Best Place to source a CLK Convertible

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Westfield 1760

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Joined
Nov 23, 2014
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16
Car
E Class
Hi I am looking for a 06-09 V6
CLK convertible preferably less than 70 k miles and FSH.
Nothing much on Auto trader PHeads or evil bay, is there anywhere else I should be looking ??
 
Motors.co.uk but that age has the high tax and also balance shaft risk. Well 08 onwards should be OK.
 
member @Blobsta is selling this
 
Northover cars in Tankerton near Whitsable in Kent used to sell a lot of them. Maybe not now but worth calling them as they may still have contacts.
 
Motors.co.uk but that age has the high tax and also balance shaft risk. Well 08 onwards should be OK.
Tried to send Westfield a message about the balance shaft but of course I can't do that because he's a new member. Thanks to W1ghty again for trying to sell mine, I think he's after a commission!

Pasted it below in the hope it helps.

Sticking my nose in, can I suggest that you look for a 2008 onwards model; when I was looking for one I found that there were a lot that have had the Engine Management Light coded out. This is usually a sign that the balance shaft gears are heavily worn and out of tolerance, basically the car cannot correct the adjustment and puts the EML on. It's a very expensive job to do £2000+ as I understand so people opt for having the lamp permanently turned off, the downside of this obviously is that you need to periodically scan the car to see if you have any new faults. So my advice is to ensure that the EML lights when you turn on the ignition and then obviously goes out once the car is running. Have a read of this article if you're not already familiar Mercedes Benz balance shaft engine issues. How to check by VIN. M272/273 – MB Medic it will give you the engine numbers that you want to avoid but the general rule of thumb is that 2008 onwards should be ok.

I will caveat this and say that there are obviously no guarantees either way and that some of the early cars may well not ever suffer this fault or have had the rectification work done (I've seen them advertised with enormous bills to prove). Don't be put off though as all cars have something that can bite you, you just have to be diligent in your approach.
 
There is a potential problem Blobsta, how many actually fail?
I have no idea, my concern is more around the light being coded out and not knowing if there is ever another fault. Also I guess if the light is permanently lit you wouldn't know if you had a new fault either but it would fail an MOT.

As I suggested, all cars have something and there is so much scaremongering around the issues isn't there? It's not necessarily intentional either; that's not the point I'm trying to make. If you think about it in this respect (ignoring the balance shaft for these engines), I had a Porsche 996 Carerra 4S a few years back and they are well known for having IMS failure which is catastrophic, it's documented all over the forums. I had an IMS replacement done as part of some work before I bought the car, 3 months later it was leaking oil through the £700 ceramic bearing, after a lot of arguing about 30 day warranty, I got it replaced, it leaked again a few months after that, got it replaced again (this time paying labour which is as much as the bearing). It was a massive ball-ache from start to finish and there are no guarantees that the original would have failed anyway. When you research your next fairly substantial purchase you can be swayed by reading the forums as you will find so many posts about the issue. To address your point based on that, if everybody that owned one went on a forum to say "My CLK drove perfectly again today with no issues" I reckon it would be a very small percentage of failures if you could even find them but of course that's not realistically going to happen other than I will say:

"My CLK performed another faultless return journey from Maidstone to Liverpool last week" :cool:

That said, I bought a 21 year old ML320 on Saturday which although it is a one owner car, has 147k miles on it, is utterly disgusting inside and has zero service history as it's been lost, this may be a VERY. different story to the CLK! Time will tell.
 
I have no idea, my concern is more around the light being coded out and not knowing if there is ever another fault. Also I guess if the light is permanently lit you wouldn't know if you had a new fault either but it would fail an MOT.

As I suggested, all cars have something and there is so much scaremongering around the issues isn't there? It's not necessarily intentional either; that's not the point I'm trying to make. If you think about it in this respect (ignoring the balance shaft for these engines), I had a Porsche 996 Carerra 4S a few years back and they are well known for having IMS failure which is catastrophic, it's documented all over the forums. I had an IMS replacement done as part of some work before I bought the car, 3 months later it was leaking oil through the £700 ceramic bearing, after a lot of arguing about 30 day warranty, I got it replaced, it leaked again a few months after that, got it replaced again (this time paying labour which is as much as the bearing). It was a massive ball-ache from start to finish and there are no guarantees that the original would have failed anyway. When you research your next fairly substantial purchase you can be swayed by reading the forums as you will find so many posts about the issue. To address your point based on that, if everybody that owned one went on a forum to say "My CLK drove perfectly again today with no issues" I reckon it would be a very small percentage of failures if you could even find them but of course that's not realistically going to happen other than I will say:

"My CLK performed another faultless return journey from Maidstone to Liverpool last week" :cool:

That said, I bought a 21 year old ML320 on Saturday which although it is a one owner car, has 147k miles on it, is utterly disgusting inside and has zero service history as it's been lost, this may be a VERY. different story to the CLK! Time will tell.
I think we are going to need a new thread on your ML320 buddy
 

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