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Looking at a pair of C220s

724 views 8 replies 4 participants last post by  Patman1 
#1 ·
Both are 96, one has 108k on the clock for $2600, very good condition, the other 168k probably for around $1800 good condition as well same family since new. Lower mileage one has had the same owner for 3 years. Are these reliable cars? I do most of my own work but don't want To be replacing a transmission or doing head gaskets just quite yet. How about quality vs the venerable w124?
 
#2 ·
Reliable compared to what? If you compare these cars to Toyotas then HELL no.

There is nothing more expensive than a cheap Mercedes. That said, if any car was well taken care of then you should be good. Check for the engine and transmission harness issues first. do a search here.

I prefer one owner cars when possible. that is just me.
 
#4 ·
Reliability is directly proportional to maintenance, unless there is some manufacturing flaw. It's a very simple equation. The manufacturing defect on these cars was the biodegradable wiring harness, but that's where it ends. Everything else is up to maintenance. Pick the most well maintained one, even if there is a price premium.

I've had my 1996 C220 for 3 years now, I've replaced the wiring harness, and it has been working quite well ever since. Any other repairs I've done have just been about replacing 20 year old parts. So do expect some small things to go wrong. I'd expect to have to replace suspension bushings and flex-discs, unless they were done before. I can't possibly stress this enough, check the maintenance records!!!

A note on cylinder head gaskets. The M111 engine ranks with the most bullet-proof gasoline engines from MB. No major issues in its service history. Same goes for the 722.4 automatic transmission. Keep in mind, the block is made from iron, and the cylinder head from aluminium. On any engine of this configuration, there will eventually be some minor oil and possibly coolant external leaks due to the different thermal expansion rates of iron and aluminium. With that being said, it is almost never an internal issue. So if you don't mind driving around with a slightly greasy block, your engine will live for a very long time. My engine now has 220 000km, and it runs very smoothly. I've got a very slow oil leak on the intake side, but even after 8 000km of driving between 2 oil changes, the level hasn't dropped at all on the dipstick, and the oil comes out still in decent shape.

If one of these two is well maintained, you can enjoy the reliability of the W124 and the modern comfort and safety of a newer car. Also, if you are concerned with fuel economy, I get around 26mpg in the city, 32mpg on the highway, which I think is very respectable.
 
#7 ·
well The 1996 had a particularly expensive harness. Usually it's around 1600$ new, but I remember shopping around and I found one for 1200$. Installing it yourself is no big deal, it just takes a bit of time. The only 2 tricky connectors to get to are the knock sensor and crankshaft position sensor, but both are possible to get to. The knock sensor you will have to remove the intake manifold support bracket. The crankshaft position sensor connector I recommend you remove it with a pick up tool and reinstall it in a similar fashion and push it back on with a long screw driver. The cyl #3 misfire is probably caused by that. Everything else is plug and play. If you do deicde to go down this road and replace the harness, you will have a very reliable car afterwards. If the cost scares you a little bit, the updated harness sometimes pops on sale on eBay used for a much cheaper price. Also, you will need a new ignition harness, but that's a very cheap item, around 20$ new.

Keep in mind, the e420 might have the same problem. Also, the 4.2L V8 likes to break the upper chain guides, so if you get that instead, I'd replace the upper chain guides sooner rather than later. The 4.3L wasn't as powerful but actually had better fuel economy and was much lighter! (Still, I prefer the 4.2). The W210 forum will have more info on all that, but the W210 doesn't escape the wiring harness problem. If you really want a 90's Benz, you will run into the wiring harness issue, no matter which model you are looking at.
 
#9 ·
Problems with the harness were not discovered until mercedes had moved well into the next generation of their cars. The engineers had no way of knowing the wires would degrade as fast as they did. The problem really only existed for the wires closest to the engine. All the wires in the car are biodegradable, yet all the chassis wires are intact, even after so many years. The problem became apparent first on cars that were heat cycled often, and it was especially bad on the V12, since it gets much hotter in the engine bay. Cars that weren't used for multiple short trips would have taken even longer to develop the symptoms. Mine for example, it took 18 years before the wiring harness started to cause issues. Another factor could be that the bigger engines developed problems on harnesses that were replaceable. I think both the V8s and V12s use a knock sensor harness that plugs into the main, so maybe initially only that harness was suspect to some manufacturing defect. In our case, the knock sensor wires directly to the ECU, along with every other sensor/wire, making our harnesses expensive. The knock sensors were always the first ones to show the signs because of their proximity to the engine block. I've heard that some harnesses were replaced as good will by the dealership, but it's not like it was an immediate rapidly progressing problem that affected the safety of the car.

Anyway, it's also possible to rewire the harness, or have it rewired. If you'd like to do it yourself I'd expect to spend a whole day on it.

This also means the throttle body harness is on its way. There are plenty of updated used throttle bodies available on eBay, I got one from there, has worked well since. The throttle body harness only has 7 wires, they go to a connector on the intake manifold support bracket from the throttle body idle control actuator. The throttle itself is still linked via a cable to the pedal, but the butterfly valve has a small amount of freedom to move about the linkage to control the idle electronically. It's not your usual air bypass valve system, so purely speaking from an engineering perspective it's a wonderful item.
 
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