E500 - advice welcome

[roman]

Hi folks,
I initialy landed in Featured cars, but hot-rods is the place to be if your looking for info on e500s.( thanks placo1)
Enclosed are my 2 messages from the other forum.


Hello everyone,
I'm a MB owner from Poland ('94 300TD) currently thinking of buying a '92 E500. The car's got roughly 200k km on it with a full service history. Can someone give their impression on the reliability of this model. I took it to a dealers but its really difficult to get an honest opinion.

Roman

thank you all for your replies. I went through the service records of the car yesterday and it seems that regular inspections are in tact. Out of any major repairs, they had the waterpump replaced at 150k km and the AC kompressor at 180k. Its got ca. 200k on the odometer now so I quess its time for a major check-up. Can you give advice what to watch out for at this milage? I'm planning to take it to an MB dealer to have them take a look, but we done have many of these cars in Poland hence their slight ignorance The car's in good shape - bodywork OK, hasn't been painted, no collision, but there's a bit of rust in the upper right corner of the winshield . The suspension's alright, as alright as any can be on Polish roads, but fortunately I do some driving around Europe.

Thanks for your help!

Roman

Hello and welcome to this board,

I can only respond to the maintenance/reliability part as it was very important for me before the purchase...

I think my 500E is reliable, I have bought it with approx 70k on the clock. She's been a good girl for the 16'000 miles I've already done with her this past year...I've been stranded once but it was due to the failure of a 2$ piece of plastic, so she never let me down BUT :

1) the first service I did was for 120'000 km's, it cost 1200 CHF, approx 900$

2) I had to change some hoses to cool the transmission or something, plus the power steering pump, plus other details, total 1700$

3) Another service, 500$

I'm looking at the air pump fairly soon, it is making noise and has to be changed, it's gonna be another 1000$, so cool.... for a part which is not needed

And with all that, here's all the rest which could fail :

wire harness : 1000 $
timing chain : +/- 2500 $
nitrogen cells : 800 $
rear self leveling system : +/- 1000 $
asr problems : see thread by member called run.exe, possibly thousands to put right

Plus all others funny surprises which can show up all of a sudden,

Don't get me wrong, I love my 500e, I want to keep her for another couple of years, but yes, she IS expensive to run, so beware...

[placo1]

I've had mine for about a year now and have spent probably about $1000 on necessary maintenance.

If the car has a good documented maintenance history and was taken care of by the previous owner you really shouldn't have too many problems.

Major expenses as Manu explained is the total fluid service ($600US) to change the differential, transmission, oil, brake, coolant, hydraulic fluids and the filters for each of these items. This also included any required adjustments.

The harness can be a problem, the power steering pump hoses are a problem (Cheap fix) and the nitrogen cells in the trunk generally fail at 90 - 100K.

The engines are bulletproof except for the timing chain rails/guides (90K), the cap/rotor(Every 30K).

Try to find a good private mechanic to review the car if your dealership doesn't have experience.

[need2speed]

Originally posted by Manu
I'm looking at the air pump fairly soon, it is making noise and has to be changed, it's gonna be another 1000$, so cool.... for a part which is not needed

I feel your pain....but can ignore the noise! :p

Seriously, the pump only runs for a few minutes on start-up so, unless you have air quality testing, let it make noise. I tried disconnecting it but it activated the "check engine" light.

FWIW, after about a year it went quiet again.

Hey Dean,

Your post gives me hope again. I thought that if the pump failed it would trigger a fault code So as long as it doesn't seize up I'm fine ?? How refreshing for my wallet

[roman]

Gents,
My E500 adventure has begun! Started of a bad note though.
I took the '92 to shop my friend uses and got it checked. The owner was really reluctant to go to the one I wanted. Wonder why . They did some checks and it turned out that all is fine, suspension and transmission OK, but THE ENGINE - that's a different story. The oil preasure gauge is broke - shows 3 atmospheres no matter what. The odometer reading 200k km most probably isn't original and the list goes on.
My decision - forget about this one! There's a '93 that I'm going to see this week. From the information I've gather seems to be a better deal. We'll see what the shop says.

Cheers!

Roman
'93 300TD