Benz products. The Cosworth came in either this champagne-tinged silver or black, and while the latter is harder to find, I have fond memories of my Dad's 300E that wore the same color. Right now, the car is supposedly looking good but I'm no longer in RI so I can't even view it. But the guy painting is said he'd just like to buff it out a little before turning it over. 

Then we begin interior re-assembly, which is far cheaper to have my body guy do than to have the actual mechanic's shop take on. So, we're still a few days away from it leaving the body shop for good, but it's safe to say the hard work is finally done. 

To say I am tired of seeing my Cosworth in primer is an understatement, but it is (sadly) par for the course with a complete respray of a car that has been painted poorly many times before. 

Right now, the hood is off for some detail work. The remnants of the hood pad have to be scraped off, and then the hood gets primered and painted before the replacement goes on. The side skirts and fender flares all need to be coated in primer and prepped for paint. And once that's done, we will likely be tossed out of the rotation again before the actual paint work begins.

There's a very big part of me that is done with the bodywork stage on this car. Frankly, I just to backburner it for a while, but that can't happen. This project will be more or less done in 2023, come hell or high water. 

There's a point in every project where you begin to feel actual excitement that the end is approaching. For the 190E 2.3-16, I haven't felt anything approaching this in the last four years. From seeing it sitting outside my mechanic's shop for months at a time to waiting for my one-man-band body shop to get me into the garage rotation, it's been difficult to make significant progress at any one time. "Keeping the faith" has undoubtedly been critical to not ever giving up on this long-term project.  

Fortunately, we are in the home stretch for bodywork. The original body kit was actually bolted up to the car on the driver's side for checking fit and how flat the pieces laid on the body, but all I could think about was how good the car looks with its lower cladding installed (The kit was previously torn off by the junkyard employees when the Cossie was waiting for its day with the crusher.) 

The side skirts and door trim pieces are so integral to what the car "is" that even in temporary form, seeing them suspended against the body reminded me of how good this Cosworth will look when it's finally done. We'll prime the whole car next, block sand all of the panels, and then prime it once more before getting a proper paint job. 

Speaking of paint, my body guy grabbed the Smoke Silver paint and set about prepping it for application. That tells you just how close we're getting to finishing this major phase of work. 

The next phase of bodywork has begun on the 190E 2.3-16 Cosworth, and now we are truly counting down until we paint this long-term project. The bodywork phase has been arduous, with the rear quarters basically being rebuilt; the rockers being repaired at all four corners; and the front quarters inside the fenders have been patched up with new metal.

When you sand a car down, it reveals the battle scars and bruises it has encountered along the way. It's clear this 190E was completely repainted, poorly, at one point, and that it has been needlessly repaired with body filler to correct small dings and dents. Quite honestly, this poor car - despite having a history of only two owners and being well-maintained by the first caretaker - fell into cheap car territory wherein it was "freshened up" as cheaply as possible. 

This is not at all surprising for an older vehicle such as this, but it does highlight just how much work a bodyshop does to get a car prepped for paint. I'm going to take a day next week to sand down the primer that will soon be sprayed across the body, as you need to wet-sand the entire car afterwards in order to smooth it out and prep it for paint. It will be a learning experience, and hopefully shave a few bucks off the final bill as well. 

This is a milestone day for the 1986 Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.3-16 Cosworth I harvested out of a junkyard in 2018: we have eliminated all rust from the body, save for some meaningless surface spots that will be eliminated during the sanding process.

The rockers are repaired and the rust spots that were revealed when the fenders removed in the lower footwells have also been fixed. There were also small spots in the rear floors underneath the rear bench on either side; those, too, were repaired. The only remaining concerns before we get to paint is straightening out the right front bumper bracket (pushed in from a previous collision) and replacing the charcoal cannister inside the driver's fender which has rotted away. 

I will be putting in some sweat equity on the next phase, working alongside Nelson, the master body man, to sand the rest of the body down and prep it for primer and paint. This will also have the added benefit of saving me some money (hopefully). To know this car will soon be ready for the final phase of bodywork - by far the most painful part of this whole exercise - is a relief. 

There's still another heavy lift of mechanical work to do, but by God, we are nearing the end of this journey to rescue an 80s four-door performance car from the jaws of junkyard death. 

We are nearing the finish line on the bodywork phase of the Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.3-16 Cosworth. The rear bodywork was the most labor intensive; the next section are the rockers. 

The rocker issues are twofold: one, there's typical rust that all neglected Mercedes of this era tend to have from the northeast. And two, the rockers were damaged when the forklift from the junkyard moved the Cosworth around the yard. The good news is the rust really isn't all that bad and, because it's hidden by the side skirts and body cladding, the repair work doesn't have to be pristine. It can be effective but not beautiful. 

Before we started this project, I manage to track down brand new rocker panel replacements. They have come in handy already, both for offering section cuts for the specific areas of rust and for using the excess / unused material to fix other small holes. The dented rocker on the passenger side was pulled out using heat and a hammer, and the one on the driver side is much milder which will hopefully mean less work. 

After this "affordable" phase comes with big one: sanding, priming, and painting the car. 

When I first got the Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.3-16 Cosworth home, I reached out to the dealership in Pennsylvania that was listed on the service reminder sticker in the windshield. I asked if there were any records of repair available, to which the service manager confirmed that yes, they did.

Amazingly, the service manager said he'd send me copies of the records they had on file, which were surprisingly complete. Now, most dealers will never release the service records, so I'm forever grateful this advisor agreed to do it. I look at the report every now and again, which confirms the 190E was well maintained before it ended up in the hands of the last owner before it went to the salvage yard. 

The most interesting detail is that it dropped a piston at just over 66,000 miles. In terms of the Cosworth engine, there's not much evidence that the DOHC mill has a tendency to burn through pistons. Although the details are sparse on the service reports, I've always been curious how extensive the repair was, and if the dealership made other fixes "while they were in there." 

We'll never know for sure what else was fixed at this time, but it's a fascinating anecdote in this car's colorful history. 

For years, I have proclaimed my undying love for the 1986 Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.3-16 Cosworth I rescued out of a junkyard in Pennsylvania. Let me explain why. 

It's the car I wanted since I was 16; it somehow corrects the emotional debt I carried for years following a junior prom date not becoming the girl I would marry (despite hoping with every fiber of my being that it would be so.) I looked at a Cosworth at a local car lot with my Dad shortly thereafter and he was ready to buy it as a consolation prize (my father did not spoil us, but he followed a code that prompted him to act impulsively and out of love when his kids were truly hurting.) Suffice it to say, his colleague that owned the lot specializing in desirable European stock told him I'd put it into a tree within about a week, and that was that. 

I know, there's a lot to unpack there, but this is why I buy needy cars - it absolves me from seeing a therapist. Anyhow, a Cosworth has remained on my car-buying radar for years. I've had opportunities to buy driver-quality examples but never felt inclined to do so. For some reason, buying this rusty, half-pillaged junkyard find was the trigger for finally bringing one home, which I find aligns curiously with the state my sixteen-year-old self was in when Liz and I didn't pan out way back in the year 2000 (God, that is a long time ago now - why am I still talking about this?) 

So, to see the Cosworth entering its most prolonged, expensive, and agonizingly tedious phase - that is to say, bodywork and correcting years of neglected rust concerns and shitty repairs (I swear, they repainted this car with three times the necessary material - the finish is so ungodly thick) is giving me heartburn. Look, it's expensive, and I'm using the most sketch-ass version of a body shop there is, the equivalent of a backdoor card game in a bad neighborhood with prostitutes doubling as bouncers. It's the only way someone like me can afford to take on a dumb-fuck project like this. 

I hate it. I love it. I hate seeing updates from the guy working long hours in a dingy garage with no ventilation because I know I owe him another $300 for something I didn't know was broken; I love it because I see that shape come back to life and all the emotions come roiling back, like I'm going to drive past Liz's house in this car and flick her off, just like I planned to do when my Dad was ready to pay Chuck Mitchell the measly $9,000 that would've bought a nice one of these 20 years ago. 

All of that is in the past. It's just in the past. But the Cosworth is here now, and while I continue to chase every side hustle I can find and chuck shit onto craigslist in hopes of a quick buck or two - all driven by getting this project done this year - I find myself in that uncomfortable middle ground of wondering why we do this to ourselves as car enthusiasts, while simultaneously already knowing the answer. 

Just a quick update here: the Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.3-16 is coming along. We're chopping up the bodywork into phases so I don't go broke. First is the rear of the car, which is the worst and most complex. 

Fortunately, $160 worth of replacement rear quarter panels and a $180 taillight panel are saving my butt and budget. These pieces have been chopped up to repair various sections of the rear quarters (with the exception of the taillight panel, which was just cut out entirely) and have yielded significant time and material savings. I have no idea why a Japanese company sells replacement quarter panels for a W201 chassis car, but I am glad they do. 

The trunk lid has to be repaired next. I bought a junkyard lid which we will use to swap the Cosworth spoiler over to, as the original trunk was too heavily damaged by the bozos at the salvage yard that ripped it open when they couldn't find a key. 

Once this is done, it will be sprayed with primer and parked until I can scare up the cash for the rockers. 

I feel like I'm at the meeting in the church basement, admitting that this was not a good week for me. I gambled, I drank, and I ate too much. Some avoidable missteps where I failed my friends and family after a few solid months of avoiding what leads me to sin. 

My body guy pulled the rear bumper and lower skirt. As expected, this was pretty distressing. I knew this was going to be the worst part of the car, but I didn't know how bad. The rear taillight panel is actually pretty straightforward, as I have an OEM panel to weld in. Frankly, it's the easiest part. 

The lower rockers are pretty bad. That's the disappointing part. I was foolishly hoping I'd see clean sheet metal underneath the rear skirt but I knew this was unlikely given how we could already see daylight in the lower pockets of the trunk on either side. 

The shop is still trying to knock this out in a week to keep costs contained; fingers crossed we're done with the rear panel by Friday so my budget isn't blown out before we even get started. 

Most people would be excited to hear from their local service department that an update is ready on their vehicle. Not me. 

So, I've had this Mercedes 190E 2.3-16 since 2018. Since that time, it has been made into a runner. But really, just a runner. Nothing more, nothing less. Considering it arrived from the Pennsylvania junkyard I found it in with no fuel system, radiator, or rear windows, being a runner is a pretty big deal. 

Now, my body shop that made the Trooper RS into a whole vehicle is taking on the Cosworth. This is sort of my siren song in the project car world. I can't do more big projects. Other responsibilities need to take over. Family, retirement, and all that. Those things have still been humming along just fine but I'm tired of spending money on cars. It's time to take the kids to Disney World, or something. 

Still, the Mercedes has to get done. And my body guy called and said, "It's time." Time to tear out the back taillight section and weld in a new panel. Time to patch the holes the floor with fresh metal. Time to do something with the rear quarters involving a bit of filler, fiberglass, and metal. Time to replace the trunk lid with one that wasn't torn apart by the salvage yard when they couldn't find a key. I've gotten too close to this project being complete to stop now, and while the next few months will be brutal, I'm optimistic it will be worth it. I do love driving this car and have wanted one longer than any other.

More updates to follow. 

This was a big day. I really wasn't expecting to do much when I stopped by German Motors other than to get a code read on my 2011 328xi, which finally let me know that the passenger front axle and speed sensor are crying uncle. But Gerry tossed me the keys to the 190E so I could see how confident I was driving it out of there next week. Let me just say this: what the hell. 

May I remind you I bought this car sitting on its belly. No wheels, no radiator, no indication it would ever run again. As of this week, it happily runs up and down North Main Street in Providence, rowing through the gears, maintaining temperature and a steady idle. It's as fun to drive as I had hoped. It makes absolutely no sense that I bought this car, but I now feel increasingly vindicated that I did the right thing by saving it four years ago. 

This is also a reminder of just how incredible Mercedes products of this era are. These are overbuilt machines, a quality I certainly recognized after owning a standard 190E 2.3 and my father running through a lineup featuring two W126s and two W124s. He was not kind to his cars, and those machines held up incredibly well. 

There is still an incredible amount of work to be done on the Cosworth. But knowing I can hop in and drive this car at a moment's notice is a pretty rad feeling, even if still looks like a complete deathtrap. 

I swung by German Motors today to see the 1986 Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.3-16 Cosworth that now runs, drives, stops, and turns without issue. It's hard to put into words how good it feels to be at this point, especially with the bodywork stage ready to begin. 

I discovered the Cosworth in a junkyard in September of 2018. It has been sitting in storage and slowly picked away at ever since. Today, I watched it go on a spirited drive down North Main St. in Providence, and the engine is healthy; the transmission shifts as intended; it holds a steady idle; it does everything you could reasonably ask of a car with such a colorful history. 

To me, seeing a car at this point after it was discarded so carelessly is incredibly rewarding. Like the Trooper RS, it's total vindication for taking a potentially risky path to saving worthwhile vehicles. Now, the list of things the Mercedes needs is still incredibly long. For instance, the windows don't work. The rear windows are just hanging in place with no regulators. The dash is cracked. The three-pod gauge cluster that sits below the radio hasn't been installed. The rear suspension accumulators are shot. The alarm was proving to be quite annoying and has been disconnected. And so on. 

But at the end of the day, I will be driving my high school dream car this summer. And while I can't go back and take the prom queen to the homecoming dance, I can rip along backroads in the car from my 16-year-old fantasies, and that's pretty great too - especially doing so in a car that was thrown away and rescued after a chance phone call in 2018. 

Incredibly, my 1986 Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.3-16 Cosworth has seen the open road for the first time in 10 years or more. It only went about 20 feet, but progress is progress. 

I told German Motors that the "secret" bodyshop that is willing to work on the numerous rust spots can get the car in the first week of May. The one thing holding the project up was installing that power seat module I reported on tracking down a few weeks ago. In order to install the seat, the seat frame had to be re-assembled because the replacement Recaros I found came without bases. I understood this was a pain in the ass project, so I didn't push too hard - but I was happy to see it was finally done and Gerry, the shop owner, took the Mercedes on a maiden voyage.

You can see a quick, low-quality video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLJJq4svJj8

I'll swing up to the shop on Monday and hopefully get to drive the car myself for a few seconds before shutting it down and assessing what else it may need in order to drive it to the hidden bodyshop under its own power. 

The seat module saga for the Mercedes was more daunting than expected. There were rumors that a module from a W126 or W124 would work, which would have been helpful given those are much easier to find. Not true, as comparing photos of those modules with mine absolutely showed numerous pins in different locations.

There was a module for a 190E on eBay, but it specified it was for a 1991-1993 model. This didn't make sense, until it did: the later cars had the position of the telescoping steering wheel tied into the memory function of the front seat, which again led to pin locations not lining up with my car, which was a very early model with memory controls. 

So, I turned to Facebook, and found a 190E owners group that was predominantly made up of users from Europe. A shop in the UK that parts out and restores Mercedes came to the rescue, even going so far as sending video showing the seat moving normally with the module hooked up. Hopefully, this brings this chapter to a close and we can bolt a seat in securely and take the 190E Cosworth for a drive. 

One of the dumber stumbling blocks with the junkyard-find 190E 2.3-16 Cosworth had to do with the interior. The original Recaro seats were in bad shape, so I bought a replacement interior not too long after acquiring the car. The one downside is the Recaros came without bases, so they had to be swapped off of the original, battered seats. 

Since installing the replacement seat, it would do one of two things: it would shoot all the way forward or all the way backward. The 190E regardless of seat options were all powered, so the easy fix was to replace the power seat switch, which also controls the memory. We replaced it twice with no change in behavior. Now, the reason I say this is a dumb obstacle is that the car actually starts up and idles quite nicely, but you can't very much drive it without a seat. Incredibly, the lack of easy resolution with the seat is one of the bigger reasons why this project hasn't moved much lately. 

My shop finally had some downtime today and found the source of the issues: the control box that sits under the seat definitely got soaked, with all sorts of corrosion inside the box. This most likely happened while it was sitting in the junkyard with no rear windows, courtesy of the yard "help" that smashed them out to get the window regulators (those and the radiator were the only parts they sold off of the car while it was inventoried.) 

The bad news is, not many used parts still exist; the good news is, you can buy one new from Mercedes. So, we'll order one up in hopes this lets us install the front seat and actually take it out onto the road.