About a year and one half ago I bought a 1980 300 TD from my neighbor. The car had been sitting for some years due to it being uncomfortable to drive with a broken seat. I brought it home (300') and proceeded to bring it back to life. I originally bought it as a "Top Gear" challenge purchase. Buy a car for cheap and see how far she'll take you. Not very. After a bit of this and that, I got it to the point that I felt it may run for a while or not and was curiuos just how well she would fare on the open road. Our whole family loves Top Gear and the challenge was letting us have our very own contest.
Take the car to Maine or leave it on the side of the road and fly home from wherever she quit. My original goal was to get the car to the east coast and sell her for airfare home. I figured she would sell pretty easy on the east coast as most cars are rust buckets in ten years and a 1980 Mercedes wagon had to have some value. This idea was quickly extinguished when I realised that if she indeed did make it to Maine I would continue the challenge and bring safely back to the left coast.

October tenth my wife and I left to head up to Idaho to visit a sister and then turn right for a northerly route. There is not a working speedometer so the GPS was my gauge. Through long boring Nevada we rode. Then afetr a great visit with sissy we headed to Yellowstone, Mount Rushmore, Deadwood, South Dakota,well anyway we traveled on smaller roads that give Mercy Me an easier time.
Except for the quart of oil she spilled or drank every eight hundred miles and the fact that seven thousand feet is totally out of her comfort zone, she trudged along well.

As luck would have it my son, the unemployed recent graduate of a semi worthless history degree was in New York partying with a bunch of other likeminded hippies and he shared the road with me on the west bound leg. My wife needed to get back to work so she was dropped of in Boston.

The fall colors were brilliant and the history that the New England states have going for them is special. In California we have nothing even resembling old if you remove the native history from our equation. To see an historical plaque that dates to before this nation was founded is a unique occurrence to a Ca. natives eyes.

My two favorite areas were Middle Idaho with its rich farming and busyness getting ready for a cold winter and Wisconsin, with its gentle rolling fall colored splendor.

Nashville and Chattanooga and Tulsa and Wichita were places that seemed to carry on in the same traditions of their forefathers and had great river comminities built up around them.

Another hilite of the trip was having my oil changed at the original Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers garage called Good News Garage. Our family has been listening to Car Talk for over twenty years and it was a pleasure to see "Our Fair City". On a sad note I also was informed by my son while gassing up in North Carolina that Tom Magliozzi had passed. What an infectious laugh, and all three Barrett's have shared many a tear of joy and sadness over this news.

The best was camping on lakes with nary a soul in sight after a long days drive.

Oh and another hilight was dispensary in Colorado. I got myself some keef for the first time and my son is calling me Dusty

How many km's -miles does she have drib?
i know these inside out and I can tell you they won't break under 300 000km.
They do get slack and hard to start but they keep running as long as there is oil and diesel.
The engine looses compression when they get tired but you can still start them by using the hard pre glow trick and and second battery and jumper leads. (needs 2 people).

How it works: Pre glow till you bored if it is cold outside pre glow some more then take of the negative of the battery and turn the key to start and trow in the second battery (jumper lead) to make 24 v.
Let go as soon as it runs and put the negative back.
Takes some practice but it works!

The speedo is just a broken cable. you have to get behind the dash to replace it and it goes trough the firewall to the gearbox.

Have fun! Sounds like a great road trip!

She left on the trip with 198000 and now has 207000. It is odd to me that the odometer is still functioning and is dead accurate and the speedometer reads not. I would think that means that it is not a broken cable. After she runs all day she drives like shit in town but when on the open highway she runs like a top. She seems to shift through two gears when she is tired.
When I bought her, I did not care if she stayed around but now that she is performing decent enough I will now invest some time and money to bring her into a fully functioning transporter.

As a side note. I passed by and stopped at a popular donut house on the east coast. They are called Duncan Donuts and I do not recall seeing any this side of the Mississippi. Their slogan is "America Runs on Duncan"
I was thinking a good promotional possibility would be for Duncan Donuts to set up bio-diesel run cars and give them to prize winners and they could use old donut fry oil as fuel. Then they would complete the slogan "America Runs on Duncan"
Better yet they could have police patrol cars run on donut fuel and the cops could have that great donut smell while while doing the rounds.
I wonder why the company felt that a good word association with donuts would be the word runs.

Very cool! Sounds like a great trip, something I hope to do with my family someday. I was also sad to hear about the passing of Tom from Car Talk, I had no idea how old he was, and how academically accomplished he was as well.

I have always loved those older Benz diesels. I had a 1966 "Fintail" 200D for awhile. Good lord the ladies loved that car.

Thanks for the post, it brings some much needed personality back to the forum.

Well blow me down! A real buffalo

Comrade Dribble: Thanks for sharing your trip.

DD, if you get bored travel around with you Merc it's serious drifter http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=24afjVqm2Uw

Just had a thought! Did you happen to see yogi bear?

Oops my bad I'm not smarter than the average bear!