A question,,,,,NOT VW related.

[moosie982]

Hi All, my daughter was recently given a car by her mother, it is a 1987 Mercedes Benz 190 E and the question I have is how do you open the fuel filler door so's you can put gas into it? Previous owner is looong gone so I cant ask them, I figured that we have a pretty diverse crosssection of automotive tastes here and that somebody might know,, thank you for your help,,,Peace,,, Moosie

[Randy in Maine]

I think the fuel door is actually locked via a circuit on the ignition switch. Most of them don't work any more, but yours might.

Turn key to "acc" and see if the fuel door will then push open.

The other weak link is the vacuum operated door locks. None of those work right.

[fung]

I never own a Benz, but did you check in the glove box for a button or on the floor by the drivers door?

[DrDarby]

Being a german car I'll bet there is a fail safe mechanism in case something is broken if you look behind the carpet in the trunk. I think that you have to have all the doors unlocked to open the tank.
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[Christopher Schimke]

My wife called me from the gas station with the same question just after she purchased her first Mercedes. It turns out that hers was unlocked but she didn't understand that she had to push on the front edge of the fuel door to open it.

Unlike the Japanese cars, most German car fuel doors don't "pop" open when you pull a lever. The fuel doors usually lock when the doors are locked and unlock when they are unlocked. Some cars fuel doors remain locked if just the drivers door is unlocked but the rest are locked. Unlocking all of the doors unlocks the fuel door. After it's unlocked, it must be pushed open as described above.
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[moosie982]

Hi, And thank you all for the tips and ideas,, it turns out that Randy in Maine & loogy were spot on in there info,,,besides that my son piped up that maybe it works like his Jetta does. maybe I shoulda asked him first. Thank you all again,,,Peace,,,Moosie

[Phil G]

And if the vacuum pot that unlocks the lid fails, those are cheap and easy to fix. It will be located behind the lid in the body, accessible from the trunk. Here you can manually actuate the link rod attaching the pot to the latch mechanism in order to unlock the door. If the car has it’s owners manual, all this is explained as well as how you can manually close an inoperative sunroof.

We'll turn this into a Mercedes forum yet!

[SlowLane]

[r39o]

STOP IT! It is bad enough that some MB wheels fit the Vanagon. There are a few quite good, no great, MB forums. I visit mercedesshop.com to find out about such youngtimers as a W201 (190.) (We have 2 in the family.)

My current Mercedes project is a 1959 190SL http://www2.190slgroup.com/attachment.php?s=&postid=27427 which has been sharing my spare car time with my Westy. Come visit http://www.190SLGroup.com to see just how nutty another group is about one particular model of Mercedes.
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