Mercedes 5 cylinder diesels of the 1980's

By the early 1980′s, Mercedes had hit the pinnacle of design and engineering with their 4 cylinder and 5 cylinder diesel engines.  The cast iron heads were bullet-proof and the pre-combustion chambers made them the perfect engine for using alternative fuels like waste vegetable oil.  Both the manual and automatic transmissions were also built strong and seldom had issues as long as they were maintained properly.

Models

240D, 300D, 300CD, 300SD, 300TD

Pros

• 5 cylinder diesel engine is legendary and is one of the best engines ever built
• Both automatic and manual transmissions are extremely reliable with proper maintenance.
• Cars are luxurious with very comfortable seating and ride
• Engine runs on biodiesel
• Engine runs on vegetable oil either with one or two-tank systems. Heated two tank systems are the most reliable and will prolong engine life and reliability compared to blending in one tank.

Cons

• Climate, locking and control systems are vacuum-actuated. Vacuum lines become brittle and crack with age. This causes vacuum leaks and failure of control systems. Vacuum systems can be repaired but troubleshooting and repair is tedious
• Hydraulic suspension on the 300TD wagon tends to fail with age and is expensive to repair or replace. If it fails, the system can be retrofitted to regular shock absorbers. This is the recommended repair method to avoid future expensive repairs.
• Leather seats tend to crack and split with age. The MBTex vinyl is more durable
• Dashes crack with age and wood laminate trim tends to peel
• Parts are expensive. Cars that were not maintained properly can cost thousands of dollars to restore. Your best bet is to learn how to fix the cars yourself. There are many online resources for technical knowledge and inexpensive parts.

Buying Guide

These cars are 30 years old now and many of them were not maintained properly by second and third owners.  If you are mechanically inclined, these are great cars to fix up and run as a primary vehicle.  If you are not mechanically inclined, you will spend thousands of dollars paying a German repair shop to keep one of these running.  Keep that in mind when choosing this as your source of transportation.

Here are a few items to look for:

• Watch out for transmissions that slip in and out of gear.  They will likely need to be rebuilt
• Excessive white, grey or black smoke could be a sign of serious engine issues.  White smoke could mean a blown head gasket, grey smoke could indicate excessive engine wear and black smoke could indicate problems with the fuel injection system.  Proceed carefully and make sure you are familiar with proper diagnosis before buying a vehicle with one of these issues.
• An inoperable Air Conditioning system could be a simple vacuum leak or a more serious problem requiring major component replacement.  Research diagnosis methods online and verify the issue before buying a vehicle with inoperable air conditioning especially if you live in a region where AC is not just a “comfort option” but mandatory.

Preventative Maintenance

1. Change the oil and filter every 5k miles with brand name (Shell Rotella, Chevron Delo, etc.) 15W40 oils and quality filters
2. Change the primary and secondary fuel filters every 30k miles or as needed due to poor fuel quality.
3. Change the auto transmission fluid and filter every 30k miles
4. Invest in a set of wrenches for adjusting valves.  This should be done every 60k miles.  Change the valve cover gasket when adjusting the valves.

In 1986, Mercedes introduced a new diesel engine with an aluminum head.  Aluminum is prone to crack when overheated and these engines were not exempt.  They also had problems with connecting rods in the 3.5 liter diesel engine in the 350SDL. By the early 90s, electronic controls replaced vacuum systems which are prone to failure and expensive to repair like most other contemporary gas and diesel engines.

NOTE: Mercedes has always built extremely reliable diesel vehicles before 1985. Therefore, choosing a diesel vehicle built before 1981 is also a good choice. The 300SD is the most powerful of these cars since it has a turbo. Most other pre-1981 Mercedes diesels are normally aspirated and do not have as much power. However, some will arguer that the non-turbo diesels are a better choice due to a less complicated combustion system.

Electric Light Rail System in Salt Lake City, Utah

While visiting Salt Lake City this week, I rode one of UTA Trax’s electric light rail cars.  I didn’t have a place to go or somewhere I had to be at the time.  I just wanted to go for a ride because an electric streetcar is fun to ride for a clean energy enthusiast. We don’t have streetcars in Atlanta anymore so this was my opportunity to experience what was a part of everyday life for city dwellers in the early 1900′s.  I couldn’t wait to buy my ticket and go for a ride!

Light rail is thought of as a utilitarian form of public transportation.  However, our grandparents used it both as a way to get from point A to B and as a form of entertainment.  In the late eighteen hundreds and the early nineteen hundreds, street cars and light rail were commonplace in most metropolitan areas.  My wife’s grandparents remember riding the street car on Peachtree Street in Atlanta in their Sunday best after church.  They didn’t have a destination.  The streetcar was the destination and the entertainment.  There was a slower pace of life that allowed people to often enjoy the trip more than where they were going.

Street Cars Stacked in a Junkyard, 1956

So what happened to this form of entertainment?  Some will tell you that mass production of the automobile in 1908 was the catalyst that doomed the electrified streetcar to the scrapyard.  Others will speak of the National City Lines conspiracy where companies representing autos, tires and the oil industry formed a company that pressured city governments to pave over rails and send the streetcars to the junkyard to make way for internal combustion engine-powered buses that needed tires and petroleum to run.  Internal Combustion by Edwin Black has detailed research on this theory.  I hoped that my experience on this electric rail car would help me form an opinion after reading studies on most of these theories.

I purchased my full fare ticket and waited for the next rail car to arrive at the station.  When the cars pulled up, I pushed a button, the doors opened and I climbed up for a ride.  The first thing I noticed when sitting down was the familiar surroundings from riding city buses and subway trains growing up.  After sitting down and looking around, I could have easily been on a diesel bus.  The sounds were familiar.  Beeping from the warning system that the doors will be closing and the rushing sound of air from the climate control system was very familiar.  As we pulled away from the station, the only missing sound was the roar of a diesel bus engine.

Here’s what I noted from my short excursion:

Riding streetcars isn’t much different from riding a subway. They have a set path and don’t deviate from it.  Buses have set routes but they can be easily changed by providing new directions to a bus driver.  Light rail requires laying new tracks and integrating it into existing tracks before the route can be changed.

There were still lots of cars on the road.  It was obvious that having a streetcar in Salt Lake City didn’t cause most drivers to get rid of their cars and ride public transportation.  The street car I was riding on was half full but there were lots more cars driving all around us.  It is clear to me that there are two requirements for the adoption of clean public transportation: building the light rail system and convincing people to use it.

A great way to see the sites. I picked a route that took me straight through the city by the convention center, temple square and the stadium.  I could have easily stepped off of the train, visited the sites and stepped back on the next street car.  However, I was there for the ride and could see the Mormon temple from the outside and the rest of the sites with ease.

My overall impression of the electric streetcar was that it is a functional and clean form of transportation that should be pursued by most cities.  While current sources of electric power are not clean, building electric transportation systems and vehicles will help us prepare for more cleaner sources of electric power that will replace coal as the grid is updated over time.

Modern Light Rail Cars in France

Currently, electric light rail is very common in Europe and more than fifty US cities have deployed electric light rail with many cities in the process of planning electric light rail systems, including Atlanta, the home of NotPetroleum blog.

My hope is that we’ll see a revitalization in urban areas in the US with electric light rail and street cars for public transportation.  Not only will it reduce our consumption of petroleum but it will help us to reconnect with our neighbors and fellow citizens.  Driving carpool in a minivan is a very isolating experience.  You can ask any Mom or Dad who has this daily duty.  Imagine jumping on an electric tram with other neighbors and heading to the grocery store, dry cleaners or even school?

As I ride down Main street Salt Lake City, I realize that light rail is a part of the solution for our clean energy future.  There will need to be many innovations and solutions to help foster adoption of clean transportation but electric light rail should surely play a role in weaning us from our addiction to petroleum.

Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air

Here is a website created by a couple in Louisiana that got tired of living in a fast-paced world and made major lifestyle changes to create a better life for themselves.  Enjoy reading about their new-found freedom.

While lifestyle changes are not the easiest for everyone, this family found that simplifiying their life greatly improved the quality of the life they are living.  Not to mention the amount of petroleum they are saving by removing themselves from the rat race!

Charles Greene of Cornell University and colleagues reconstructed the patterns of climate change in the Arctic from the Paleocene epoch to the present. Over these 65 million years, the Earth has undergone several major warming and cooling episodes, which were largely mitigated by the expansion and contraction of sea ice in the Arctic.

When the Arctic cools and ice expands, the increase ice cover increases albedo. The resulting increased reflection of the sun leads to global cooling. Likewise, when ice sheets and sea ice contract and expose the darker-colored land or ocean underneath, heat is absorbed, accelerating climate warming. Currently, the Earth is in the midst of an interglacial period, characterized by retracted ice sheets and warmer temperatures.

As large portions of the polar ice cap break off and fall into the Arctic Ocean, large quantities of fresh water abruptly reduces the salinity. Continued exposure to such freshwater forcing, however, could disrupt global ocean circulation during the next century and lead to very abrupt changes in climate, similar to those that occurred at the onset of the last ice age.

“If the Earth’s deep ocean circulation were to be shut down, many of the atmospheric, glacial and oceanic processes that have been stable in recent times would change, and the change would likely be abrupt,” says Greene.

“While the ecosystem consequences of gradual changes in the ocean are somewhat predictable, all bets are off after such abrupt changes occur.”

These abrupt disruptions on a large scale could halt the Earth’s ocean currents and lead us into the next Ice Age.

More…

Bradford Plumer, in his article in The New Republic, “The End of Aviation,” writes of the coming downsizing in the commercial airline industry due to rising fuel costs.  He makes a case for why the current air travel industry’s business model doesn’t work with $135/barrel oil.Read how the spiraling costs of oil, as supplies are depleted, will affect the cost and availability of air travel.

Learn more…

 - Veggie Ranger

Polar Ice Caps Melting by September

It appears that the ice at the North Pole has decided to melt and should be completely melted by this September.  I guess you can look on the bright side; now you can take a cruise to the North Pole and experience what many an explorer froze to death trying to accomplish!

It’s also a well-known fact that there is oil under the Arctic Ocean.  I guess it will also be easier to drill for it now…

- Veggie Ranger

This book begins in the forests of Cyprus, whose trees and wood provided fuel for the ancient Mediterranean. Black carries the reader through to the Elizabethan era, in which the Hostmen guild of Newcastle exerted political influence by monopolizing the British coal supply. The central thread of this well-researched book, which draws upon a vast array of archival sources and an extensive list of secondary texts, picks up centuries later with the competition in the American automotive market between electric power and oil-fueled internal combustion.

The definitive blow in favor of oil comes with WWI, which prompted increased demand for gas-powered vehicles at the very moment Thomas Edison and Henry Ford aborted plans to develop an affordable electric car. The decades-long “General Motors conspiracy” solidifies the demise of electrically powered mass transit in American cities.

- Publisher’s Weekly

I recommend this book highly for the person who wants to begin their journey in ridding themselves of petroleum by learning how it all started. We learn much from studying the past.

Just say “NO” to petroleum,

– Veggie Ranger