A Luta Continua - My Merc E class

As many will know I finally got tired of chasing faults with my beloved old SAAB 9-5 2.2 TiD (there may be a thread about that car somewhere) a couple of months back, and decided to trade it in for a 2005 Mercedes E320 CDi estate.

It seemed like a good buy at the time, 100k miles, full service history, one private owner from new, £4.5k.  Platinum blue, beige leather interior.  Nice combo, really classy.

initial impressions were favourable, and yes I still admire and enjoy the car enormously.  It is the most powerful thing I've ever owned (34th car I think since 1987), the best built, the 2nd most comfortable (miss the SAAB a bit on that one), an all round fantastic place to be when on the road.

A couple of weeks after purchasing it, I took it on the family holiday to France, destination being an 8 hour drive from Calais.  On the way down and during the holiday, I noticed two things: first, it was starting to give the impression that the power wasn't *quite* being delivered smoothly from a stand still, especially with a cold engine (left overnight).  Also, as I approached Rouen, we started a longish motorway climb and I asked for a bit of grunt to maintain speed and get past the lorries.  Foot in the carpet, nothing.  Even started to lose speed and by the time we hit the summit we're down to 60 from 80mph.  No kickdown.  Yikes, a limp mode.  But no warnings on the dash.  Rouen arrives and I pull over into a layby to see if a 'reboot' will clear the limp mode.  I re-start the engine and pull away, big cloud of black smoke out of the back and we're away, no limp mode.  Hooray.  Maybe the EGR is dirty and needs cleaning thinks I.

Further down the road, and we get limp mode back.  Argh.  Another quick stop at an 'Aire', including comedy moment when the children refuse to go in the toilet block due to their lack of, er, well, hygiene to be frank, a restart and limp mode clears again only to reappear 20-odd miles short of destination.

Over the holiday I used the car a couple of times to do supermarket runs - no limp modes appeared but it did give me that impression of lacking smoothness when cold.  Gear changes when cold are noticeable, which really shouldn't be the case on this car (auto).

The trip back home throws up a couple more limp modes, but home we get in one piece.  No more black smoke events.

A visit to my local Mercedes indie ensues, who have the proper Mercedes STAR diagnostics system.  They spend a day with the car, test drives and diagnostics done.  Conclusion: two problems.  Diagnostics show error codes relating to a position sensor in the turbo, which is an integral part to the turbo and can't be changed.  Diagnosis: new turbo will be the only fix.  This, however, would not explain the lack of smoothness from cold thing and this is diagnosed as most likely the torque converter starting to deteriorate.  Indie bloke expresses surprise at the turbo issue as faults are apparently rare on my older, I6 OM648 engine, but are apparently endemic on the newer, V6 version (2006 onwards).  The TC however, well those do tend to go apparently and he gets a lot through the workshop with the same symptoms and diagnosis.

So.  Money.  I purchased the car with a 6 month warranty - happily a warranty company which this indie uses themselves when they sell vehicles, so they have a good relationship with the warranty company.  My warranty appears to cover the TC, so advice is to monitor for a while and come back before the warranty expires (mid December) to have this done.  The warranty only covers up to £500, so I will have to go with a recon unit to have any chance of staying within that figure.  Fair enough, it's an old car and brand new one will be about £1500 fitted.  As for the turbo, well that's not covered by the warranty at all.  So, a new one fitted, again about £1500, but I could get away with a recon for about £250 plus fitting, so about £500 in all.  Again, advice is to monitor and come back if further limp modes are experienced to see if the fault codes still match, before taking the plunge on the turbo.  Since then I'm using the car for my usual 25 mile each-way commute, but no limp modes have appeared yet.  I'm putting this down to needing a longer run at constant high speed to trigger the mode, so I'm waiting to see what happens.  Next really long drive I have is to Loch Lomond in October, we'll see what happens then, I suppose.

All in all not the greatest disaster known to mankind, but I just don't seem to get the luck at the moment with second hand vehicles, although of course our Mazda 6 seems invincible.......