"New" CL600 coming home soon

Brought the 01CL600 home. Added 5qt of cheap oil to make sure there was some in the sump (I bought a dipstick that supposedly fits the engine, not exactly sure where the oil should be on it but there is a fair amount in the engine now), car started right up and runs well aside from being a bit rich which I think is that camshaft sensor, suspension pumped right up and is still holding a few days later. Have not yet had a chance to look too closely at the car (or unload it from the trailer) but will do that today and give it a good cleaning and see what all is going on with it. Fun times ahead I guess.

I found the Copart sale for the car which was a bit saddening as the guys I bought it from got it pretty cheap and made some good $$$ off me, but oh well that's how it goes. They were going to part it out and make some big $$ off it so I can console myself that I saved it from an ignominious end... though I might still be a fool...

I bought a 01CL600 parts car 2 weeks ago for pretty cheap. This thing was about as far back in the mountain woods dirt road as you can get in Georgia. Aside from no key no cats no tandem pump and no title it is actually in pretty good shape aside from whatever someone was trying to bodge with the front suspension valve block so that will be a good donor for this one if I need anything for it. I do need a cluster for the silver CL600 so will pull it from the black car. I put power to the car and the cluster lighted up so that was encouraging. The body is in mostly excellent condition except for that scratch on the lower driver door and black interior is very good aside from some damage to door cards from the windows being down for awhile, so parts off that are going on my CL500 to replace hail-damaged hood and cracked front fender. It has the multi-contour seats so I might swap those into the CL500 too. I washed it and hit the hood with a clay bar and a first compound polish and it looked really good. Almost makes me want to try to fix it up but not sure how to work the title and key issues though there might be a way...

tim687 said:

I made the mistake to continue driving with a enriched fuel trim and one of my cats was destroyed.



Amazing to read from you again!

Two things;

• Could you not forget to take a video of the oil cooler leaking when the engine is running?
  • That will be a nice reference video to have
• Could you post a photo of the engine (or message me your VIN number)? Your car has the AMG body parts and I'm wondering if it is a real AMG.

Whenever you change the ICM, you'll need to reprogram the VIN into the cluster. There are plenty of tutorials out here that show you how you can do that

Click to expand...

Thanks on the ICM, I'll check that out. And I will see what I can get on the oil cooler. Interestingly I did not see any oil blowing out when I loaded it on the trailer, and it looks fairly clean on the headers and front cats where the oil supposedly goes so that is curious. Maybe the leak is not yet too bad.

The silver car has AMG kits but no AMG badging on the trunk
772 AMG STYLING PACKAGE-FRONT SPOILER, SIDE SKIRT
792 AMG-WHEELS 8X18 SQUEEZE-IN DEPTH 31 235/40 (S210)
It has no AMG engine cover badge. Curious too the wheels are not staggered. My CL500 has staggered wheels (8, 8.5X18) but those were probably added at some later time as those are not on the build sheet.

The black "parts" car has AMG badge on the trunk (for whatever that is worth) and "AMG" chrome wheels (I have not pulled one off to look at actual part number if they are actual MB AMG wheels thought they look like they might be) but shows no AMG packages on the build sheet like the silver car does so I don't really know what's going on with it. The side skirts look similar to the silver car but the front spoiler and aux light surround is somewhat different. It does have an AMG engine cover with the signature of the builder on it, but again, who knows the story with it. I didn't get a pic of it yet. I parked it up on another property and did not do a lot of detailed look at it. I did spin the engine with a wrench though, so it was not locked up or anything which is encouraging. I'll get more details on the black car later.

The cluster came alive when I put power to the car and I was able to move the steering wheel too although nothing else would move without the key

OK so I got the 01CL600 home and started digging into it a bit. I bought an oil dipstick to check the oil level and of course did not read the little paper in the package that said where the oil lever should be for this engine (DUH), and had added a jug of cheap oil to it to make sure it had enough after the supposed oil cooler leak. Well turns out it was not low so I had to suck out all that new oil which is going into the chain saw jug so it won't be wasted.

Anyway, starting the car showed huge amounts of smoke billowing out, i thought this was due to the excess oil. Starting the car after sucking out the oil it was better. I decided to take it for a quick little drive and it would not really get past idle, and it was blowing smoke still. After thinking about it, and sniffing the exhaust (DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME KIDS! LICENSED PROFESSIONALS ONLY ON CLOSED COURSE) and decided it was fuel not oil that I was seeing. hmmmm. Also I could see no oil leaks aside from a bit back around the bell housing, certainly nothing that suggested a catastrophic oil cooler leak. hmmmm.

When I went to look at the car I had seen a code for the right camshaft position sensor so had ordered one. I figured I would pop that in, that would most likely cure the issues with the excess smoke. Well, "popping in" a new cam position sensor is not to be done -- there is NO ROOM to pop it out as the intake manifold is in the way. WTF? So I dug into the WIS and shonuff you have to remove the whole d**n intake manifold to swap this $55 part. So now I am thinking that the PO took the car to the stealer to get it fixed, they told him this would be a $2k job to replace this fairly cheap part, and at that point he just walked away from the car or traded it in or something (it ended up at Copart auction where the guy I bought it from picked it up). So anyway, this is more encouraging than having to take the engine mostly apart for the oil cooler, just taking part of it apart for the cam PS 😱. So anyway time to order more bolts (they are stretch bolts) for the manifold and gaskets and probably the other cam PS too as it should probably be changed as well while I am doing this job. Sigh.

On a positive note the suspension pumps up and holds, no problems there, that is comforting.

I gave the car a good wash and it looks amazing, just a few little dings here and there. It clearly has low miles and was very well-cared-for over the last 20+ years, interior is very nice too. Carpets need some cleaning but easy enough to do. I am somewhat encouraged now about the engine issue, and when the weather warms up later this week I'll get the parts and get to the job and get this beeste back on the road. I'll need to pop in the "parts car" cluster too, then dig more into the miles issue. It seems like to clone a "new" cluster you would need the old one to pull the data from but without that I'm not sure how to do it. More on that later after more investigation.




The CPS does not have enough room to slide out, the intake manifold is in the way 😡 How stupid is this design? If it had been positioned to the left a little bit no problem. I guess sometime between the 123/126 and the C215 MB lost all sense of reasonably sensible repairs on their cars.

tim687 said:

Any updates?

Click to expand...

I got the bolts and intake manifold gaskets along with another cam position sensor (replaced both while I'm at it). Pulled out the manifold, cleaned it up (it had a lot of oil in it, I think from the PCV vent). Managed to crack the ends of the brake booster vacuum line and the end of the PCV tube that goes from the front to the back so I need to order those. The PCV tube is made of 4 segments connected together, I can't actually find these in the EPC but they have part numbers (called "coolant hoses") so could find them on dealer vendor sites. Weird. They appear to be shrink fit on the connectors too, not sure how to get them apart except with a heat gun to expand/loosen the ends then that might get into a whole nuther set of issues. So I need to order those to get the thing back together, another $100 in parts plus whatever 4 connectors (can't find the part numbers) are, ugh. The old gaskets were crusty and the paint was peeling off so those were trash.

Anyway I got everything fairly well cleaned up, no signs the oil cooler is leaking so that is A Good Thing. There was a bunch of crap down in there, mice or rats and acorns and leaves and such but not too much, wiring looked OK.

I got the manifold back on and the new bolts torqued down properly. The gaskets were a bit fiddly as there is only one locating pin on one end, so I put a bit of adhesive on the other end (not on the part around the holes) to hold it in place but still had to get a little screwdriver to push it into place through the end bolt hole. It all worked OK. Plugged the injectors and other connectors back in.

I found a really good video on the V12icparts web site of the guy replacing the manifold so that was really helpful. This is not a particular hard job just a bit fiddly with having to remove everything to deal with the stupid design of the cam position sensor location. And the brittle plastic bits... I printed off the WIS guide too so that was also helpful but most everything is fairly intuitive (with a bit of guidance) once you get in there.

So I need to get these other parts then can get it buttoned up and see how it runs.

I got the CL600 back together yesterday after taking the intake manifold (as associated parts) off to replace a cam position sensor. Missing 3 or 4 random bolts that I recall were not there and I forgot to order them when I got the other parts, but it is OK for now. Car started right up, was blowing enough smoke to clear out the mosquitoes all around but soon cleared up and was running fine and clean. I think there was a lot of fuel in the catalysts from it not running well with the cam sensor bad. Took it out for a short drive to get some fuel (instrument cluster missing so didn't know how much was in the tank). Car ran great (OH WOW!!!!), no issues whatsoever. I scanned it and no fault codes with the engine so I call the job a success!

The tires on the car have good tread but are older so I am reluctant to really drive it hard until I get those sorted, but for easy jaunts should be good for now. A few more things to organize, and give it a good cleaning, and it will be an awesome ride.

I got the new cam position sensor installed and the manifold and everything back in place with some new parts for the PCV tube. Car ran fine after blowing some big smoke for a bit after starting it up, but it soon cleared out. No fault codes. Drove it a bit and had some issues like it was in limp mode but a restart cleared that out, and I found a loose battery connector so I think it was losing electrons too. Drove it around last week and it seemed fine. Drove it again and it was doing fine on a little trip to the grocery store, then on the way back it was down on power although it was running OK.

A scan shows faults again for the right cam position sensor AND now for both upstream lambda sensors on that side too (0V showing on the scan for those two sensors, zylinders 1-3 and 4-6), so I am thinking the right bank is not running at all, the ECU has shut off fuel and sparks. I vaguely recall the guy I bought the car from saying he had replaced an O2 sensor, and I just replaced the cam sensor, so not clear what is going on. I tried to trace the wires and it looks like both O2 sensors run to the right side behind the engine under the throttle body then up into the wiring loom on back left side thence to the ECU, and the cam sensor goes into the loom right near the connector to it. Nothing apparent as to any breaks in the wiring, all looked good. I'm quite sure all those sensors would not fail at the same time so not sure what is going on. Very perplexing. I did not disconnect the wiring connector to the ECU, maybe I should do that and spray everything down with contact cleaner, see if that does any good. Maybe whatever connectors for those 3 things are goobered up.

Oh, and it looks like indeed the oil cooler is leaking off the back of the engine and dripping oil onto the exhaust downpipe on the right side, so there's that too... 😬🤑👎🏦