Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Kerley
Good luck and enjoy. I echo your feeling for the W202 generally and the C230 particularly. The 1997 C230 was my first Mercedes. I was in love at first, but, over time, the unexpected, expensive problems took their toll on our relationship. Ours sits on the street looking nice, waiting for the next electrical issue to surface. I can't quite bring myself to sell her. . . .
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I was in the same leaking vessel, I'm afraid. My C230 was a wonderful little car in many ways, easy to work on and change the oil on, etc. Yes, I had to replace the A/C compre$$or early on, but that was the only big thing outside of replacing all 4 tires, one at a time, over 3 years (due to nails and debris all over the crappy streets here).
But . . . the persistent rattle from the sunroof bothered me. The car rode a little hard on these broken streets. And then came the big thing: The early 5-speed electronic transmission began to balk and stick, and nobody could say that the $1500 rebuild that both dealer and independent quoted me would *certainly* fix the problem.
Maybe I should have bitten the bullet, gotten it fixed (presuming that expensive tranny job would solve the problem), and continued to drive the little gold beast sans car payment. But my gas costs would have been about the same as I pay now for the Buick. And the '97 would now be 11-12 years old, and there'd be more issues. I miss it sometimes, but I'm also very pleased with its replacement.
(By the way, I too had the wiper arm slowdown symptom. I squeezed a little power steering fluid under that clamshell, and it would work perfectly for another year, at which time I'd repeat the treatment. Worked okay.)
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