That’s what we called my wife’s 2004 ML350 and having sold it this afternoon I now post this as a warning to anyone who might be considering a per-owed Mercedes one day.
To preface this please know that I’ve bought and sold vehicles for a living, so it’s not like I can’t tell when someone’s jacked with an odometer, or welded two halves together.
In early 2010 I saw an ad in the paper for a one owner ML with the equivalent of 45,000 miles on it and went to see it. I had a cracked grill and some punks had removed the emblems for jewelry. It needed tires and the pads had less than 25% left, ran great. The owner had moved to France due to security issues down here and left his nephew to sell off his cars and bikes. We did the negotiation dance and he wouldn’t agree to my offer without the uncle’s blessing, so we parted ways and a few days later I got a call telling me the equivalent of $9,000 would take it. The original invoice was for $54,000, so I thought I’d made a pretty good deal.
I changed the motor and trans oil, replaced the emblems, tires, all the pads and sensors and added side steps and took it in for an alignment. Good as new, but I should have realized what was coming when I went to get the alignment done. The machine is proprietary and locks onto holes in the rims, the cost was $300 compared to $30 bucks for my Ford. The guy I bought it off swore he had two keys when I picked it up, but never did find the second one, so another $200 bucks at the dealers. A few months later the throttle position sensor went out. $150 and a tow and it was all downhill from there.
When I started looking for a manual all I could find was a likely pirated Mercedes CD that ended up opening in German and blocking me before I could figure out how to enter the pass code. At that point accepted that I would be using the dealer for pretty much anything more complicated than oil changes.
One sensor after another, the A/C pump, steering pump hoses, vacuum lines, trans leak, u-joint, AWD sensor, and torsion bars. At one point the brake pedal became spongy and the fluid looked a little funky, so I sent it for a flush because the antilock system has a pump that is connected to a pressurized box that has a dozen lines connected to it which needs to be bled by a vacuum pump. Another $300 and when I got it back the peddle was worse than before. Long story short every component of the braking system was replaced and the brakes never came back to normal. The truck was at the dealers for almost 2 months and we picked it up and returned it the following day at least 4 times during that period. After taking to the Mercedes rep for Mexico and North America I finally gave up and just accepted that the pedal reaching the carpet every time I stopped hard was the new norm.
Every freaking time I spent money on it I would tell myself that this was the last one and that it would now last me for 200,000 worry free miles like everyone else with these things seems to be getting. Boy was I wrong. I ended up buying the wife a new Honda (it has issues too) a year ago so that this time could be at the dealers as long as they wanted to keep it and we’d use it as a spare car when our were getting serviced, but after having it in the shop for almost all of November and a large chunk of January for steering pump issue I decided to blow it out today for $3,000 bucks to a dealer with only 71,600 miles on it. I likely could have gotten an extra $1,000 bucks had I sold it to an end user, but I wouldn't have been able to sleep at night. Not because I’ve got moral issues with selling a POS to an unsuspecting putz, I’m afraid for my life once they realize what a money pit it is!
So a few minutes ago I started throwing out my receipts and decided to add them up. Turns out that not counting oil changes, or accessories I spent $8,528 on repairs over the past 26,600 miles. Then I added up the receipts from the first owner that he’d accumulated after the warrantee had ended, $7,338. Holy crap! I didn’t get those until after I purchased the vehicle and never bothered to look closely, I wish I had. Fuel pump, suspension, sensors, etc. and the odometer readings were between 28,000 and 35,000 miles when all this work was needed.
Never again! My advice to all: DON’T EVER BUY ANYTHING THAT HAYNES OR CLYMER DOESN’T MAKE A MANUAL FOR!
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Originally Posted by knappyfeet
