It looks like we are all willing to accept different levels of tradeoffs to drive MBs.

Cap'n Carageous, your travails have far exceeded my threshold for pain, and I would have given up long ago. Reading the forums, there are some owners that have more than their share of bad luck. In my very short period of ownership, problems have been minor.

Since buying my used 1991 300CE with 112,250m in June 2002, now with 122,750m, this is what I've done besides fluid changes:

tumbler $90
SRS and horn contacts $50
Horn Hub $80
voltage reg $50
front rotors and pads $165
thermostat $7

I LOVE driving this car. I look forward to my driving everyday. When faced with a new car purchase decision, my choices were a new econobox (i.e. Honda) that would be initially expensive but would have low maintainance and high dependability or this car that looked awesome, drove awesome and cost far less but with potential repair and dependability problems. So far so good, knock on wood.

glenmore
1991 300CE