"im helpin" is god, for helping out XP

*snickers* dood. and you wonder why your car died?

cats r not mechanics

Well, I found that out, didn't I? But hey, they tried...

:3 cute

Actually I left my hood open once and one of my neighbor's cats came over to inspect. Well I left to get a wrench and I came back their was burnt hair on my battery... I saw the cat afterwards and their was this giant burn mark on its tail. Stupid cat.

Could be worse, they coulda gotten caught in the fanbelt...

Or worse, in the fan itself. There was shaved cat fur all over the lawn for two months before it all blew away.

OOOooooowwwwwwweeeeee..... That would have been an interesting clean up.

what happened that your poor 'cedes (280S/W114 from the looks of it) died on you? the mouse them cats were hunting finally got caught in the carb or soemthing?

250/114. Put a rod through the side of the block, and it was sufficiently rusty that I didn't feel like putting any more moolah into it... :)

But in this particular case, I was tying off the radiator so the fan would stop hitting it (bad water pump bearing)...

owch! reading such stories certainly hurt!

you see, here in germany you can read all kinds of horror stories about how US car drivers abuse their vehicles, and how they are restored by using wires, pop rivets and coke cans... and 7,24 kilograms of putty. :)

Yus. Used to have a 116 with no trunk bottom, so I had to hold the spare in place with bungee cords.

'Course, I only paid a dollar for the car, then found $1.25 in the back seat, so... ;)

*laughs* ach du scheisse...

I hate to think what it takes to corrode the bottom out of a 116's ass like that. those cars might have their 'rust traps', but are relatively sturdy all in all.
or rather, a wall of steel. :)

Yeah, the crumple zone is the other guy. :D

They use a lot of salt on the East Coast, so the tin worm strikes hard on older cars. That's one reason I liked moving to the MidSouth. My new/old 107 may have sunburned paint, but virtually no rust... :)

and sunburned interiour. my other car is the 'not-UK' version of the Cortina MkIII, called, "Taunus", which came with a black vinyl roof top and light brown interiour when I bought it down in switzerland. it took only five years more until vinyl and seats were burned so black they crumbled apart. now the rooftop is black paint, and the interiour is black seats and door panels, and the rest I painted black with special vinyl spray paint. now it looks like one piece again.

Hee! Well, that works. I'm gonna get the 107 repainted, prolly in silver as that's the Mercedes racing color...and Tali drives a silver 450SLC, so what the heck. :D

tehee, you two are Mercedesionalists, sotosay? well, I'm a Fordoholic. XD

in case you're curious what rides were popular in germany, here are photos of my cars (beware of patina!):
http://s90.photobucket.com/albums/k.....8/AnbessaLion/

Oo! Sweet. Yeah, I've been a Chicken Foot Fan since my late dad got a 113 back around '70 or so. In the past ten years, I've owned:

'66 230S (I)
'68 220D
'70 250
'67 250S (I)
'61 220b (I)
'76 450SEL (the rustbucket)
'78 450SEL ('nother rustbucket, but amazingly stable; I inadvertently put it sideways at 75 per on the Interstate while swerving one afternoon and it didn't flip over)
'73 450SEL (I)
'78 450SL

(I) denotes inoperative

And a couple Oldsmobiles and a Pontiac. ;D

Which outdoes my father, who only had the 280SL (then a 280C at the time of his death). :)

that's quite a conga line of classic 'cedes here. a 220b? these are a rarity here in germany now... most people look after the "S" or "SL" varieties, forgetting about the "standard" models it seems.

anyway, I had various Fords of around the same model over the years, with only two of them gone the way of all tin now, and one Opel Ascona-C inbetween (mid-80's front driven model which was licensed off to Chevrolet I think they called it "Monza". it also served as the very first Hyundai Pony) which was unreliable to drive at best, and resold after five months.

here in germany you can wink at most other oldtimer car drivers on the street and receive a wink back no matter which model you drive, except most mercedes drivers, which can appear pretty snobby at times. with the exception of /8 and W123 drivers which are mostly normal as any other guy off the street, and I had a long chat with one /8 driver once. different brand? doesn't matter, we all love old, rusty tin, so there! XD

Yep. In fact, I amused myself at a couple of car shows with the 250 in these pics:

Shiny Corvette placard: PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH

Shiny Mustang placard: PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH

Ratty 250 placard: AW, GO AHEAD AND TOUCH IT

I got more guffaws with that... Even worked up a schtick. "Step right up and touch a gen-u-wine Mercedes-Benz! Feel the authentic German oxidation!"

It's some sort of weird conditioning, though, very few people actually worked up the nerve to touch the thing. :D

My da had a couple late 60s Opels - a wagon, wherein I learned how to operate a stick shift, and a Rallye, which, alas, gave its all to save my father in a head-on smash on some ice (neither car was going terribly fast, but the closing speed was about 50mph)...

I oughta do an essay on cars I've owned... :)

well, duh! :)

once I saw a Ford Escort MkI, which saw use as a stock car (known to you as chrash race, but with the main goal of doing as many laps as possible, toppling someone over gains the other one an extra point) complete with cage, mud-grabber tyres, and decoration, and more bumbs than a goose, and that one was the most photographed car on the entire fair. :)