Pre-purchase inspection of a C55 near Southampton?

[clk320x]

Two headlights, £1300

£10 headlight restoration kit and they’ll be back as good as new

 

[robparker]

The previous owner of my c55 spent £1,500 at Mercedes having new ones fitted.. they do look good though!

 

[Rushingphil]

that's without mentioning that the seller is claiming 130k miles, with MoTs to back that up, but the odo says 260k and when they dug into it with STAR, it seemed to corroborate the latter number.

Hi Congrats on buying Dammit's car !

Did MBS discuss how this could have happened, or the seller offer an explanation please?
I'm considering going to look at it (very close to me). I think I can cope with the other issues, but the mileage is a show stopper!

 

[samoht]

Hi Congrats on buying Dammit's car !

Did MBS discuss how this could have happened, or the seller offer an explanation please?
I'm considering going to look at it (very close to me). I think I can cope with the other issues, but the mileage is a show stopper!

Thanks, I'm with my C55.

With the mileage:
The seller is a dealer; he took the car from a franchised dealer who took the car in part-exchange. So the seller doesn't have much extra info about the car's history beyond the paperwork. When I arrived to view the car the seller was under the bonnet reconnecting the battery, he said he'd disconnected it in an attempt to clear the 'glitch' with the odo cluster displaying double the mileage.
The seller told me he would be able to 'get a man' to fix it, but hadn't done anything when I got MBS to look at it.
MBS said they noticed the discrepency and did start to investigate it with STAR. They said they interrogated one of the subsystems which independently records the mileage, and found that it was giving the higher 260k reading. They didn't look deeper since I wasn't paying them to do a STAR diagnosis.

I don't have a huge amount of knowledge about these modern systems that record the mileage in multiple independent locations. From a position of ignorance, I can think of two theories:
1) An electronic glitch in one of the units is causing it to report double the true mileage, the odo in the dash is then taking the highest of the readings it's seeing. Ie the true mileage is 130k and the 260k is a mistake
2) The car has been clocked or a chip fitted to hide (halve?) the true mileage on the display, this is now failing and the odo has started displaying the true mileage again (260k)

I've no idea which is true. I imagine the seller can get someone to arrange for the odo to display 130k before sale. The remaining question is how well supported that is with documentation - the MOT mileage history is consistent at least, and there is a fair amount of other maintenance paperwork as I recall. You could try calling MBS and ask them for any more info; you could also ask them to do a deeper dive diagnostically and try and see if they can get to the bottom of it.


The car actually drove quite nicely, apart from a horrible graunch through the brake pedal when pulling to a halt - but sure that's just discs and pads. I'd be really happy to see this car fixed up and enjoyed by a fellow enthusiast, just as long as you go in with your eyes open about what you're taking on.

 

[Rushingphil]

Excellent, thanks for the info! The car is having two new springs fitted at the moment, and I'm hoping to have another chat with him on Monday or Tuesday!

I intend to delve through the paperwork to see if that reveals anything!

 

[Rushingphil]

I just remembered - I once had a VW Passat ('98) tdi estate that I'd owned almost from new. Owned it for about 5 years and the mileage was about 60k. I had a leak through the scuttle panel and the passenger footwell filled with water flooding the ecu. The mileage jumped up to 90K