Front shocks stuck all the way up
 

Racked for an oil change now my front shocks are stuck all the up. WTH?

Well we sprayed the shafts with WD40, put a floor jack under the car gave it a wiggle and down it came.

I’m thinking it might be time for new shocks. LOL

Uhhh, yeah!

You lost me. Do you mean the shocks were extended and were supporting the weight of the front end? That would be very sticky.

Yup, stuck solid all the way up.

This usually means the camber is changing from the sloppy worn balljoints allowing the wheel to literally scrub inwards from the bottom.

moving the car about 10 to 15 ft back and forth with steering motion would have settled it down.

I used to have this problem on my old W124 before I changed its extremely shockingly worn out balljoints.

That's good information, thank you.

$657 later new shocks and all is well again.

Massive Expense
 

?! Even if you'd done all four with the most expen$ive Bilstein HD's it shouldn't have been that expen$ive .

Who did the job ? .

The MBZ tech wouldn’t touch it for that price.

WHAT MBZ Tech ?. the Dealer ? .

Stop time in this area is 100 bucks an hour

Shop Labor Co$t$
 

O.K., I gotcha .

I'm a retired Journeyman Mechanic so i still do the piddly repairs like shocks and tune ups etc.

I'm a Realtor so it's tough for me to timewise and my vision isn't great so it's hard to do my own work anymore. Besides, I get quite a bit of business out of the local shops.

I might be able to land a $200 rebate, but when you need the car back sometimes the extra Hundred isn't the issue.

The fellow at the shop did install the replacement broken sail panel for me at the same time, so there's that bonus. A kind member here directed me to a cream colored sail panel on ebay to replace one that turned into a noodle a few months back. Apparently there are not many cream colored interior parts available.

Another bonus, while the car was in the shop the guy that owned the car 13 years ago happened to stop at the shop. This car was traded in about 13 years ago at a Buick dealership then remained at that dealership in a living collection until I picked it up a few years back. The shop is trying to get us in touch, I'm hoping the prior owner has an old file on the car.

Nice .

I assume by 'cream' you mean Parchment ? .

FWIW, interior its are getting impossible to find new anymore, sad to say .

All three of my current W123's are Palomino color, I'm always finding a better part here or there ~ those Sedan inner sail panels get quite brittle and are easy to break when removing for routine rear seat belt service .