okay what i was gonna to tell you about is that my fiance and i have just finished as a matter of fact today restoring a seventy three Mercedes
you don't mean it
i i we've done a little bit of it ourselves but mostly we were lucky enough to find a a guy that works for a Mercedes dealership and he restores cars on his on his uh you know off time
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how'd you find this one
well it was uh a gentleman that works with my fiance and he had bought it for his daughter and she wasn't taking care of it and boy was that obvious when they pulled up in it it had been really um
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pretty shabby shape huh
it was in a mess it was just in a terrible mess uh
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so what's the last thing you ever had done to it
well the last thing we did to it was today they had uh replaced the gear shift
my goodness
um it's uh it wasn't we had to order the part from the dealership and the guys put it in today when you shifted it down you didn't know if you were in park drive reverse whatever
oh i hear you
so that was the very last thing that we had to uh had to have done uh basically the whole car's been redone they put in new um
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they used new sheet metal and stuff to to repair the body i mean there were you know these rusted dents
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a new paint job they uh redid all of the trim we had the seats reupholstered we put in a new dash it's been recarpeted it's just it was you know just completely
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my goodness
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my gosh y'all put a lot of money in this
yeah it was completely overhauled and uh for what
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is it a Diesel
it's a diesel um-hum it sure is
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i guess it's what four speed on the column
yeah you're right um-hum
um-hum i seem to recall the old Mercedes had four speeds on the column
yeah yeah and it's it's just been lovingly restored that's one good thing about about having somebody to do it your you're you're there because they worked on it here at our home
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so how many miles does it have on it
i have no idea i i doubt that anybody will ever really know
why is the speedometer was disconnected or something
well i i i can't really remember what it shows on there but i remember when we discussed it we said that we were pretty sure that that was like times maybe or add an additional one hundred added on to that a hundred thousand
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i hear you
yeah because it's uh it had definitely been through the mill but uh
um
well i got a little car that uh has a certain history to it too
uh-huh
it's an old seventy one Maverick and i'm not trying to redo the body or anything
oh yeah
but i've had it to drive back and forth to work now for some i guess nineteen years or so
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um-hum oh my gosh you've had it
and it's got two hundred and one thousand miles on it
oh my word
and it's an automatic transmission and it's just a regular old everyday go back and forth to work car
uh-huh
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and uh i uh i guess the interesting history about this is about the only work i do on it myself an the last time i did do some work was i did a brake job on it
and that cost me fourteen dollars
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oh my word
by buying the parts at one of the local discount parts houses you know and
uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh
and luckily this time didn't need to have drums turned or anything
replaced yeah
then i was able to do a brake job on there at fairly i think inexpensive price by doing it myself of course
yeah oh definitely
but another interesting aspect of this car like yours is
uh it's only had the oil changed about six times since uh seventy five thousand miles
oh gosh
uh-huh uh-huh
because i only change the oil every twenty five thousand miles
right right
i do change oil filters every twelve thousand five hundred though
uh-huh uh-huh
but uh other than that it only has the oil changed every twenty five thousand miles and that is a a true statement i just wrote Mobil Oil Corporation a letter as a matter of fact
yeah
two weeks ago thanking them for the uh good durability that Mobil One oil which is what i use in it provides
uh-huh
because it does have two hundred and one thousand honest miles
gosh that's unbelievable
and it's only had the oil changed those few times and uh it uh performs very nicely it's shifting the uh transmission of course i get overhauled on it not overhauled but
hum
uh-huh
all the uh fluid drained out and new screen and and filters and everything put them in every fifty thousand miles religiously
right right
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so it still shifts just a crisp today as it did when it was brand new
that's amazing that is amazing
and the engine still runs just as strong today as it did when it was brand new
is it the same engine that's been in it all the time
oh yeah the the engine's never had any work done on it all except at ninety five thousand miles i think it was uh we rebuilt the carburetor and a hundred thirty five thousand miles we put a new uh water pump on it no internal work has ever been done on the engine
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it's had uh three starters uh one fuel pump about six eight ten batteries i guess been put in the car and um uh one uh uh um voltage regulator during all this time
wow
uh-huh
yeah yeah
and that's it nothing else been ever done to it except you know the usual filters and this that and the other that you have to put on a
that's amazing yeah
and doing that it and the uh radiator on it has been rebuilt twice
yeah
so the car was how old when you when you bought it
well i bought it from a fellow that i knew uh that worked up here it had sixty nine thousand miles on it at that time
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he always took good care of it and he bought it just to pull a boat with and when it when it got to be old and uh or older i bought it in seventy seven from him it was about six years old
yeah oh i see
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uh-huh
and uh it had sixty nine thousand miles on it and i had written about synthetic i had read about synthetic oil s in Popular Science so i decided hey this is a good car to experiment on it i don't have much money in it you know i only bought it for a thousand dollars
yeah
exactly yeah
uh-huh uh-huh
so i changed it over to uh Mobil One at seventy five thousand miles and i proceeded from then on to never change the oil but every twenty five thousand miles as they say on the can
uh-huh
and uh but i
yeah oh is it does say that on the can
but the oil gets yeah it says that on the can Mobil One cans if you read them says uh uh it it it says as as the automobile manufacturer recommends or twenty five thousand miles what they used to say anyway
i didn't realize that uh-huh
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so i decided this would do as a good experiment and i had read about this these kinds of synthetic oils in um as i said Popular Science
yeah
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right
but the oil gets so black that uh at every twelve thousand five hundred miles i do pull the oil filter and change out the oil filter and when you do that you have to add a quart
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but this car uses no oil at all between oil changes i mean not a drop
oh i see yeah
that's amazing yeah and this is a Maverick you said
it's a seventy one Maverick
Maverick
well i had uh i had owned a Cougar up until oh just several months ago that i had had since uh um i think it was an eighty two or something
uh-huh
and i had that car only uh about two years and the engine blew in it
oh
and so i had to put in a new engine that was that's an experience when you have a two year old car you know and it wasn't in warranty then i mean it must have like the day after the warranty was expired it must have exploded
uh
my goodness
what kind of engine was it
i have no idea uh V is it V eight i don't i don't know a lot of
well they have V eights they have V sixes and they have
what's the biggest one is a V eight bigger
i guess the V eight
yeah that's what it had in it
well that's interesting
and yeah so it it uh that's my latest experience with something major
i guess that's uh uh you uh you must undoubtedly get all kinds of different uh
uh engine types or whatever in terms of their durability depending on how they got made but this one here has just lasted and lasted and lasted
yeah
yeah
well see that's what i was thinking i thought maybe it has something because that turned me off from American cars i mean you know something and and i'm sure i shouldn't i shouldn't feel that way that's why i was surprised to hear you talk about this car it sounds very resilient
oh really
um
whatever they have in that engine whatever a kind of engine it is in that car
it's just a V eight same as what was in your Cougar probably
yeah yeah yeah maybe it has something to do but i i know i took good care of it i changed the oil quite often i didn't even do that myself i i could never do any of this myself
you did
yeah
you know i'm just not uh i'm not uh
and it still blew up
you're sure nobody ever sugared your gas tank or anything that got mad at you about something
yeah and it still blew up
well now that yeah not that i know of
because i had a van that uh somebody sugared my gas tank and it it tore that engine up and i had to replace it but if it hadn't been for that then uh
oh really
i would've never had any problems
you would never have a problem well you know that's possible i never had thought about it but that's my i'm i have a
all it takes is a cup full of sugar dumped down your gas tank and it will ruin the engine
what what does that do
it uh freezes up the rings and everything inside so they can't lubricate sugar does it turns to like a a syrupy like crud
uh-huh
oh okay just like just like sugar would it turns syrupy
yeah and uh it it freezes everything up it scalds it scalds the bearings in an engine it essentially just freezes it up
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yeah
and the only thing to do is take it apart and completely rebuild it from bottom out
yeah
and generally it ruins the engine to the point where you have to replace it
yeah ugh well that maybe that's what happened to it because it had been it had been fine but the odd thing about it was is after i had that engine replaced that car ran hot
every summer i mean even though yes Texas is notorious i mean we it's true we have a hundred and eight degree days but you know it uh i had i had trouble with that car after that i don't know if it was just a lemon
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um
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um
even though it was a brand new engine you know so uh
that's amazing
might not have been rebuilt properly or they might have put too high a degree thermostat in it
yeah course it was a brand new engine supposedly now that's what the dealership told me you know
yeah
well even if it was if they put the wrong size thermostat in it for the climate you're in it could could make it run hotter
yeah
yeah
that's what i i know my i had uh had my dad to finally took it down there because i would take it back and forth and the dealership would not it was i still had the problem it just continued and continued and they would charge me you know two hundred dollars every time they looked at it
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and um he kept saying the same thing he said it seems like it was your thermostat but at any rate it was really never rectified and i told the people that when i sold it to them i said you know you you might need to watch out but they didn't seem to mind
um
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they wanted the car so
hum
you know as far as my ability to do anything on it i can check the oil i know that's about as far as it goes it's been amazing to watch these guys work on this car i mean you know just from
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how did y'all come to uh to uh make the seventy three your your collector's item you might say
well it just this this gentleman had this car and uh you know he had he had told my fiance that he was going to sell it i mean he just i mean he sold it to us for like three hundred bucks you know and
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and we took before we said we'd buy it we uh took it to a Mercedes dealership and they looked at the engine and uh the engine had been rebuilt about uh i think the guy had told us two hundred miles previously or something and
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they said it you know the engine alone was worth you know much more than that so we didn't feel like there was any problem
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and uh it's it's definitely been amazing to to see the transformation we took
we took after pictures it's a shame that we didn't take before pictures because yeah it was just uh as i said rusted dents and the color was that dark dark green that's almost
no you should've
