2007 C55 Estate, laundry list

[Petrol Pete]

MOT time, £1,200 including a service B. Most of that cost is the service and new front discs and pads.

£1200 ! are you sure ? My indi charges me £180 for a B service, the discs and pads you could change yourself in just a few hours . I bought 2 front OEM Brembo discs from Eurocarparts for £109.92 + VAT for the pair. I have Akebono ceramic pads that I bought while in the USA for about $100. Pads are available for all budgets.

 

[Will]

At twelve years old the scope of the service ‘B’ could include quite a few additional jobs. Eg spark plugs, pollen/air filters, brake fluid, maybe ATF fluid and filters etc.

I doubt many will get away with a £180 bill!

 

[Dammit]

The pollen filter was indeed surprisingly expensive.

 

[Petrol Pete]

The pollen filter was indeed surprisingly expensive.

I paid £11.53p + VAT for mine. I agree bit much for what it is.

 

[Petrol Pete]

At twelve years old the scope of the service ‘B’ could include quite a few additional jobs. Eg spark plugs, pollen/air filters, brake fluid, maybe ATF fluid and filters etc.

I doubt many will get away with a £180 bill!

When I bought my daily drive C55 a few years and 30K miles ago (now on 147K miles) there were 'holes' in the service history, I knocked the trade seller down on price and took the car to my indi.

• Oil and filter change
• gearbox service
• Diff fluid replace
• brake fluid replace
• Spark plugs replaced
• Replace weeping cam cover gaskets
• All parts and fluid (except spark plugs which I sourced for less than half the price quoted by MB, a good idea as there are 16 of the buggers) were supplied by inid.

£445 + Vat. So if the OP is getting all of this done and the discs along with the MOT , then £1.2K might be an acceptable figure.....

The C55 is quite an analogue beast and the engine is a simple lump that just likes a drink of oil and petrol ..often. mine is getting on a bit now so I am just keeping on top of the wear items and driving the thing. Like the OP I will have to bite the bullet and get the bit's of 'Tin worm' sorted . That will probably be the most expensive job to do on my car, other running costs are negligible for a car of this type and age.

 

[Dammit]

Well, today was fun - went mountain biking which was great, then around 2 miles from home the dash showed me a red battery icon and the power steering vanished.

I thought I'd see if I could get home, but then around a mile from home the dash flashed up "temperature too high, stop at once", so I did.

Fairly easy to spot what had happened:

I'm not sure the belts meant to look like this:

Hopefully I shut it down before anything nasty happened to the engine, as I doubt that they are cheap.

Are these engines known for throwing belts? I've maintained this car with an open cheque-book approach, so I have to say I'm disappointed that this has happened.

 

[Jobsworth]

If nothing has seized it could be a tensioner fault or one of the plastic guide pulleys that has expired. On my old C55 estate the ribbed plastic guide pulley, above the waterpump iirc, split in two and threw the belt off. Check your hoses at the front of the engine carefully too. Mine took a bite out of one with the flailing belt.

 

[Dammit]

Now that it's cooled down I checked everything over, all pulleys are intact (insofar as I can see), all ancillaries spin freely - the one pulley that is very hard to turn, and feels gritty when it does turn is the tensioner. Is that expected, or does that mean it's likely to be the culprit?

 

[alecmascot]

Now that it's cooled down I checked everything over, all pulleys are intact (insofar as I can see), all ancillaries spin freely - the one pulley that is very hard to turn, and feels gritty when it does turn is the tensioner. Is that expected, or does that mean it's likely to be the culprit?

That pulley should spin freely as well.....

 

[Jobsworth]

Now that it's cooled down I checked everything over, all pulleys are intact (insofar as I can see), all ancillaries spin freely - the one pulley that is very hard to turn, and feels gritty when it does turn is the tensioner. Is that expected, or does that mean it's likely to be the culprit?

That sounds like the problem then.

 

[Dammit]

I admit to feeling a bit let down by the car at the moment. Hopefully this will change.

 

[Petrol Pete]

As long as the belt has not chomped on anything else you are looking at a cheap and easy fix. This is no different to the fan belt falling off your old mans Ford Anglia back in the day. The tensioner is available as a bolt on part and a new belt is cheap.

It's a shame it was a breakdown and you did were not given prior warning (noise) of the tension roller seizing up , but chin up, it's about an hours worth to replace both. Biggest PIA is it is easier to take the tension off from below the car which means removing the lower engine covers.


I know you seem to have had some bad luck with this car , but this particular event is not one to worry about too much. Keep the faith.

PS , get those winter wheels off, they look carp

 

[Dammit]

Hah, well - the garage that the car is going too has the summer wheels in their storage so they'll swap those on, an unanticipated benefit.

I've told them to go over the car and fix everything they find.

What would be a fair price for this car, maintained with a true open cheque-book approach with exclusively OEM Mercedes parts, at 94 thousand miles (with two sets of wheels, both of which have almost new Pirelli's on)?

 

[Petrol Pete]

You are braver than me Dammit, taking an old C55 to a garage and telling them to 'fix everything they find..' ! How much is it worth ? Only what someone will pay for it is the glib answer.

Some on here say 'why get an old V8 when a diesel car will give it a "good run for it's money.." , not sure what they mean by that, diesel MB of the same era with OM642 V6 had a tiny bit more torque and were more than 100bhp down on a C55. Add to the fact that nothing sounds as good as an N/A petrol V8 and I have yet to see a diesel car with any character, or one with an exhaust note anyone wanted to hear.

Fuel consumption ? who cares ? life is too short. The price of tidy C63's are firming up not because they are destined to become classics but (IMO) some people just want to drive the last of the N/A V8's before we are all wrapped in plastic 'cars' fitted with washing machine motors that have been designed by politics steered by dodgy science and as a result possess and a crushing lack of charisma .

If the 'plan' to tax these cars off the road in the near future ever goes ahead they will be worth whatever scrap cars go for these days £40- £60 , or a track day car that needs a manual gearbox fitted to make it fun, who knows ?

I am not sure if it is that I have simply had much better luck than you with my 147000 2006 C55 as my running costs have been negligible and it's my daily drive (a little less now in lock-down) , I also do a lot of the maintenance on it myself.

This .

 

[Dammit]

Well, it's been my approach since I bought the car, and to my knowledge the things that are outstanding are:
- One parking sensor at the front has an intermittent fault
- The magazine for the CD player is sometimes "not found"
- The passenger door check strap, replaced a year or so ago, is going "gronk" again (drivers side did the same thing and was a warranty replacement)
- Belt tensioner is unhappy, and has thrown a belt

There's nothing else wrong with it, based on asking the garage to go over it with an eye to finding every/any fault at previous services.

Unless, of course, I've cooked the engine by driving it from the time the belt broke to the temp warning going on (I didn't realise the water pump was belt driven, or I'd have stopped at once).

 

[Major774]

Same thing happened to my dad’s W210 E280 last year.

The tensioner pulley seized up. I should have replaced it before it went, it was already making sneaking sounds which I kept putting off. Whilst I was there, I replaced any other pulley that was not spinning freely.

 

[Joncey]

Fingers crossed for you that the engine is ok , we have got to keep these Wagons rolling

 

[DavidL]

I agree, fingers crossed it's just a simple belt replacement.

How many are there on here? There are 4 silver c55 estates on this thread at least.

 

[AltonAnt]

I admit to feeling a bit let down by the car at the moment. Hopefully this will change.

It seems just about anything that can go wrong has and given how much you have spent on maintenance I'd also feel the same.
I did think the other day that I must buy a serpentine belt to keep in the car

 

[Petrol Pete]

I have only ever seen one other C55 estate on the road since I got mine (2 years and 7 months ago) ...it was iridium silver just like mine. Of the 60 or so UK versions registered I would guess most of them are silver.

The late great Bruce Millar of this parish had one in Tanzanite blue. I have seen Jap imports for sale in both Black and White - car looks $hite in those colours IMO ...each to their own - I have not researched this but I think it was only offered in a handful of colours with limited interior choice . 2 wood , one aluminium and 3(?) leather options ...

My personal preference is Iridium silver with black/aluminium.