I will add my Mercedes experience here although they are based on a smooth riding 79 280SE gas burner in 1990, ie. 11 years old with roughly 130K miles. The first wonderful experience started with the driver side interior flooding after it rained, quickly followed by complete and total electrical failure with a flamed out wiring harness. What happened? Simple, the sound deadening applied to the outside top of the firewall collected rain water which allowed the firewall to rust out and the fuse box to break loose!

So, a few custom made sheetmetal patch panels followed by copious quantities of fiberglass and the firewall was whole again. After that, it was two weeks of making a new wiring harness one wire at a time. A replacement harness was out of the question at $4000! So that disaster was averted.

Two weeks later, had a flat right front tire, used the factory jack along side the road by inserting it into the jack hole in the rocker panel. It was going great until I had the wheel off, the rocker panel crushed due to invisible internal rust, and the jack ripped through the rocker panel and driver side front door as the car crashed to the ground! Damage was repaired with a new used door, front half of the passenger side rocker panel, fender repair, and replacement of the sheetmetal valence under the front bumper. After paint, that was a $2300 disaster!

Things were going well after that for about six months, then the head gasket let loose and coated everything in the engine compartment with oil. Remove head, replace head gasket, timing chain, timing chain guides and a bunch of other seals and gaskets, she didn't abuse me too bad that time, I did the labor and the parts "only" cost $1200!

After a few more months, the heater control assembly on the passenger side firewall failed, $500 aftermarket... what an overdesigned piece of poo that even had an electric pump in it so you can stay nice and cozy while at idle!

This was shortly followed by another insult, a vacuum diaphragm ($24) for the ventilation system failed. Sure, $24 doesn't seem bad, but by the Benz book the entire dash had to come out to replace it, that's 40 hours labor out, and 40 hours back in! I devised a chainsaw method to correct this error but I was up to my eyeballs and seeing red at that point!

Finally, the vacuum door lock system failed due to another bad diaphragm, see a pattern? Rust failure, rust failure, gasket failure, vacuum failure, and a few more electrical and injection failures I didn't even mention! The smoking driver seat motor... I was almost hopeful she'd burn to the ground, but alas the fuse blew!

Note that I got a good deal on the car when I bought it, it even had full dealership records from day one! I actually sold the car for more than I paid for it originally, but none the less, I lost my arse on that car! Six months later, I got a call from the new owner, who was quite upset that the auto trans disemboweled itself on the freeway, I felt bad for their conundrum, but like me, they fell for the Benz "star"!

Give me Swedish iron any day! And I do realize that Volvos of the same vintage had significant rust issues as well, but dang, virtually every system in that Benz was failing day by day!

jorrell




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92 245 278K miles, IPD'd to the hilt, 06 XC70, 00 Eclipse custom Turbo setup...currently taking names and kicking reputations!