Still, about 20 years too late, and for reasons that will become clear later in the year, I have just disassembled a substantial part of a 1985 Mercedes W123, the E-class before the one before the last one. People who mend old cars have told me that this Mercedes was one of the best-built cars in history. Anthology Chess Combinations Pdf Viewer. It harks from a time when Mercedes avowedly over-engineered everything, when the customer paid a premium for that and was rewarded with a monastic interior and wind-up windows. You bought one of these Mercs if you enjoyed the nagging suspicion that everything, including the bits you couldn't see, had been done properly.

I can now confirm that it was. Taking the old E-class apart was a lengthy and baffling exercise, because there was always another hidden bolt, another screw, another fiendishly recalcitrant clip. The glovebox lid, for example, would not yield even to Jeremy Clarkson and his Cotswolds Screwdriver*; it would come off only by reversing the process by which it was attached in the first place. In isolation, it seems like an unnecessarily complex one, but time has proved it to be unbelievably fit for purpose. So yes, the W123 E-class is a superbly well-made artefact on a par with some cathedrals, and it has got me thinking. I now know what old people are on about when they lament the passing of the mendable appliance.

End connects to the Transmission. Good Pictures Dan. I took apart one Shifter to clean it and grease it up. The most difficult part was getting the 2 springy washers back in. I found this thread that might be of some help, shows parts and an exploded picture. FS: W123 Manual Transmission Shifter Assembly. May 20, 2013. Everything goes wrong with old cars, you can only have so many of them lying around before your head explodes. What's better than a. But a diesel W123 is still fairly primitive machine, even though it's Mercedes. OK,my newest car is a 1985 300D W123 with a STT turbo conversion and manual trans.

This week I have been forced by manufacturing timidity into discarding a kettle, a toaster and a pair of binoculars. The kettle leaked, the toaster suffered a simple internal electrical failure and the binoculars had water in them but, as none of them had been built to be rebuilt one day, there was nothing I could do about it. Dualit toasters and the Rowlett model I have bought, for all their knowing ponciness, are held together with self-tapping screws and other things that can be removed and replaced endlessly. Like George Washington's axe or the yard broom of two heads and three handles fame, they are infinitely repairable.

Because the Mercedes was built properly, it came apart properly. And because it came apart properly, it would go back together again. No doubt in the 22 years that my example had roamed the Earth, quite a few parts had been replaced - it certainly didn't have its original gearbox, and various small components were obviously of newer vintage. But somebody once told me that only half of Westminster Abbey is the original building. It's still Westminster Abbey.

Whoever engineered my Mercedes must have wanted it to last for a very long time. This is, I suspect, an increasingly unfashionable approach to making anything in large volumes. Sooner or later, and as with the kettle, the toaster, the laser printer and the washing machine, the car, even a superbly made one, crashes headlong into the argument about economic viability. We drive around in a car for maybe 10 or 15 years, then decide we're bored with it or it's somehow not worth maintaining any more.

So we throw it away - the whole car! But look at the life of a typical W123 Mercedes like mine. It enjoyed what we would think of as a full life in the west before starting a new one as a taxi in the developing world, after which it began yet another existence in the hands of a private owner with the odometer already indicating a trip to the Moon. There is no reason why it shouldn't last until the end of time, and that would make it a very green machine indeed. *Hammer • BBC Top Gear presenter James May's new series, Twentieth Century, is on BBC2, Tuesdays at 8pm.

• His new collection of columns, Notes from the Hard Shoulder, is published by Virgin (rrp £7. Download Anime Bakugan Battle Brawlers Sub Indo Avatar there. 99) and is available from Telegraph Books for £6.99 plus 99p p&p; telephone 0870 428 4112.