Hi all,
As the title states, my E420 is not in good shape.
After some hard driving, the car started producing large amounts of white smoke from the exhaust and losing coolant at a rapid rate. Things seemed ok from a compression test, leak down test, and block test. My friend who is a mechanic recommended replacing the intake manifold gasket as there are opportunities for coolant to leak into the intake through that gasket.
I performed that job, (the gasket was indeed compromised), and got everything machined before putting it back together. However, still white smoke.
Fast forward to now, the car has sat for a month or two and I decided to get it properly diagnosed at a local mercedes mechanic. After about 4 hours with the car he called me and let me know that they had found cylinder 4 half full of coolant and that he believed the engine has a cracked head, or at least a severely blown head gasket.
The quote for the head gaskets was around $4,000. If he did indeed need to source a new head, he said it could exceed $5,000.
While I don't doubt the cost for his time, I do wonder if it's even worth fixing that engine, or more worth it to source a used engine and have him swap it in, which he said could be done for around $2000.
I do have some questions about this though, unfortunately I don't know the exact model M119 the car has currently, but I do know that it is the distributed variant with the plastic oiler tubes.
- Does the engine I source have to be the exact same variant of the M119?
- Would it be possible to put a later variant with coil-over ignition into the car? (I always hated the distributors)
- Lastly, 5.0L variants seem to be much more plentiful near me, are there any inherent problems with putting a 5.0 in the car other than having to swap the computers?
Sorry if this isn't enough information, a little lost here and don't want to scrap the car, but I also don't see a lot of sense in putting over $5000 into a 25 year old car that might sell for less than that.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
As the title states, my E420 is not in good shape.
After some hard driving, the car started producing large amounts of white smoke from the exhaust and losing coolant at a rapid rate. Things seemed ok from a compression test, leak down test, and block test. My friend who is a mechanic recommended replacing the intake manifold gasket as there are opportunities for coolant to leak into the intake through that gasket.
I performed that job, (the gasket was indeed compromised), and got everything machined before putting it back together. However, still white smoke.
Fast forward to now, the car has sat for a month or two and I decided to get it properly diagnosed at a local mercedes mechanic. After about 4 hours with the car he called me and let me know that they had found cylinder 4 half full of coolant and that he believed the engine has a cracked head, or at least a severely blown head gasket.
The quote for the head gaskets was around $4,000. If he did indeed need to source a new head, he said it could exceed $5,000.
While I don't doubt the cost for his time, I do wonder if it's even worth fixing that engine, or more worth it to source a used engine and have him swap it in, which he said could be done for around $2000.
I do have some questions about this though, unfortunately I don't know the exact model M119 the car has currently, but I do know that it is the distributed variant with the plastic oiler tubes.
- Does the engine I source have to be the exact same variant of the M119?
- Would it be possible to put a later variant with coil-over ignition into the car? (I always hated the distributors)
- Lastly, 5.0L variants seem to be much more plentiful near me, are there any inherent problems with putting a 5.0 in the car other than having to swap the computers?
Sorry if this isn't enough information, a little lost here and don't want to scrap the car, but I also don't see a lot of sense in putting over $5000 into a 25 year old car that might sell for less than that.
Any help is greatly appreciated.