Worth it? I think so.

A lot can happen in 33 years. That's plenty of time for a car to become less than perfect. Far less. Things get bent, corroded and just plain dirty. I mean really dirty. Not to mention the dumb things that previous owners have done. I once had a '77 Wagoneer that had really been put through the ringer. Someone had cut the wiring harness off right at the firewall. Nothing electrical worked in the dash. On top of that, it had something like 4 or 5 BAD paint jobs, the last of which was grey latex paint that had been applied with a brush (there were brush marks). But it was still cool. At least I liked it. The thing is, when you come into contact with a car after most of its life (in my Benz's case 33 years) has gone by, it's easy to look at it and think that that's how it is. That's just the way this car is. It's pretty hard to picture it as being anything else. Meanwhile it's wishing it could tell you about the day it rolled of the assembly line so that you could picture it.

Because of this, I find that I look at things and somehow just think that they're part of the car. Today as I was prepping the floor board for rust patching, I got under the front fender to clean off around the rust holes and saw just how dirty it was under there. Now, I've been under there before. Many times. I put new shocks on the car when I got it. I've rotated tires. I've re-packed the front wheel bearings. Each time I've been under there I've undoubtably seen the years and years worth of caked on dirt. I think I thought it was the texture of the undercoating. I don't know. But today I took a wire brush to it and it sure looks different. Now I see little surface rust spots that will need to be treated. The whole wheel well will need to be repainted. Yet another example of my ever-expanding project. But it'll be worth it. My car's gonna look so good when I'm done.

Sure, I've thought about just getting a nicer car that I wouldn't have to do the work on. More than once. Wouldn't it be nice to just start over with another car that looks better than mine does, especially compared to how it looks now! But that car will have problems too. When I get to looking a little closer, they'll be there, and I'll have to deal with them or they'll just get worse. They won't be the same as the ones I'm dealing with now maybe, but they'll be there. Plus I just really like my car. It was love at first sight.

So, I'm gonna stick it out with my '75 240D 3.0. Yeah, it's given me problems in the past and continues to at times. But I've got so much time already invested in it, and the payoff's gonna be worth it. Plus we get along pretty well...