Project Chronicle

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.