If We Can Clean This ABANDONED Mercedes 380SEL, We Keep It For FREE!

I'm just trying to get cleaned up around here and if you guys get it going and it runs and everything, I don't know if you guys want to keep it or do a giveaway. For the United States market, I think that this was actually the big dog for 1982. It was probably one of the most expensive luxury cars you could get in the United States. It was $45,000 brand new, which in today money is $145,000 brand new. All right guys, now it's time to get on a call to find out who the third-party system randomly picks to win the C10 badge. God, this guy's a scrap daddy. He's got a lot of stuff going on over here. Oh, we got a lot of stuff going on over here too. Mercedez. Big body Mercedes. This thing's nice. This thing is actually really nice. This thing's really, really nice. It matches the building, the paint scheme. Yeah, what color combo would you call this? The classic white and green. I call this Renner's beige. Oh, it smells like broccoli. Okay, that does smell like broccoli. It smells like burnt broccoli. Purely overcooked broccoli. Oh, yeah. We've got some nice rodents that have been nesting in the seats here. That's lovely. These were built like tanks, man. Mercedes interiors, when rodents don't chew it all up, they actually hold up really, really well. It makes it really nice to work on when there's not holes in the seats. Broccoli, right? No, it's like the tank doors. It's such a solid car. This thing's pretty cool. It actually belongs to one of the friends of the channel, Brett. So let's go grab him and get some background on how the car got out here. All right, guys, we're here with Brett, friend of the channel. How you doing? He almost left me hanging. I've been getting left hanging all the time with these handshakes. I don't know what the heck's going on. Brett's going to create a montage at some point of me just getting left with my hand out there. Anywho, Brett invited us out again to do one of his other vehicles. We actually have done two cars for Brett already. We did the Nash. I can't remember the brand. He did a 49 Nash, the Super 600. He did the black Mercedes 220 65, and he also did the Indian. Yeah, yeah, three cars, man. And the neighbor's car. This is our, we call this a honey hole. We find a lot of cars through Brett, including this 380 SEL. How long have you had this? I've had it for about 10, 11 years now. Believe it or not, the 220 Mercedes that you guys did came from the same place that the Corvair did. Oh, okay. The red Corvair. They were Mercedes enthusiasts, and they had, I think, close to 80 at one time. They had a whole bunch. So I got the black Mercedes and this one around the same time, about a year apart from the same person. The trees have really done a number here on your tree farm. They have littered the whole entire car. It looks like it's been sitting here for quite some time. How long has it been back here? About 10, 11 years. Did you ever try and get it started? I tried once. I just didn't have time. It seemed to crank over, but just didn't want to do nothing. All right, well. But yeah, I'm just trying to get cleaned up around here. And if you guys get it going and it runs and everything, I don't know if you guys want to keep it or do a giveaway or... Keep it? Give it away? We just finished the giveaway. I don't know if we can give another car away just yet. We actually have one in the works, but that's hush hush for now. And in my opinion, it's a wee bit cooler than this, but I'm biased. So I don't want to take away from how cool this Mercedes is. But I mean, if you're offering, a free car is a free car. Yeah, or if it doesn't run, I actually... All the other scrap, I donate it to the local schools for the athletic boosters for the wrestling and the track team. Oh, cool. So if you can't get it running, maybe we'll just end up doing... Well, I'll tell you what. I'm going to count it as a free car. But if we get it running, we'll try and sell it and then we'll donate the money. And if not, we'll bring it back and you can sell it and donate the money. Well, that sounds great. All right, I'm still counting it as a free car. Thank you. Thank you. Well, we have a mission in getting this thing started. But the first mission is getting it back to the shop in the first place. So let's back the trailer up and load her up. What's this guy doing? I'm testing out my new Brunt work boots. Well, they're not new anymore. I've actually been using them for the last couple of months and I love them. So Mike, why don't you try out your boots? We have to test them out. No, I like my boots. I don't want to get them all dirty. Come on, you got to see if they work. Let me tell you about Brunt work boots. If you know me at all, you know that I use and abuse my tools, which is why I actually blew up two brand new trucks back to back. They couldn't hold up to my durability test. But that's not the case for my Brunt work boots. I've worn them for the last couple of months and they've held up incredibly well. And my favorite part, they're waterproof, which means they're extremely easy for me to clean. I ordered the ring boots from Brunt and they have a composite toe insert in the boot, which means I can tire kick to my heart's desire. So whether I'm working in a mud pit at Brett's house or I'm picking up a car in the dead of winter, Brunt's boots have held tough, kept my feet dry and my toes safe. Brunt also offers a free trial where you can wear the boots to work. And if you don't like them, you can send them back for a full refund. And they cover shipping both ways in the United States. That means there's no risk to try out Brunt work boots. So guys, if you want to try out some of the best work boots on the market, click the link in the description below or go to bruntworkwear.com slash WD Detailing 10 and use code WD Detailing 10 to get $10 off your first purchase. Thank you so much to Brunt for sponsoring this video. And now we have to load up that Mercedes. All right, Mike, first of all, glad you kept your boots clean because they look good. Anyways, do you think we're going to be able to get some air in these tires? I think so. I think so. Some kind of slow leak or something, but let's hope we get some air to stay in here. At least for a while we were putting in the trailer. Well, this makes our life easy. The underside of this thing looks pretty nice too. And now we start loading the car up. I want to ask the question of the video. So leave your answers in the comments below. This is clearly a luxury car. So my question to you guys is, are you more of a luxury car person or a performance car person? Personally, we all at WD like sports cars, performance cars, but every now and again, it is nice to get into something that is luxurious. But let us know what you prefer in the comments below. All right, guys, now it's time to get on a call to find out who the third party system randomly picks to win the C10 Apache. My name is Brady Cooper here with WD Auto, and I am the third party that's lucky enough to get to pick the winner of the truck. We have all of your data. We looked at all the multipliers, all the postcards, all the purchases. Everything that you did to earn entries has been accounted for by us. We compiled it here and we're here to pick the winner for the truck. So here you can see we got all the information listed. Lots of people, lots of entries. Everyone's accounted for. The personal information covered up and we will jump in and randomly select a winner. Do you guys have anything to say, WD team? Best of luck to all the contestants. Thank you guys so much. I feel like nervous for some reason, even though this should be something that's not nerve wracking, but we want to be transparent, I guess. Take it away, Brady. Let's see who won. Yes. All right, here it is. Richard. Richard, we have your number associated. You are the winner. We don't know who you are. We don't know your last name yet. We don't know anything about you, but after we stop screen sharing here, we don't want to give up anyone's data. We will find out which Richard this is. Dude, that's RJ's name. That's my name. Did I win my truck? All right, guys, we're about to FaceTime the winner of the truck. You want to pick up, bro? I promise. Pick up for your pickup, Richard. All right. Hey, Richard, how's it going? It's RJ from WD. Hey, how are you? I'm doing really well. How are you? I'm doing great, thanks. So here, actually, I'll be able to show you better by FaceTime. Is that all right? Yeah, I can FaceTime real quick. All right. Go ahead and hit me and I'll join. All right. Okay. Richard, how are you doing? It's very nice to see your face. Thank you. I watch you on TV all the time. Well, yeah, not only I left you a message saying there was a problem with one of your orders, there's actually no problem at all. Okay. You are the winner of the C10 Apache. You won the truck. Oh, my gosh. Are you serious? Yes, sir. You're the winner and you're in Ohio, so we're going to hand deliver the truck to you. Oh, my gosh. My wife is going to be so excited because she loved that truck. Oh, that's awesome. We watched the show twice. Oh, man. I got to say, we were so excited to see the fact that you had not only made one purchase, but two purchases, and then a third purchase with that last text message that we said, hey, you know, to boost your odds, if you spend X amount more, you end up. You're from Ohio and your name's Richard. My name's Richard. I know. Oh, my gosh. I am so excited. We are so pumped too. This could not have gone any better. A fellow Ohioan. I mean, we love all the states, but, you know, the fact that we get to actually hand deliver it to you, it's going to be, the pleasure is going to be all ours. I can't wait to show you the truck. Oh, my gosh. That is so cool. Congratulations. Thank you for the viewership, the support. I can't believe that we get to do stuff like this and I'm just, it's awesome. It's really cool. I love watching the show and I love the interaction that you have with the people. Without you, people like you, you know, we don't have a job. We don't get to have this dream. So thank you so much for all you've done for us. And I'm glad we get to do something nice for you. Oh, my gosh. It's just, this is great. All right. We made it back with the 380 SEL, nearly safe and sound, but I didn't realize how special this car actually was. So it's the 380 SEL, which was one of the highest trim models from that time period and the SEL designation actually means that it's the extended wheelbase. I believe it's the W126 chassis and the SEL means that, you know, this back door is larger. I think it usually would cut around here. So you have all that extra room in the cabin, but this is a pretty special car. Yeah. So for the United States market, I think that this was actually the big dog in the U.S. for 1982. They did have the 500 series in Europe, but that didn't come to America yet. So this was one of the most expensive Mercedes that you could buy in the United States. It was probably one of the most expensive luxury cars you could get in the United States. I believe in 1982, it was $45,000 brand new, which in today money is $145,000 brand new, which is kind of nuts because you could buy RS6s. Dude, M5. You can get an M5 for that money. I think you buy the M5 CS. Like some of the really crazy cars that we think of today, that was this back then. Which is kind of cool. And well, also kind of sad to see it in the condition that it is now. It makes me wonder if we're going to start seeing, you know, eventually in the future, Audi RS6s or M5, you know, CSs under trees like this. And then them only being worth $10,000. Sadly, that is probably the reality. If you look at some of the older M5s, unless you kept really good care of it and kept it really nice, that's when they're worth a lot of money. But you can find them coming down now, especially when some of them have, you know, some kind of engine issues. I know the V10 cars have a crank issue and stuff like that. So it's very possible that in our future, we'll see M5s just sitting on the side in a barn somewhere. One other thing that Mike just mentioned is that, you know, over time, some of these cars have some issues. And I was looking into some of the issues that this car might have, including the timing chain, as well as potentially some vacuum issues. So hopefully it's neither of those. And hopefully it just needs some fresh gas and a bit of TLC. But first we have to start with the cleaning process, which I think our pre-wash is going to do a lot of work today. So we better get started. But first, I guess we'll start with the wheels. All right, starting with the wheels on this Mercedes. It's always funny. A lot of these cars from the 80s have this bottle cap design. But as you can see, there's tons of brake dust on this wheel. And you're going to notice as soon as I hit this wheel with this purple rain, all that's going to turn purple and start melting away. And hopefully this wheel is going to look brand new. And now we're going to begin the pressure washing process using our WD Auto Supply pre-wash. And that's going to loosen up all this mildew or moss that's on the exterior of the car and help us safely pressure wash it away. But you will notice some stuff does not get pressure washed away. And that's sap that we have to deal with afterwards. One of the things I love about Mercedes is that they are innovative. And one way I could show you that is from how you open the hood. Obviously pop it from inside the car. And then there's two little handles in here to open it. So it's a dual lock system. And you would say, so what? But on so many older cars, it's always a single lock right in the center, which kind of lets the hood wobble a little bit. But this dual lock system is used today on many high-end cars like high-end Audis, BMW and Mercedes still use this system because it just holds the hood down better. And I think it's a lot smarter than what a lot of other companies are using. Now, under the hood of this car is a 3.8 liter V8. Not a huge displacement V8, kind of small. But even smaller is the number of horsepower this thing produces. It only made about 155 horsepower for such a massive and long limo style car. That is not much. I read that this thing could do 0 to 60 when it was new. A little bit over 11 seconds. So this thing wasn't exactly lightning fast. But again, that's not what this car was for. This car was a luxury car to slowly cruise around in. So it does fit the bill. But looking at this engine, we see that it is pretty complete. There's nothing really missing and there's nothing that looks chewed up from rodents. So that's a really good sign for us. And hopefully we can get some power to this bad boy and maybe get it started. But with all that being said, we're going to start off our engine bay cleaning like we always do with our citrus degreaser. Just like I mentioned before, here's all that nasty sap that was left over on the paint after pressure washing it. So first, we're going to fill the foam cannon with cherry suds and give the car a good wash. Now to remove all this sap, this is going to take us in real life two hours to do. But for you guys, it's going to take less than a minute. So first, we're going to use plastic razors. That's not going to scratch the paint. And we're going to get the topmost layer of all the sap off. And then I'm going to take a microfiber towel with some sap remover on the end of it. Soak each and every dot in it and start rubbing it away. This is a very extreme case of this. You don't see it very often. But for you guys, we'll do anything. So getting every single one was worth it. And then after that, we used our iron kryptonite with a clay mitt to get all the rest of the micro contaminants out of the paint so it could be polished later on. Moving on to the interior of this 380 SEL, I have to say this is one of the most comfortable cars I've ever sat in. It seems that this car was extended to be sort of like an executive car. But I also feel like this is a car that you'd actually want to drive around. So it's not like a Rolls Royce or something like that where you'd be driven around. And I feel like if you were a businessman of the day, this would be a great car for you to have. The seats are incredibly comfortable. The materials that they use in here, like the carpet, is just in wonderful, wonderful shape. It's just a testament to Mercedes build quality over the years. But I do have a sneaking suspicion that this car was in Florida for a while. If you know anything about Florida, obviously it's hot, a lot of sunshine, and it beats up obviously the paint of the cars, but also the interiors. This driver's seat has seen better days, I would say. Besides that, I'm very surprised the dashboard has no cracks. It's going to come out actually really, really nice. If you see all this texture on the instrument cluster, I'm not sure if there was some kind of moisture that got in here or if this used to be some kind of design that like failed. But let me know if you know in the comments what's going on here because I have not a clue. But with all that being said, I got to get these seats out of this car and get started on the carpet. All right, so I just found one of the coolest things I've ever seen in a car that I had no idea came in cars in 1982. But being that this is an S-Class luxury vehicle, I was like, wait, what purpose does this serve? And then I realized that the back seats actually allow you to recline. So the seats move forward and then I started looking on the door card and there's the window button and then there's the seat button. So if you were a big pin-pin executive, you could sit back here with your extended wheelbase and hit your seat and recline. Brent would love this, wouldn't you Brent? What's in that? Now it's time to polish the 380 and I'm already super impressed with how the paint turned out, being that it had so much organic growth all over the paint as well as all that sap that we had to scrape off. But before I get started polishing, I'm going to obviously take a look and see what it requires. And obviously we have a ton of staining left over from all that mildew and organic growth. And then we have a ton of oxidation from sitting outside in the sun for all those years. So my goal is to use a light polish and a foam pad. I'm going to try and brighten up this white, remove the oxidation and hopefully take away some of that staining. And I think I'm going to be able to do a pretty darn good job of it. And this is going to be resurrected to its former glory. So stay tuned, the end result. All right, now we're going to try and get the Mercedes started. But before we even start that, there's a couple of things in this engine bay that I didn't realize because I wasn't here when they were cleaning the engine bay. And first off, I loved the color of this dipstick. It's very cute. And then I didn't realize that Bayer made radiators. I thought Bayer was just a paint company. I don't know. I thought the same thing, but I do not know if that's the same Bayer. It does look like the same logo though. I mean, either that or there's some copyright issues that Bayer has to address. I also have another question for anybody that knows these Mercedes because I don't. This guy right here. I'm not sure what this is. It looks like old school OBD stuff, maybe. You plug your Mercedes plug into and you can maybe read the ECU on the car, see what issues are going on. But let me know if I'm wrong. I think that's what this is. It looks clean in here. There's no, it looks like there's no rodents. We're full of oil. It's old. Dirty. Yeah, but it's there. It's better than no oil. It's a nice dipstick. Oh, filter looks good. That's beautiful. No rodents got in here. Yeah, it's clean. It has to have like a flapper on here or something to not let anything in because this thing looks great. Oh, we do got a little guy in here. Bee boy. So that's just one massive carburetor? I don't think, no, no. I don't think that's what this is. I think that this just lets air through and then below it is something else. Should we try and take this off? Sure, let's take a peek. All right. I think it's just one massive carburetor. This looks like some kind of CIS like wash. So this is similar to the fueling system that's actually in my Chiraco, I think. And these give people problems. That's what I know about these. Oh, no. Yeah. Because when people see that I still have that in my car, everybody's like, how is that still in there working? So interesting. So where do you spray the carb cleaner or the starting fluid? Comes, goes in there. It's the same thing like a regular carburetor. So it's like a, it's a blend between chemical fuel injection, but it's almost like a blend between both designs. Right at the change of the guard, I guess. Interesting. This is a crazy design. And I now know why these things were a million dollars when they first came out and then why people let them just die. Yeah, this doesn't really look like what you'd see on other cars from the 80s. It doesn't. But this is very satisfying. Sounds good. I like that. So all right. Put some power to it. Yeah, let's put power to it. Let's see if the lights come on and everything first. All right. Ready for power, Mike? Yeah, go ahead. Put a little bit of power. Power, Mike. Hey, that's a noise. Hold on. God, that's a terrible noise, dude. It worked. You got owned. All right, give it a crank. RJ, be ready with the stuff. Get close. Hey, we're getting somewhere. Well, the engine freed up and starts, but it seems like... It's not getting fuel. Yeah, it seems like there's no fuel. Do it again. God bless. That was loud. All righty. All right. So clearly we have a fueling issue, but it does turn over and start. So that's cool. We should probably call Adam Pranti because if we keep this up, I'm going to lose my hearing and we're going to blow up the shop. All right, guys. So we're on the phone with Adam from Power and Performance. He helps us get all these non-running cars running again. And he came by last night while we weren't here. Adam actually has a key to the shop now. But Adam went ahead and did some extra digging to figure out why it wasn't getting fuel. Yeah. So we know that the motor cranks over. It's just not getting fuel. So I started digging into it. Those cars actually have an external fuel pump. I checked to see if we were getting power down at the fuel pump and we're not getting power there. So it's not a bad pump. Well, at least for right now, we don't know if it's a bad pump or not because it's not getting power at all. So I started doing a little bit of research on these cars and found out that they have they have a kind of weird electrical system around the fuel system. And the relays kind of are a big problem with those cars digging around in the fuse box and ended up finding some disassembled relays that were inside the car. So this has been a problem for somebody in the past. And they're not super gettable. And the ones you can get apparently are a 50-50 chance on whether they work well or not. So it's one of those things where if we can find one, I drop that in and then we can see if we actually have a working pump and the car would probably run at that point. Well, it seems like we're closer than farther. But now we have to find a W126, 1982, 380 SEL fuel pump relay that is functional. So if you have that, reach out to us at wdbarnfinds at gmail.com and let us know if you have one of those relays for sale and we'll purchase it and hopefully get this car running because we'd like to make sure that it's running and driving before we try and sell it or give it back to Brett so that he can sell it and donate the money to the local school. So Adam, thank you so much for all your time and effort. We appreciate it very much. No problem. And thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate all the support that you guys give us. If you like this video, give it a thumbs up. If you want to see more videos like this, hit subscribe. And we're going to see you next week with another awesome car. Stay tuned.