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My 59k mile W202 C200 classic (auto)

Really nice to see so much enthusiasm for a 202. I'm a massive fan of the 202. I've had 4 of them and still have my v6 C280 after nearly 9 great years. Someone mentioned a PMS unit. I've a feeling this only applied to the very early 4 pot 202's. The op's is a late pre face-lift model very much like one I had with the early 5 speed 722.6 box. This should have the later injection and management system which I believe does not consume ecu's like the earlier type.
 
I do have a little more information on the cars past after the V5 threw me when it came through as previous owners 3.

The car was supplied New to Avis and is presumed to have spent it's very early life as a demonstrator vehicle at a dealer in Doncaster. This explains the London registration?? Plate ends OLP.
The first owner (first private owner at least) purchased the car very nearly new with only a couple of thousand miles on it... he went on to keep the car up until 2014, around the time he either stopped driving due to age, being born in 1925 will do that to you. Or his unfortunate passing I'm not sure which.
In 2014 his son took on the car and until late last year when I purchased the car ,it served for his daily duties.
As far as I'm concerned it really may as well be a 2 owner car. Happily the mileage all traces through as genuine and there is certainly nothing that would contradict this fact!

It has a nice spec to live with daily and isn't over complicated...
Dual zone manual aircon in full working order.
Electric glass sunroof
Electric front windows only
Electric door mirrors
Electric aeriel
Cruise control
Mushroom cloth interior and brown dash
6.5j steel wheels with trims

No other toys of note except for it was ordered new with a high output alternator and huge battery for some reason.
 
Interesting. The car I referred to in my post was actually my first ever Merc and it also was a P reg and a very early 5 speed auto. This also had a huge battery and possibly high output alternator. Maybe something that was common at the time perhaps. Mine was a C200 Elegance and had covered 150 odd thousand miles at its demise. Unfortunately some idiot ran into the side of it and wrote it off, otherwise I might still have it - ran beautifully and used no oil between changes. I keep my cars donkeys years but did recently sell my 4 speed 202 C200 P reg with 72k miles to purchase a mint R170 SLK.
 
Hi any and all that are going to be interested in my W202!
I decided to buy this wonderful car earlier this week as, in my view, it was a bargain!

The car has little evidence of history with it from the previous owners. What is there backs up a totally genuine 59860 miles! Original factory check sheet is present along with brochures, Blaupunkt radio papers + unused window stickers and owners books.

It's fairly basic specification. There is a 5 speed standard (none tiptronic) automatic gearbox, cruise control, glass electric sunroof, electric front windows/door mirrors and manual air conditioning.
The car is Imperial Red with a mushroom interior and is like getting into a very nearly new car!

These pictures are from the advert that I purchased the car from...












One of the only fixes that had to be done was the badly functioning mono wiper unit! The wiper on intermittent or speed 1 would only park in the centre of the screen and speed 2 (flat out) didn't work at all. This speed on the stalk serves only to park the wiper!!
I decided to spend a few hours on the internet and get some research in on the issue.
Confident in my new found information being reliable I set about fixing the problem. Unfortunately in the past somebody has removed the leaf covers and smashed the large harder to remove part that fits below them. Then proceeded to fix* the problem by doing this....


Why on gods green earth you wouldn't just reset the mono wiper park position is totally beyond my comprehension.
If your interested, this is the rear of the unit when removed from the car and resetting is simple enough as there is loads of information on the web!



Needless to say the wiper motor wiring is now repaired properly, everything is re greased and it now both parks and functions on all settings.


I am unfortunately aware of the bit of rust now and waiting for a price on a new screen as this one is delaminating.

Today I have visited my local MB dealer to get some of the service items dealt with. Last owner was running it on 0w40 which MB tells me is wrong so MB oil, filter, sump plug and washer, genuine wiper blade and some complimentary screenwash were collected. I didn't think it was bad for around £80 in all honesty.

The oil that came out was last changed about 6k ago along with the filter. I'm so glad that I changed it all as this was the none genuine filter and old oil...









Prices for the wiper blade and oil,filter, sump plug and washer from the main dealer are as shown.... part numbers can be provided if needed. Oil capacity is only 5.5 litres not anywhere near 7 litres. But I now have 1.5 litres in case of top ups being required before next change is due.



Old and new sump plug/washer side by side ....



I have only a couple of little niggles to sort out now and then I will be completely happy with the car.
I have what I think is a noisy pulley (tensioner?) next to the power steering pump. There is a very slightly warped front brake disk and I have a noise like a rustling plastic wrapper in the passenger front footwell while driving!

I will through the course of 2017 be getting all of the jobs needed sorted out. MOT and major services are going to be done by myself or MB only. I will also be saving for some front wings and a respray to get it back up to perfect!

I will add to this post as and when things get done,thanks for reading my monster first post on the site!!
...Nice thread from a very enthusiastic owner !! I had a W202 like this about 6 -12 months newer in white.. dealer maintained never ever had a fault... plastic wheel trims were a bonus as continually scuffing the kerb meant I just popped a new one on every now and again.. build quality not quite up to 190E standard but I drove that one all over the British Isles no probs... foxy52
 
I now have a new issue rearing it's head, unsurprisingly really at almost 20 years old.
Anyway one of you guys may know what's causing the issue....

Generally this issue is evident when everything is warm or the car is parked with one side higher than the other (I.e when half on a low curb as I unfortunately have to park at home).
Basically when turning the steering wheel in either direction it has started to develop a grumble. To explain the best I can it's like a groan/grumble audible inside the car, also accompanied by a fairly annoying vibration that you can feel through the seats in the front, front floors and pedals.
The more you turn the steering from lock to lock the more it does it.

None of my tyres are looking to wear badly. Power steering fluid level looks good. All of the brakes are brand new and it did it even before these were changed. No leaks at all are evident and the spot it's parked in has no oil or fluid stains. All of the bushes and ball joints look in great condition without play (except for the upper arm on the front right that creaks a bit when loaded).

The noise is 100% definitely from the front axle/drivetrain and not from the rear. The vibration/noise happens at the same level regardless of what gear it's in or even in P... even does it when you have you're foot on the brakes or sat on the parking brake!

The steering is nice and responsive and doesn't feel heavy. No wheel wobble or vibrations except for when parking or in particular making a sharp right hand turn at low speed (almost feels as if it tries to drag the front wheels across the floor on nearly full lock parking situations)

I appreciate any ideas as to what the issue is as I'm pretty sure that it isn't a normal thing to be happening and I'm a little stumped. My internet searches bring up lots of 4matic cars which this obvs isn't.
Thanks guys :thumb:
 
I'm not sure your symptoms are consistent with this but I do know the 202 can suffer from seizing front swivels / ball joints. This causes a groaning upon turning the wheel round corners etc. What happens is that they rust up inside, seize and eventually break ! It's not usually picked up at mot time since the tester is looking for play in the joint which won't be there.
Good luck.
 
That makes sense now that you say about the balljoints.
I will get a pair sorted out pronto as after having a look around people seem to report average 60k if you're lucky .... just done over 60k now and no records of the ever being touched, may even fix the creaking on the front right (we can but hope I guess).
 
That makes sense now that you say about the balljoints.
I will get a pair sorted out pronto as after having a look around people seem to report average 60k if you're lucky .... just done over 60k now and no records of the ever being touched, may even fix the creaking on the front right (we can but hope I guess).


From my experience the biggest improvement you can make to your car (excluding springs & shocks) besides replacing the front lower ball joints is to replace the complete lower wishbone as usually the b/joints are worn and the bushes are well past their sell by date - usually split with only two of the four contact points of each bush still intact or the bushes are just perished due to age.
 
I have had a couple of 202's and have to confess I do like them. The 1.8 was way underpowered with 4 up but fine for just the driver. The couple of diesels I had were excellent.
 
Happy news today for me!
Went over to Ecp to get some lower ball joints (I have access to a trade account through a very good friend).
I had previously purchased all of the brakes, every single bit needed including handbrake shoes. I didn't need the shoes or the fitting kit that was with it, so I walked out with a pair of lower ball joints and £2 in my pocket that I didn't have before I went in :bannana:



That's the part X2! Question is whether to remove the hub or not to do the job??
I have looked at a few different ways of doing these and general concensus is that you can do the job without removing the whole hub and just taking the brakes to bits... providing the locating pins are not seized into the lower arms!

What's people's thoughts with the different methods? Going to try and get them changed tomorrow if possible.
 
Got one balljoint changed so far. I went for the drivers side first as that was where the most noise was coming from.
At a first look and attempt to remove the first nut it was obvious that we would have to be a little more brutal than I would have liked...



About an hour after starting both of the nuts were removed and the grinder, hammer and curse words had to be deployed!
The following pictures are the state of the presumed 20 year old balljoint...







The job was fairly simple really. Just requires some careful use of brute force.
Getting the old balljoint out of the lower control arm was the hardest part as it was seized in pretty well, I was lucky that the locating pin came out with the old unit I'm told.

1 down, 1 more to go! It's just too damn cold for me to do them both in a day really.
And the best part is the steering noise is all but gone! There is still a bit of noise from the passenger side, but that hasn't been done yet.
Drivers side still creaks a bit over bumps though, shall investigate this before the winter is done!
 
Limited pictures but lots of work since last post...
First up the rest of the dirt was cleaned out by removing the seats and clearing all the mess out from previous owner...


It's amazing what can hide under seats when left unchecked! Unfortunately I haven't had the time to photograph the clean interior yet.

Idle became a little lumpy so I changed the plugs...


Turns out that these had been in a very long time and the ceramics had burned.
Along with this the air filter also got changed at the same time. Much better idle now, lovely and smooth.

Changed the cabin filter too as it was steaming up allot when the car was full and it had started to smell a bit stanky.....
Old filter:






And all of the junk that was hiding in the bottom of the blower motor and filter housing....




I can't seem to find the pictures of the new filter so that has to be left to imagination I'm afraid.

Also the leaky radiator gave out, the entire bottom 2 inches failed to such a point that even the radweld that I had put in for emergency bodge was unable to stop the leak.
I am short of photos at this point as the job got really messy and I didn't fancy wrecking my iPhone.
The radiator was replaced with part number 203220540 at eurocarparts and cost me £56.56 on trade. This radiator is branded EIS and except for the unions being brass rather than steel and missing the dealer sticker, it's the same. Even down to the text embossed on the unit ... MB wanted £260 for the same thing and I recon the only difference was a sticker (which I swapped over)!

At the same time as the radiator change it made perfect sense* to also change the gearbox fluid, filter and sump gasket. So I did, unfortunately no pictures again though due to the mess and having to work under the car.
The old atf was very brown, not burned, just dirty worn out and brown!
My car thankfully is old enough to have the torque converter drain plug, so that got drained down too and the lines were blown through.
The box filter looked almost black inside so the whole lot was obviously really ready to be changed.
In the sump there was the expected uniform covering of fine silvery sludge (just fine metal filings from normal wear) and rather worryingly there were a couple of larger aluminium shavings in there. I asked advice as far as the shavings are concerned and was told it's fairly normal and it could even have been there since new. There were only a couple so not of concern at all.

Now after all that work I took it on a run to London and back. That's about 548 miles round trip from where I live!
The car returned 38mpg overall at a mainly constant 60mph on cruise to go as far as London from teeside and then on to chesterfield where my dad lives for an overnight stay. I decided to go no faster than the large lorries for my 124 mile return from my dads place ..... 43Mpg and that was from as full as the tank gets to filling up the same when home. The boot was overloaded and there were 5 of us in the car so I guess the recent works paid off with how it runs!

Oh and I almost forgot ... the oil filler cap failed over the last weekend throwing about half a litre of oil down the side of my lovely clean engine so I had to buy a new cap from MB, it is listed on receipt as P MA000 010 12 85 FUEL-TANK CAP 023402 . Not 100% sure why they list it as a fuel tank cap but it was £6.54 all in.
I'm told that they have a spring in them or something and it can fail causing oil blow by.

Anyway that's February instalment for you're amusement and my running total on repairs for everything since December 1st 2016 when I got it is £588.02 + purchase price!

Enjoy!
 
Keep up the work OP. Good to know you are local to me, may be calling pn your expertise to assist me with my new to me W202! ;)
 
I now have a new issue rearing it's head, unsurprisingly really at almost 20 years old.
Anyway one of you guys may know what's causing the issue....

Generally this issue is evident when everything is warm or the car is parked with one side higher than the other (I.e when half on a low curb as I unfortunately have to park at home).
Basically when turning the steering wheel in either direction it has started to develop a grumble. To explain the best I can it's like a groan/grumble audible inside the car, also accompanied by a fairly annoying vibration that you can feel through the seats in the front, front floors and pedals.
The more you turn the steering from lock to lock the more it does it.

None of my tyres are looking to wear badly. Power steering fluid level looks good. All of the brakes are brand new and it did it even before these were changed. No leaks at all are evident and the spot it's parked in has no oil or fluid stains. All of the bushes and ball joints look in great condition without play (except for the upper arm on the front right that creaks a bit when loaded).

The noise is 100% definitely from the front axle/drivetrain and not from the rear. The vibration/noise happens at the same level regardless of what gear it's in or even in P... even does it when you have you're foot on the brakes or sat on the parking brake!

The steering is nice and responsive and doesn't feel heavy. No wheel wobble or vibrations except for when parking or in particular making a sharp right hand turn at low speed (almost feels as if it tries to drag the front wheels across the floor on nearly full lock parking situations)

I appreciate any ideas as to what the issue is as I'm pretty sure that it isn't a normal thing to be happening and I'm a little stumped. My internet searches bring up lots of 4matic cars which this obvs isn't.
Thanks guys :thumb:

Check your power steering fluid - the pump will make this noise if the level is low . It's just ATF to top up if needed . A small loss over 20 years isn't too bad .

Edit - having read further , glad you got it sorted . I had the same job on my R129 last year .
 
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Thanks.
I will be sure to check this first thing to make sure it isn't running low.
There is some atf left over from the box service if it needs a top up :thumb:
 
You need to check with the engine running to get the correct level .
 
Power steering fluid was indeed a little low. Sat on the minimum mark at full operating temperature and engine running.
Thanks for the heads up on that one, can't believe that I overlooked it.
Time will tell if it improves the noise.
 

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