1994 E320 engine wiring Question
 

I have read about the E320 wiring insulation going away. I saw it happen on a simular year Volvo. We bought the 1994 E320 wagon 3 months ago. I looked today real carefully at the wiring under the hood and It ALL looks perfect. I looked at where the ECM is behind the battery and saw what looks like a date tag on the wiring loom. It said 1993. So my question is were there some cars that WEREN'T affected with this problem? I pinched alot of the wires insulation with my finger nail and all seemed supple. What do you think or know about this? Thanks, Chris

I've not ever heard of a batch of good ones. The best way to tell what you have is to get the part number - a dealer parts person will be able to tell you whether it is original or a replacement. Whatever it is if it looks good and is working fine I'd just leave it alone.

What does the replacement loom cost?

According to MB, there couldn't possibly be any cars that were NOT affected because there weren't any that WERE!!!:bsflag:

True .

You can be assured that if there were ever any harness problems, Benz would have taken care of them, no questions asked !!!
This is THE car manufacturer of the WORLD, for goodness sake .............

Yea... Maybe if they look away long enough, it will go away!

Outward appearance of harness may be deceiving
 

Thought I would chime in with my M104 wiring harness experience last summer. When I purchased the car ('95 E320 wagon) in July 2004, the usual places for detecting a defective harness all appeared sound (as in, the insulation was not brittle and quite intact). The car worked well and I thought I dodged the proverbial bullet; it worked well until last summer and we were a few hours in the state of Maine heading for Canada. The car started to miss as we encountered grades or needed to accelerate. Upon arrival at my destination in Nova Scotia, I accessed this very website and searched on the dreaded harness. I discovered that to thoroughly assess the condition of the harness, the cover between camshafts had to be removed. I felt the wires beneath the conduit and it was quite "crunchy". I carefully cut into a section of the conduit with an Exacto knife and discovered the insulation on the wires leading to a coil unit was either missing or quite fragmented. Not having the luxury of time to accurately determine the source of the "miss", I deemed a wiring harness replacement was necessary before further diagnosis could occur. The purchase price of a new, replacement harness from the dealer was on the north side of $1,000 (U.S.). The harness was replaced and the "miss" never occurred again. I failed to take not of the manufacture date on the replacement harness. One can only hope that MB did not continue to re-introduce the problem by supplying the defective harnesses to their parts inventory.

how many miles on the car?

archibald2, Thanks for your opinion and findings. I will take the cover off and check the wiring under it. Did just the wire loom costs $1000? Or was that with labor too?

The car has 115,000mi.

dtf.... I see by your signature that you own a '94 E320 wagon too. I see that you have 260,000mi on it. Did you have to replace the wire loom? Have you had any major or unusual problems with your car? Thanks, Chris

Yup - got one too. Getting ready to turn 270,000 miles. Wiring harness lasted until ~250,000. Had it changed with all the coils to the plugs too.

Things that are predictable to go bad that have happened to me:

Radiator neck (Plastic ones at any time)
Fan clutch bearing (~200,000 miles)
Head gasket - on it's third one (hopefully the last one, updated part this time)
water pump
EGR valve need cleaning out periodically

Just as a side note the ball joints on this car cost ~$800 each side to do because they are part of the lower control arm and can't be replaced individually.

Tramsmission on these cars have a 30,000 mile service interval for the fluid and filters. Worth the ~$150 for the job.

Labour was additional
 

Motorhead, I believe the labour charge was an additional ~$400. As I was +/- 2,200 miles from home, it was money well spent.
More recently, I had the head gasket replaced as it started to drool near the firewall end of the engine. That was around $1,800 but this included taking the head to a machine shop to check the guides (deemed to be hardly worn); replacing the timing chain, and water pump. While not in chronological order, I did have the evaporator changed prior to the Canadian road trip of 2005. This trip to the shop came in at ~$2,300. Different contributors to this forum have been fortunate to go quite along time without having these issues manifest themselves; many others could chime in on having a similar experience to me; i.e., evaporator, wiring harness, and head gasket all needing replacement at one point. Having had this work done, I am still not disappointed with the decision to purchase the car a couple of years ago. I always thought that the '94 & '95 E320 TE was a well designed automobile that was safe, versatile, great to drive, and the subjective side of me still thinks they are a great looking vehicle.