Sub £3k ML280 - Total gamble
Discussion
With two personal car projects unfinished and hardly any spare time at all I've cleverly decided what I need to do is purchase a 2007 M-class with the EML on and no service history.
I was looking for a little bit of a fixer upper that would easily fit two child seats in the rear, I find the upright driving position of SUVs creates more rear seat room as I don't adjust my seat like some sort of wannabe F1 driver/barry boy.
So with my SUV purchasing excuse made I was looking at Disovery 3s, L322 Range Rovers, X5s, & RXs but there were no real bargains to be had. I had the fear of gearbox issues on the X5 & Range Rover so was trying to budget that in, while the Discoverys and Lexus' were more expensive. I ended up looking at the M-class, initially the older w163 model, but again got scared of all the bork stories. While I was at it I saw this, a W164 ML280 Sport in black with xenons, 133k on the clock, no service history, EML illuminated but with decent tyres on and a Mercedes specialist keyring, somehow it sounded like a good idea.
I'm terrible at remembering to photograph things but here's a picture of it as it came, it's probably the best angle, there's a few knocks and scrapes around but the car's acceptable overall on the outside.
First thing I tried to do with the car was open the boot, which I couldn't. A look in the back revealed all of the trim was missing from the inside of the tailgate, so that's broken then.
Coughing the diesel into life I initially thought the gearbox was f'ed as I couldn't get a gear, thankfully this turns out to be operator error (you don't need to push the button to shift, the button is park - duh) and the gearbox is fine, phew.
The car starts and drives in limp mode, no power whatsoever, but equally no excessive smoke or weird sounds, this made me hopeful for my fantasy of a cheap quick fix. Plugging a cheapo OBD reader in I got just the one fault code, P0244 Turbochager wastegate solenoid A range/performance. A google session later it seems the turbo actuator is a common failure on these OM642 engines, as is the boot latch, so armed with this vague knowledge and no mechanical experience whatsoever I ordered cheapo eBay parts; £60 for the actuator £80 for the latch and prepared to pull my new purchase apart...
I was looking for a little bit of a fixer upper that would easily fit two child seats in the rear, I find the upright driving position of SUVs creates more rear seat room as I don't adjust my seat like some sort of wannabe F1 driver/barry boy.
So with my SUV purchasing excuse made I was looking at Disovery 3s, L322 Range Rovers, X5s, & RXs but there were no real bargains to be had. I had the fear of gearbox issues on the X5 & Range Rover so was trying to budget that in, while the Discoverys and Lexus' were more expensive. I ended up looking at the M-class, initially the older w163 model, but again got scared of all the bork stories. While I was at it I saw this, a W164 ML280 Sport in black with xenons, 133k on the clock, no service history, EML illuminated but with decent tyres on and a Mercedes specialist keyring, somehow it sounded like a good idea.
I'm terrible at remembering to photograph things but here's a picture of it as it came, it's probably the best angle, there's a few knocks and scrapes around but the car's acceptable overall on the outside.
First thing I tried to do with the car was open the boot, which I couldn't. A look in the back revealed all of the trim was missing from the inside of the tailgate, so that's broken then.
Coughing the diesel into life I initially thought the gearbox was f'ed as I couldn't get a gear, thankfully this turns out to be operator error (you don't need to push the button to shift, the button is park - duh) and the gearbox is fine, phew.
The car starts and drives in limp mode, no power whatsoever, but equally no excessive smoke or weird sounds, this made me hopeful for my fantasy of a cheap quick fix. Plugging a cheapo OBD reader in I got just the one fault code, P0244 Turbochager wastegate solenoid A range/performance. A google session later it seems the turbo actuator is a common failure on these OM642 engines, as is the boot latch, so armed with this vague knowledge and no mechanical experience whatsoever I ordered cheapo eBay parts; £60 for the actuator £80 for the latch and prepared to pull my new purchase apart...
Northbrook said:
Interesting. Was it cheap?
£2,600 so probably should have been less, but it was cheap enough for me to talk myself into it.Cambs_Stuart said:
Good luck. Hope it's not another bork bus of pain.
That thread was an inspiration to me prior to my purchase, perhaps I should have waited a little longer!Back to the EML...
Thankfully the turbo actuator (and turbo) is right on top of the engine between the V, to get decent enough access you only have to remove the air intake, unplug breather intake and remove heat shield on top of the turbo. The turbo and breather intakes have orange rubber seals and both of these were fairly knackered as you can see, so I replaced these with more cheapo eBay parts (£6) and I also did the air filters seeing as I was basically there anyway (£35.38).
Worn breather intake seal, the turbo actuator is the hella marked box just behind.
New vs old seal
Everything comes out fairly easily, although to free the right-hand air-box you need to unbolt some of the scuttle additionally. The bolts on the actuator face away from the front of the car which makes it fiddly but the most fiddly bit is trying to keep track of the circlip, which pinged off unseen as they always do. Must have been my lucky day though as I managed to find it sitting on top of one of the cylinder heads, result.
Whilst everything was off I checked for play in the turbo and checked the actuator arm moved freely and happily all was well. So it was then simply a process of putting everything back which is always harder. Thankfully my beginner's luck continued and after a lot of wiggling bits of plastic and shouting at the car I had everything back nicely.
The car fired up and was happy to rev past 3k all of a sudden, bye bye limp mode! This was fortunate as the next day the car was booked in for a transmission service at Stevensons Mercedes, the single biggest expense so far at £300, apparently the oil was bad but not awful, so surely not done all 133k without a change? That's what I'm telling myself!
Obviously feeling pretty chuffed with my good luck with the engine I moved on to the supposedly easy task of changing the boot latch. As you can see in the first post the previous owner had helpully removed all the trim for me (and lost two parts of it by the looks) so all I had to do was undo three bolts, one plug and swap the locks, or so the theory went.
Firstly I couldn't get the bolts loose, so I asked my favoured local garage to cut them off for me while I had the rest of the engine serviced. With new oil, oil filter and fuel filter (£161) I'm hoping we have covered for the lack of service history.
With the bolts off for me swapping the locks was indeed a fairly easy affair, however that's where my luck ran out, The new latch was no more responsive than the old. As I was still at the garage I asked him to have a look and by putting a power to the boot release switch it worked immediately. In addition to this the boot actually does work very rarely, sometimes it even starts trying to unlock by itself, so I'm thinking damaged wire (I've located it at various points in the loom and it doesn't appear to be fully broken anywhere) or dodgey rear SAM?
It's all a bit beyond me now so unless I have a eureka moment it'll be off to either a auto electrician or back to Stevensons to see if they can find the problem.
OpulentBob said:
Is it a soft-close boot? I've not had any goood experiences with Merc soft-close boot latches, the gears inside are made out of what I can only imagine are Quality Street wrappers.
It's not but the standard cogs don't look up to much from what I've seen, at the moment that seems easier compared to whatever problem I may have...
Great thread, keep us in the loop! I've got an OM642 in my E350 which is now on 127k, I do about 20k a year in it. The biggest single expense was a MAF sensor failure which was an eyebrow raising £900 part from Mercedes only, but other than that the engines been pretty sound. I had one injector seal go which was fixed for £90 at a specialist, and one engine mount which was about £150 - so fairly reasonable.
So I've put 100s of miles on it now, so some quick observations; I've heard people say the 280 is slow but either this one has been remapped or they aren't actually that slow.
It can take a bit of cranking to start when cold, cycling the ignition twice negates the problem so probably glow plugs?
It took me a long time to get the rear right brake bulb working, eventually I saw that it's badly corroded inside the lamp, I've managed to get it working with a bit of persuasion. Probably could do with a new lamp unit but I'm toying with the idea of getting the facelift LED ones fitted anyway.
Also the cigarette lighter power and light have taken leave, occasionally returning, and the right hand side interior light is intermittent in its operation. Add all this up with the boot issue and I'm thinking the rear SAM could well be the culprit.
I phoned Stevensons Mercedes and when I explained the weird electrical things along with the fact that I'd already tried a new latch, he agreed and ordered a new SAM. All being well that will be fitted next week, estimated cost £600.
If it fixes all these weird issues that will be a result, and with a working boot we can move on to the long list of mainly cosmetic faults, another post on that if we successfully clear the boot hurdle!
I've noticed this post doesn't have any pictures, so here I will attach the results of cleaning the steering wheel buttons with Autoglym tar remover;
It can take a bit of cranking to start when cold, cycling the ignition twice negates the problem so probably glow plugs?
It took me a long time to get the rear right brake bulb working, eventually I saw that it's badly corroded inside the lamp, I've managed to get it working with a bit of persuasion. Probably could do with a new lamp unit but I'm toying with the idea of getting the facelift LED ones fitted anyway.
Also the cigarette lighter power and light have taken leave, occasionally returning, and the right hand side interior light is intermittent in its operation. Add all this up with the boot issue and I'm thinking the rear SAM could well be the culprit.
I phoned Stevensons Mercedes and when I explained the weird electrical things along with the fact that I'd already tried a new latch, he agreed and ordered a new SAM. All being well that will be fitted next week, estimated cost £600.
If it fixes all these weird issues that will be a result, and with a working boot we can move on to the long list of mainly cosmetic faults, another post on that if we successfully clear the boot hurdle!
I've noticed this post doesn't have any pictures, so here I will attach the results of cleaning the steering wheel buttons with Autoglym tar remover;
I headed down Stevensons yesterday to find the part hadn't arrived but we were still able to do some diagnosis and it seems the SAM is very likely to be the cause of my boot issue. The lock jumped into life as soon as the cables into the SAM were being touched. A bit of contact cleaner saw it actuating randomly but not when you actually pressed the button.
One of the technicians there noticed the cause as well, the offside rear tail light is damaged, you can actually see into the car where there should be black plastic, so water will have been getting in there and down to the SAM which is stupidly placed right in the firing line. Apparently this was moved beneath the seat on later Mercedes'.
The blue thing is the brake bulb holder which shouldn't really be seen from outside the car, no wonder the connection was corroded!
I was told the SAM is not impossible to clean yourself so I thought I'd have a look when I got home; once you've fished the box out (and taken a picture of where the cables go to save the 10 minutes on google I had to spend later) it's a case of releasing the plastic clips around the edge of the box to get inside, then releasing the clips around the cable ports to free the board.
Encouragingly I think you'll agree this doesn't actually look that bad, the water damage seems limited to one of the plugs for some reason, but without removing the plug from the board (I don't know how?) I can't really get under there to clean properly.
I still took the opportunity to spray with WD40 and try and get under there with a toothbrush but couldn't make much of an impact on the crud. I put it all back together and guess what, it worked! Tailgate opening restored. I even locked it, went upstairs and grabbed my wife to show her the tremendously exciting sight of a man opening a tailgate.
My mirth was short lived however, 10 minutes later it had reverted to non operation, so the £600 replacement looms large again...
One of the technicians there noticed the cause as well, the offside rear tail light is damaged, you can actually see into the car where there should be black plastic, so water will have been getting in there and down to the SAM which is stupidly placed right in the firing line. Apparently this was moved beneath the seat on later Mercedes'.
The blue thing is the brake bulb holder which shouldn't really be seen from outside the car, no wonder the connection was corroded!
I was told the SAM is not impossible to clean yourself so I thought I'd have a look when I got home; once you've fished the box out (and taken a picture of where the cables go to save the 10 minutes on google I had to spend later) it's a case of releasing the plastic clips around the edge of the box to get inside, then releasing the clips around the cable ports to free the board.
Encouragingly I think you'll agree this doesn't actually look that bad, the water damage seems limited to one of the plugs for some reason, but without removing the plug from the board (I don't know how?) I can't really get under there to clean properly.
I still took the opportunity to spray with WD40 and try and get under there with a toothbrush but couldn't make much of an impact on the crud. I put it all back together and guess what, it worked! Tailgate opening restored. I even locked it, went upstairs and grabbed my wife to show her the tremendously exciting sight of a man opening a tailgate.
My mirth was short lived however, 10 minutes later it had reverted to non operation, so the £600 replacement looms large again...
I can highly recommend one of these for proper mercedes diagnostics and clearing codes:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/303667115499
Also get under the jeep and take a look at the rear passenger side rear of the engine beside the gearbox and see if you've any oil leaking there. If you do you need to do the oil cooler seals. And while you're doing that you need to do in the inlet motor arms too. A time consuming laborious job rather than expensive cost of parts.
Your glow plug problem will be one or two glowplugs and/or the glowplug relay too.
Check your rear SAM unit thats down in the rear wheel well where it gets wet and goes haywire and will give lots of strange electrical gremlins.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/303667115499
Also get under the jeep and take a look at the rear passenger side rear of the engine beside the gearbox and see if you've any oil leaking there. If you do you need to do the oil cooler seals. And while you're doing that you need to do in the inlet motor arms too. A time consuming laborious job rather than expensive cost of parts.
Your glow plug problem will be one or two glowplugs and/or the glowplug relay too.
Check your rear SAM unit thats down in the rear wheel well where it gets wet and goes haywire and will give lots of strange electrical gremlins.
Gassing Station | Readers' Cars | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff