dpbayly
Active Member
Just wanted to say HI back again.
I was a regular on the forum a couple of years ago with my ML430 till I sold up
Anyway Im glad to say Im back in the seat of a Benz after picking up a 2002 CL55 after doing a deal with my X5 4.4 V8 came away well chuffed.
Here's the old X5 I swapped:
and here's the CL55 I picked it up 10 days ago and here's a few pics of the car and a list of the work I've carried out so far:
first up when I picked it up I took my garages diagnostic machine (Im a mechanic) and plugged in and scanned all systems engine, transmission, ABC, ESP and basically all the other systems and I was pleased to find the only errors were a couple of voltage errors showing that its likely to have suffered a flat battery in the past and the only other fault was the O2 bank 2 sensor 1 signal error and live data confirmed it knackered which was causing the management light to be on, so the first job was to replace that with a new Bosch one, now all the systems have a clean bill of health, one thing I checked thoroughly was the ABC system which was error free and also the live data all showed great when parked on a level surface the sensors all read within 1mm of each other and the pressure at idle was 197 bar and when working the system up and down the pressure only went down to no lower than 179 bar so I was happy with that.
Next job was to neaten up the paint work, Its had a full colour change re-spray from Silver to straight gloss black the spray job is very good but me being as fussy as I am It just needed finishing so I set about wet flatting a few areas then masked up everywhere I didn't want to get filled with polishing compound and then set about compound polishing then went over the car again with the soft mop head with a fineness glaze to prevent the hologram effect you get once you've mopped a dark colour:
next little job was to swap out the old xenon bulbs for new 8000k ones as the old ones had faded:
new one on the left one on the right:
a couple of other little jobs Ive done so far is re-align the boot lid on the back left corner, re-balance the 20" wheels, remove the 2 center resonators (might also remove the 2 secondary cats) swapped out the stock number plate bulbs to LED.
I did also fit the adjustable lowering link rods and adjusted them evenly but although the level sensors are all even the car sits slightly lower on the N/S/F and O/S/R so my OCD got the better of me so I adjusted those 2 and it seemed to up set the ABC due to the differences across the axle the level sensors especially on the back where along way apart and when driving hard I guess the sensors gap gets so big it tripped the ABC error anyway after messing with it I eventually set the rods to the stock length at least till I've had the heights altered on a star and then the sensors re-calibrated so till then It's back to stock height ( my diagnostics cant get deep enough into the ABC to make adjustments so if anyone local to me Royston has star I can pay to help me out
)
Anyway here's how it now looks cleaned and waxed:
One last thing if anyone local to near Cambridge (I can travel) with Star I would really like to carry out an ABC fluid and filter change CASH waiting (as well as the height adjustment and sensor calibration if poss). I've heard it can be done without Star but I really don't want to mess it up and I'm begrudging giving stealers my hard earned £££££ especially being in the trade my self.
I was a regular on the forum a couple of years ago with my ML430 till I sold up
Anyway Im glad to say Im back in the seat of a Benz after picking up a 2002 CL55 after doing a deal with my X5 4.4 V8 came away well chuffed.
Here's the old X5 I swapped:
and here's the CL55 I picked it up 10 days ago and here's a few pics of the car and a list of the work I've carried out so far:
first up when I picked it up I took my garages diagnostic machine (Im a mechanic) and plugged in and scanned all systems engine, transmission, ABC, ESP and basically all the other systems and I was pleased to find the only errors were a couple of voltage errors showing that its likely to have suffered a flat battery in the past and the only other fault was the O2 bank 2 sensor 1 signal error and live data confirmed it knackered which was causing the management light to be on, so the first job was to replace that with a new Bosch one, now all the systems have a clean bill of health, one thing I checked thoroughly was the ABC system which was error free and also the live data all showed great when parked on a level surface the sensors all read within 1mm of each other and the pressure at idle was 197 bar and when working the system up and down the pressure only went down to no lower than 179 bar so I was happy with that.
Next job was to neaten up the paint work, Its had a full colour change re-spray from Silver to straight gloss black the spray job is very good but me being as fussy as I am It just needed finishing so I set about wet flatting a few areas then masked up everywhere I didn't want to get filled with polishing compound and then set about compound polishing then went over the car again with the soft mop head with a fineness glaze to prevent the hologram effect you get once you've mopped a dark colour:
next little job was to swap out the old xenon bulbs for new 8000k ones as the old ones had faded:
new one on the left one on the right:
a couple of other little jobs Ive done so far is re-align the boot lid on the back left corner, re-balance the 20" wheels, remove the 2 center resonators (might also remove the 2 secondary cats) swapped out the stock number plate bulbs to LED.
I did also fit the adjustable lowering link rods and adjusted them evenly but although the level sensors are all even the car sits slightly lower on the N/S/F and O/S/R so my OCD got the better of me so I adjusted those 2 and it seemed to up set the ABC due to the differences across the axle the level sensors especially on the back where along way apart and when driving hard I guess the sensors gap gets so big it tripped the ABC error anyway after messing with it I eventually set the rods to the stock length at least till I've had the heights altered on a star and then the sensors re-calibrated so till then It's back to stock height ( my diagnostics cant get deep enough into the ABC to make adjustments so if anyone local to me Royston has star I can pay to help me out
) Anyway here's how it now looks cleaned and waxed:
One last thing if anyone local to near Cambridge (I can travel) with Star I would really like to carry out an ABC fluid and filter change CASH waiting (as well as the height adjustment and sensor calibration if poss). I've heard it can be done without Star but I really don't want to mess it up and I'm begrudging giving stealers my hard earned £££££ especially being in the trade my self.
