Hello, my name is Rado and I’m 34.
This is my childhood dream and my marriage challenger, the 1994 MB E500 with 145k miles.
My wolf is a keeper and, as I think about it now, a gift at my son’s wedding, btw he’s 6yo now and my wife jokes that I might be just about done restoring it by then. I passed on a 1993 500E as I knew that E500 is the only one I want. Funny enough the guy was selling the 93 500E because he was mad that he’s son is not interested in it and he was studying in NY and will do public transport only
I hope I won’t get there.
It’s a marriage challenge as I do spend quite some time diagnosing it’s issues since it has a few and reading all the forums around just to find out that the thing I was reading was for a pre face lift or whatever… the challenge is also that I have a E500 and not a 500E, just try googling e500 and you don’t get the w124 chassis, some of you might feel the pain.
Yes I search by 500E and have to make sure it’s for the later models
I do get projects once in a while, the light ones, and get bored as I finish them. Working on cars lightly helps me relax from work, stress relief. My goal with the wolf is not to be done with it in a month or so as I’m afraid of losing interest in it.
I have a 2 car garage and had to sell my other cars to keep the wife happy. We live in Vegas so parking in the garage is a must during the summer time, now I need a proper 3rd car that I can driver around and park it outside
It’s funny how it’s been out in the sun for over 15 years and now only garaged. One man’s trash another man’s treasure I guess.
About the car, 199 black pearl color with some shade of gray bottom part, cream interior and all stock.
About the previous owner, I say owner since he had it since 1995, so we’ll just forget about that first one who paid msrp. The guy is Japanese and he said this car was taking space in front of his garage for too long. It was posted on auto trader by owner with just a few pics, made an offer sight unseen and he took it, I flew to make sure it’s real and we shake hands. I later shipped it to Las Vegas.
The good things is that it’s a California car with no rust, clean title and no reported accidents. No check engine light. It was a solid start and the goods ended there. Top engine harness replace in 2004, the lower one goes in the bad section.
The bad, I mean not the worst but things that I have to work on. Lower engine harness is leaving the chat, when washing the car the oil pressure is all over. 2 minor mishaps, not sure how to classify them, rear trunk had a dent or something and the guy repaired it by himself, it looks awful, we’ll deal with it on the final stages of repair. And the 2nd he was saying about drivers door dent or something, but this time it was better fixed.
We’ll just skip the burned hood and top as it is obvious, and we’ll add the dry interior with ripped driver seat and somehow stained rear left seat. And don’t forget about sagging headliner.
The good or the bad I’m not sure how to put it is the missing maintenance history, which later I realized it was not only missing from the car history but also from car itself. Truly bone stock and untouched piece of history.
My goal is to first restore it, give it the service it’s been missing for the past all years. Then gently slightly upgrade, like the monoblocks 2, bigger brakes, recaro classic seats, paint the bottom half to match the whole car color, I’m not into the 2 tone.
Know issues which I most tackle already: All vacuum hoses and fittings, all oilers, both valve cover gaskets, chain guides, oil pan gasket, spark plugs, washer tank and many small things.
ABS and ASR lights are on, made my flasher tool to see the codes and I found that my light will stay always on on abs module, found a burned fuse, after replacing it I managed to read codes. Not surprised I found wheel speed sensors are the issue, I cleaned driver side one and when I went to passenger side the bolt just crumpled, need to extract it somehow and then move to the rear one, after checking the codes again - the driver side sensor was not throwing the code anymore.
All filters, the cabin dusters were good to grow potatoes in them. The suspension is surprisingly not that bad the tie rods are gooooone, ordered new genuine for Mercedes SL with the part numbers I found here on the forum. Ordering parts from FCP, eBay, pelican, autohouseAZ and many other sources.
I’m working in steps:
Step 1 - repairs
Step 2 - service
Step 3 - upgrades
Step 4 - interior
Step 5 - exterior
If any of you restored this car before, let me know some insights please, I go by common sense here and it pains me to see the ugly in it until we reach the last step. I’ll throw some pics and add more info as we go.
Thanks for having me and I’m enjoying the support already.
