[War_Wagon]

There is a 1984 Mercedes 300SD at one of the places I find weird cars. It got towed into them, it had been traded in at a Mercedes dealer a few weeks ago. Since it was towed in, no one bothered to see if it ran. Well, I got it started. It will run, the turbo spools up when you rev it, but it smokes black under the hood. The air filter housing is covered in soot, and the smoke looks like its coming from the filter housing, or the turbo under it, but there is so much soot and smoke that I can't see where its coming out of lol. I can't test drive it, but it did move back and forth so it has at least reverse and 1st gear. None of the gauges move at all either. The odo shows 263,000 KMs (163k miles) but since the gauges aren't working I have no way to know how correct that is.

Is there a common cause for this sort of thing on one of these cars? The smoke out of the tailpipe wasn't bad at all, just a little black, no blue. I am only asking because it will be CHEAP, but at the same time if it's a big repair I don't even want to bother grabbing it.