OK, I realize that this post probably belongs in the Best Benz Shops thread, but I figured it would get more exposure here. I want everyone to know what a jewel Mr. MB Motors is, and what a great person its owner/operator, Enrique, is.
If you have been following some of my prior posts, you probably know that my daughter's 1989 300 TE was "possessed" by the coasting-stall. That is a condition exhibited by many W124 vehicles. The condition causes the car to stall as it is coasting to a stop. After the car stalls (or cuts out) it will start right back up. Until it stalls again. There are supposedly many causes for this problem. It seems to afflict only certain model years from the W124 series.
My former mechanic was not able to fix the condition. He simply kept throwing parts at it, but the car kept stalling. My prior posts detail all the "fixes" (that didn't work) that were attempted by my previous mechanic. Finally I got fed up and took it to another local mechanic. He too couldn't get the car to work right.
At this point I was ready to either perform an exorcism on the car, sell it, or drive it off a cliff to collect the insurance money.
Luckily I did neither of the above.
Instead, I decided to follow Paul's advice (as well as others here) and took the car to Mr. MB (and Enrique is truly Mr. MB). Right away we hit it off. I liked the way his shop looks, very clean and organized. Enrique was born in Spain and, like me, is fluent in Spanish. Although both of us are also fluent in English, we spoke in Spanish to each other--it is always nice to communicate in one's mother tongue. I also liked the way he took his time to explain things to me. He was, and is, always polite and generous with his time.
Anyhow, I left the car with him and I told him to take all the time in the world. Three weeks went by and then he called me to give me a progress report.
He told me that he wanted me to go to his shop so he could better explain to me what he had found out about my car. To me, that sounded like the family doctor calling you in to his office to tell you that your test results were back and things weren;t good. When I got to the shop we sat down and he the proceeded to explain to me all the different things he had tried and looked at while trying to diagnose the problem with my daughter's car.
His final conclusion was that the wiring harness was defective. He told me that he had spent the past three weeks testing different parts of the car and going through different scenarios trying to pinpoint the exact cause of the stalling. His final conclusion was that the wiring harness was defective. He said that he wanted to be sure that in fact it was the wiring harness because the wiring harness is a very expensive cure and he did not want to replace it until HE WAS SURE that was in fact the problem.
Then he told me that he had checked around and there were no wiring harnesses available in stock for my daughter's car. He said that a wiring harness would have to be ordered from Mercedes Benz in Germany. He must have seen the look of shock in my face because he then told me that if I trusted him with the car for a couple of more weeks, he would go through the wiring harness, wire by wire, and isolate the source of the fault.
Since there were no wiring harnessess to be had, and since ordering one would probably take a couple of weeks anyway, I gave him the go ahead.
Well, sure enough, Enrique was eventually able to isolate the problem to a couple of wires within the harness and he replaced them.
The car has not stalled again.
Now for the best part. A wiring harness would have cost $800 - $900 for the part, plus tax and labor.
Enrique had my car in the shop for over a month. He could have easily spent 15 - 20, or even more, hours of labor diagnosing the problem, test driving the car, etc. Instead, he charged me for only 5 hours of labor and a few parts that he put in. I had asked him to also do a front brake job. Total for all the work he did, including the brakes, was $750.00. Far less than the cost of one wiring harness!!!
I paid him $800.00 and I told him to take the extra $50.00 and buy his wife some nice roses.
We never discussed cost when I initially took the car to his shop, because I trusted him (based on all of YOUR experience) not to burn me. I offered to pay him more than the $750.00 and he refused. He said that to him the satisfaction of meeting a challenge and fixing a car for his customer means more than making money. He said that he has always had the same philosphy and it has always worked well for him.
Needless to say, I am now another one of Enrique's countless fans. He is a man who clearly enjoys what he is doing and he does it extremely well. He could probably retire tomorrow and live very comfortably, but people like him, who love what they do, cannot just restire. And that is a good thing for the rest of us who depend on him to keep our cars running.
While I was in his shop, "visitng" my daughter's car, I saw people from ALL over the city bring their cars to him. Not many mechanics can make the same claim.
One final story. After I picked up the car I went to put gas in it (now, talk about a major rip off!!!). As I looked aorund, I found a crumpled $20 bill behind the driver's seat. I knew the money was not there before I took the car to him, because I had just cleaned the car's interior and there was no money there (I would have taken it). So I figured that the money belonged to Enrique and that it had fallen out of his pocket while he test drove the car.
I drove back to the shop and handed him the $20. He looked at me and smiled and told me that is one of the reaons why he does not "burn" people, so that in turn people do not burn him. It is all about Karma and what goes around comes around.
I think it is fair to predict that Enrique has a lot of good Karma coming his way!!!
