Its Sunday morning and i'm bored so i thought i'd share with you all my last 2 week's ordeal ! ***WARNING*** This will be quite a long read!.
IT all began when i was cruising along... changing into 3rd gear and i heard the loudest WWII style bang coming from the back of my car jerking me forward, this was then followed by a by some kind've revolving metal sound grinding against something else (basically my diff died). So i then took it to Mercs only in near Boston Manor (if i'm not allowed to quote mech's please remove this part of my post), and asked them to check the differential, gearbox and propshaft. 3 hours later they called me saying that they've checked everything and that the gearbox bearing has gone!!!
So, because i trust(ed) these guys and i've been servicing my car there for about 2 years, without hesitation, i contacted Dronsfield LTD and they provided me with a like-for-like gearbox with 36k miles for £280 delivered to my doorstep, which came 9:00 the very next day, great service. I then drove this gearbox to my friend's garage (it was dodgey but i was desperate) and the car made it, and we put it on the ramps (which are about half a meter off the ground) and left it for the next day.
Me and my friend (who is a learning mech) and his father is the real mech, who has been working on cars in bosnia, then in england for about 35 years in total then proceeded to dismantle my car bit by bit. His father would come and have a look, and tell us exactly how to dismantle it, and then go off, we started with the exhaust then as we came to do the propshaft something very strange happened. It was turning (while the wheels were on the floor, with the handbrake up and the gearbox in neautral) for more than half a revolution before it stopped. Papa mech then told us that this is wrong and the diff is completely F*****d. i came to the forum just to confirm, and it seemed as if it really was the diff. So we started inspecting the diff, only to find alot of oil all over the fuel tank and surrounding area of the diff, and surprise surprise, there was a LARGE hole in the diff, it looked like an exit wound.
I was really angry at this point, because i had just bought a £280 gearbox for NO REASON. So we left the car and the next day i sent an email to mercs only with the picture of the hole in the differential and visited them in person. I asked him to open his emails to look at it, he did and without even questioning or arguing he immediately gave me a refund + £35 for my troubles. I appreciated this greatly and left.
I then called up dronsfield and told them i want to send the gearbox back and get a differential for the same car, they said ok, and we did the swap but they completely refused to refund me any money, which is the only part of their service that i didnt enjoy.
New diff now, and i bought new driveshaft nuts (since it was recommended as stated in "Haynes Service book" for the C-class), and bought diff oil from mercedes all for £35, which isn't really that bad. we then filled the differential with about 1.5ish litres of oil, put it on the jack, lined it up and put it in its rightful place. The only hardship of working under these conditions was the restricted space we had under the car, you really need to have strong arms to lift with such short length available!
Once the diff was in, we stopped for the day as it was 10:00pm. *I didnt explain before, but we were doing work on the car starting from about 7:00pm everyday because we had work from about 9-5.* Anyway the next day we put back the propshaft and the exhaust, and returned everything to normal. Also while doing this work on the diff, i replaced my centre console with an armrest, i finally finished off my full alpine system with components, and i fixed the climate control backlight that was bugging me for ages too
.
The exahust had a flaw tho, the backbox had fallen off recently and we hadn't still welded it back on, but that wasn't a big deal, the car was loud but still drivable, or at least we THOUGHT it was. Once i brought the car home... i was checking the file i have for the car only to realised that my MOT had expired !! So that same night, when i got home (around 9:00pm now) i was telling my dad about it and he said "ok lets weld that box in ourselves just so it passes the MOT" and we did it in about an hour, then went to sleep.
So the next day (saturday now), i woke up at 8:30am and called another friend of mine who has an MOT test garage, i asked him to slip me in he said "you have to be here by 9 otherwise i cant do it, i'm fully booked til wednesday". I was in hounslow, he was in surbiton, thats a good 10 miles travel, and i hadn't even brushed my teeth yet! so i rushed and rushed, and eventually got there at 9:05, he put it on the ramp and started the test. I wasn't worried about anything on the car, not the xenons or the leds, or even the (quite bold) tyre which i had in the back. It was the backbox i was worried about, we aren't professional welders and we obviously dont know how to do this kind've thing properly. The entire test went fine... until we reached the emissions test.
The range of Lambda for my car is 0.97 to 1.03. The cats were working fine, and it passed, and it passed the idle test, but there was air leaking from where we had welded the backbox. When he proceeded to do the fast idle test, at about 2800 revs, the lambda reading 1.038, i thought ok thats fine it should go down a bit over time, but IT DIDNT BUDGE . And it failed on that! He told me the catalysts were fine, it was just the backbox that was letting me down, cuz the CO of the the cats was well below the legal requirement which was good.
So i went home thinking "omg what am i going to do now", and then i thought of something, i was always going to modify my exhaust to have more flow, so i thought why not do it now? I then proceeded to call up MiJ performance to book in my car to have it done (11:00am now), i also obtained an original and very cheap C36 AMG Backbox, which i wanted them to use. they booked me in for 1:00am, and i drove down there, 129miles! Got there at 1:30pm, and realised something absolutely terrible... i had forgotten my wallet AND my phone because i left in such a rush! LOL!. So once i got there i asked them if i could call home and get my card details, they let me do so and the payment was fine. They then proceeded to do the exhaust from the manifold all the way into my C36 backbox. I was sitting down now in their waiting area, very dizzy because i still hadn't eaten breakfast or even consumed ANYTHING, and it was 2:00pm. He came over and said, "we're going to go and buy some food for our work lot, you wanna come and get something for yourself?", i was shocked, but equally delighted, and of course i agreed, they bought me a nice big kebab for lunch/dinner which i ate faster then anyone there!
After that i watched them do my car, and i also explained to them, the one of the nuts on the bracket broke because as me and my friend tried to remove it, it was too rusty and so it broke. They renew it for me, and even secured my exhaust more then i thought it would be, did all the cuttings required and fitted 2 sports catalysts. He told me that if i tried to fit 1 catalyst only, it might trigger the computer into "limp home" mode, because it will recognise that there's only 1 cat, and there's meant to be 2 on this model. I trusted him, and they did all this for me, along with all the piping and 3.5 hours labour for £500!!!! i was so chuffed! i really recommend these guys to anyone, they did my exhaust on my c200 which lasted for 45k miles before i exchanged it for the c230k.
I bid them farewell, and thanked them for their wonderful hospitality and got back to london for about 8:30pm, what a day! I'm now waiting for monday so i can do the emissions retest, and hpefully, it should pass with flying colours.
Hope i didnt bore you all (whoever bothered to read all of this) but i really wanted to share it with you all, as its been a really long 2 weeks for me!
IT all began when i was cruising along... changing into 3rd gear and i heard the loudest WWII style bang coming from the back of my car jerking me forward, this was then followed by a by some kind've revolving metal sound grinding against something else (basically my diff died). So i then took it to Mercs only in near Boston Manor (if i'm not allowed to quote mech's please remove this part of my post), and asked them to check the differential, gearbox and propshaft. 3 hours later they called me saying that they've checked everything and that the gearbox bearing has gone!!!
So, because i trust(ed) these guys and i've been servicing my car there for about 2 years, without hesitation, i contacted Dronsfield LTD and they provided me with a like-for-like gearbox with 36k miles for £280 delivered to my doorstep, which came 9:00 the very next day, great service. I then drove this gearbox to my friend's garage (it was dodgey but i was desperate) and the car made it, and we put it on the ramps (which are about half a meter off the ground) and left it for the next day.
Me and my friend (who is a learning mech) and his father is the real mech, who has been working on cars in bosnia, then in england for about 35 years in total then proceeded to dismantle my car bit by bit. His father would come and have a look, and tell us exactly how to dismantle it, and then go off, we started with the exhaust then as we came to do the propshaft something very strange happened. It was turning (while the wheels were on the floor, with the handbrake up and the gearbox in neautral) for more than half a revolution before it stopped. Papa mech then told us that this is wrong and the diff is completely F*****d. i came to the forum just to confirm, and it seemed as if it really was the diff. So we started inspecting the diff, only to find alot of oil all over the fuel tank and surrounding area of the diff, and surprise surprise, there was a LARGE hole in the diff, it looked like an exit wound.
I was really angry at this point, because i had just bought a £280 gearbox for NO REASON. So we left the car and the next day i sent an email to mercs only with the picture of the hole in the differential and visited them in person. I asked him to open his emails to look at it, he did and without even questioning or arguing he immediately gave me a refund + £35 for my troubles. I appreciated this greatly and left.
I then called up dronsfield and told them i want to send the gearbox back and get a differential for the same car, they said ok, and we did the swap but they completely refused to refund me any money, which is the only part of their service that i didnt enjoy.
New diff now, and i bought new driveshaft nuts (since it was recommended as stated in "Haynes Service book" for the C-class), and bought diff oil from mercedes all for £35, which isn't really that bad. we then filled the differential with about 1.5ish litres of oil, put it on the jack, lined it up and put it in its rightful place. The only hardship of working under these conditions was the restricted space we had under the car, you really need to have strong arms to lift with such short length available!
Once the diff was in, we stopped for the day as it was 10:00pm. *I didnt explain before, but we were doing work on the car starting from about 7:00pm everyday because we had work from about 9-5.* Anyway the next day we put back the propshaft and the exhaust, and returned everything to normal. Also while doing this work on the diff, i replaced my centre console with an armrest, i finally finished off my full alpine system with components, and i fixed the climate control backlight that was bugging me for ages too
.The exahust had a flaw tho, the backbox had fallen off recently and we hadn't still welded it back on, but that wasn't a big deal, the car was loud but still drivable, or at least we THOUGHT it was
. Once i brought the car home... i was checking the file i have for the car only to realised that my MOT had expired !! So that same night, when i got home (around 9:00pm now) i was telling my dad about it and he said "ok lets weld that box in ourselves just so it passes the MOT" and we did it in about an hour, then went to sleep.So the next day (saturday now), i woke up at 8:30am and called another friend of mine who has an MOT test garage, i asked him to slip me in he said "you have to be here by 9 otherwise i cant do it, i'm fully booked til wednesday". I was in hounslow, he was in surbiton, thats a good 10 miles travel, and i hadn't even brushed my teeth yet! so i rushed and rushed, and eventually got there at 9:05, he put it on the ramp and started the test. I wasn't worried about anything on the car, not the xenons or the leds, or even the (quite bold) tyre which i had in the back. It was the backbox i was worried about, we aren't professional welders and we obviously dont know how to do this kind've thing properly. The entire test went fine... until we reached the emissions test.
The range of Lambda for my car is 0.97 to 1.03. The cats were working fine, and it passed, and it passed the idle test, but there was air leaking from where we had welded the backbox. When he proceeded to do the fast idle test, at about 2800 revs, the lambda reading 1.038, i thought ok thats fine it should go down a bit over time, but IT DIDNT BUDGE . And it failed on that! He told me the catalysts were fine, it was just the backbox that was letting me down, cuz the CO of the the cats was well below the legal requirement which was good.So i went home thinking "omg what am i going to do now", and then i thought of something, i was always going to modify my exhaust to have more flow, so i thought why not do it now? I then proceeded to call up MiJ performance to book in my car to have it done (11:00am now), i also obtained an original and very cheap C36 AMG Backbox, which i wanted them to use. they booked me in for 1:00am, and i drove down there, 129miles! Got there at 1:30pm, and realised something absolutely terrible... i had forgotten my wallet AND my phone because i left in such a rush! LOL!
. So once i got there i asked them if i could call home and get my card details, they let me do so and the payment was fine. They then proceeded to do the exhaust from the manifold all the way into my C36 backbox. I was sitting down now in their waiting area, very dizzy because i still hadn't eaten breakfast or even consumed ANYTHING, and it was 2:00pm. He came over and said, "we're going to go and buy some food for our work lot, you wanna come and get something for yourself?", i was shocked, but equally delighted, and of course i agreed, they bought me a nice big kebab for lunch/dinner which i ate faster then anyone there! After that i watched them do my car, and i also explained to them, the one of the nuts on the bracket broke because as me and my friend tried to remove it, it was too rusty and so it broke. They renew it for me, and even secured my exhaust more then i thought it would be, did all the cuttings required and fitted 2 sports catalysts. He told me that if i tried to fit 1 catalyst only, it might trigger the computer into "limp home" mode, because it will recognise that there's only 1 cat, and there's meant to be 2 on this model. I trusted him, and they did all this for me, along with all the piping and 3.5 hours labour for £500!!!! i was so chuffed! i really recommend these guys to anyone, they did my exhaust on my c200 which lasted for 45k miles before i exchanged it for the c230k.
I bid them farewell, and thanked them for their wonderful hospitality and got back to london for about 8:30pm, what a day! I'm now waiting for monday so i can do the emissions retest, and hpefully, it should pass with flying colours.
Hope i didnt bore you all (whoever bothered to read all of this) but i really wanted to share it with you all, as its been a really long 2 weeks for me!
![GetAttachment[1].jpg](/data/attachments/5/5676-9c35b574a980da0ef16e29d891068a07.jpg)
