Project Chronicle

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. 

I finally had the chance to flip through the service booklet that came with the 911. Now, the bulk of the records came in the form of invoices from specialist shops in North Carolina and Georgia, and those were certainly compelling reasons in my decision to buy the car.

That said, the tried-and-true method of tracking a car's history - the maintenance booklet - can be just as valuable. In the case of this car, the stampings were limited but meaningful. The early part of the car's history showed a few dealer stops in Wisconsin after being sold new by a fairly prominent dealer in a wealthy Chicago suburb. After it arrives in North Carolina, however, it makes two stops at Road Scholars. 

Road Scholars is one of the foremost Porsche restoration shops in the country, if not the world. Between their personal collection of significant air-cooled Porches that routinely win at major Concours like Amelia Island and Pebble Beach and being hired to take on the restoration of historical and culturally significant cars, Road Scholars has an iron-clad reputation in the Porsche community. 

This car already had a strong portfolio of proactive maintenance, but seeing Road Scholars in the maintenance book suggests a prior owner was only keeping the 911 serviced by the best of the best. I hope to get in touch with Road Scholars soon to see if they're willing to share whatever invoices they have on file for this car. 

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. 

I regret to inform you I did not escape the dreaded headgasket failure on my '97 LX450. 

Truthfully, I saw it coming. I had ignored some of the tell-tale signs and written them off as irrelevant. The entry in the history file indicated around 230,000 miles, an overheating event occurred, with subsequent entries showing a new thermostat, water pump, and radiator did not resolve the issue. Then it goes quiet, and another 20,000 miles are logged before I buy it. 

I noticed a good amount of dense steam at startup - warm weather or cold - that looked like condensation but also had that awful smell that only burnt coolant smells like. But it would go away once the truck was warm, and I wouldn't see it again until the next cold start. 

Then, an overheating event on the way back from vacation seemed to be tied to a dead fan clutch. Two more months of even-temperature gauge bliss. But in December, on a frigid night, I ran out of heat and the truck began to run warm. It was parked at the local Lexus dealer for a month wherein my friend Joe, the lead tech, observed the radiator was empty. He thought it was not the headgasket as a pressure test revealed no sign of exhaust gases in the system. But with no other explanation as to where the coolant was going, and the radiator otherwise intact, he pulled the spark plugs and saw the dreaded sign of internal coolant leaks. 

To be perfectly honest, this was not an expense I anticipated. And I had just decided my plan going forward was to sell my E91 in the spring to shore up the maintenance budget; buy a 996; and use the LX450 and Dakota R/T for occasional daily driving duties. 

The new plan is to get the Lexus down to my friend Jay, who revived the Trooper, and works almost exclusively on old Toyotas. This pushes everything off a bit but I need to get the Lexus buttoned up once and for all. And truthfully, once the HG and chain are done, there's very little else that can go wrong on this thing. God willing. 

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've been watching a set of BBS wheels for a few weeks on the Japanese parts importing website, Crooober. Despite being predominantly a haven of JDM parts, the site also stocks wheels and accessories for European makes - often for less money than what you'd pay on the local craigslist page.

These wheels were the perfect size for the Audi S6 Avant: 17x8, ET 35. The stock wheels are 16x7, ET 38. These should fill out the generous flared front fenders nicely, and poke just a smidge out the rear.

The wheels will need tires, but I'll cross that bridge in a few weeks. In the meantime, I've been assembling all of the bushings and mounts I'll need to refresh all of the suspension when the Konis and H&Rs go on. 

As you may recall, the Lexus LX450 - what should be the most reliable project in my fleet - has been sitting at Lexus of Warwick after an intermittent loss of heat and temperature gauge spike occurred one early winter night. The heat would cut in and out and then just stopped, and the only way to get the temperature gauge down was to open the vents up to full-blast mode. 

This was maddening, as the cooling system has been completely gone through. My mind jumped to a heater core job (miserable and expensive on this era of Land Cruiser) or worse, a failed head gasket. 

I left it alone for several weeks, getting through Christmas without so much as texting Joe Manzi, my mechanic. I finally broke down and asked him to give me the news, which turned out to be better than expected. Joe couldn't find any leaks and even tested the cooling system to make sure it was free of any exhaust gases. The only culprit he found was a radiator that had lost a gallon-and-a-half of coolant. Now, this is good news because more than likely we are dealing with a faulty radiator as Joe noticed dried coolant around the base of the radiator and the previous owner swapped in a Chinese-made replacement not long before I bought the truck. 

It could be a case of it being too good to be true and to be honest, I haven't heard from Joe since last week (guessing he's moved on to other things after babysitting my truck for a month and potentially finding a root cause.) I would be ecstatic if this mysterious heating/cooling issue turned out to be a case of a faulty radiator. 

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.