Nice, do you have photos of the car? Also what is the maintenance cost like?
Thanks for the great questions.
I briefly cleaned the engine room, painted the tires dark and removed all stains on the soft-top last week. Will take/post some pictures.
Maintenance cost is okay for a car of this nature, but you need a very accommodating shop that understand and appreciate vintage benz. Genuine parts are hard to find/expensive/out-of-production. Nowadays we use off-label/used parts to keep it going. No big deal as this can keep yearly repair cost down to 2000~3000USD.
It's the 25th year we owned this car:
1. We replaced suspension once
2. the top seems to be weaker and takes more care/maintenance. A weird issue sometimes blow the fuse of the top.
3. The radio broke long ago. We installed another one that takes USB/iPod
, but no more CD changer for this setup.
4. Door trims can be flaky as the doors are heavy like a solid block and require a bit of bang to close.
5. From my experience with our V140 M120, all plastic parts near engine room (including reservoirs) can break down at some point due to age and extreme heat. But these should be one-off, and we have been lucky with the R129 so far.
6. Exhaust last only 5-7 years due to extreme heat.
7. Again due to heat the car will refuse to go faster than 50KM/h in the most extreme summer days. (a self-protective measure, I think I have a "standard" 400hp+ M120, not the detuned version, read wiki for more)
8. The cooling fan in front is among the loudest in any car, even when the car is idle.
9. Very limited choice of tires. The best i can find for the original 16" rims are Michelin PS3.
10. Great daily driver, good/enough ground clearance and trunk space.
11. The V12 and the gearbox easily last forever, great engine sound, great response across spectrum. No nasty vibrations felt in my V221 S350. (which is silly, V221 S350 is not a "bad" car!)
12. Attract attention in a subtle way where people look at you, but won't come take pictures sitting on the front of your car when you are away.
Will post some pictures, feel free to ask more.
