I self insure as much as I can. Insurance companies are a for profit business and have no ethical or moral qualms about ripping someone off. Unless I have a loan company that requires full coverage or unless I am driving a car I can't afford to loose I self insure.

When you consider cars like ours it makes even more sense. For example you wreck your car and its not repairable. You take the amount the car is currently worth and subtract that for the scrap value you got for the car (many of our cars are worth a lot in parts) and that is your loss. Many people underestimate the value of a wreck and underestimate how easily it can be sold. Many of us would only be out a couple of grand in an accident and have paid much more than that over the years in insurance premiums. Just like in Vegas the house (the insurance company) always wins. Over a period of time the amount you spend in premiums will ALWAYS be higher than the amount the company pays out.

Carfax is a nice try but because of all the loopholes and the way that the insurance companies and recyclers work the rules I don't trust it 100%. If your terribly afraid of buying a wrecked car go buy a new one. Its interesting the hysteria involved in vehicles that have involved in collisions.

Water damage is ok as long as it is not salt water damage. After only several days, the salt water starts to attack cylinder bores, cranks and cams. If they are recovered quickly, they can be flushed. In the hurricane zones, there were two types of damage. Flood and impact. People were buying flooded out boats/cars, then replacing the drive trains with dry components from crushed boats/cars.

As someone else in the forum suggested a while back, why not disconnect the air bags in older Benz and avoid the potential problem? Sure, it's a safety item, but I don't believe that it is an inspection item in most or any states that I know of. We drive cars without the air bags every day if they are a little older. It appears that the car salvagers know how easy it is to disable these items; why not just do it or have it done by a mechanic?

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Ben Harrison Carter
1999 Mercedes ML320 87K
1992 Mercedes 300CE 89K
1995 Corvette 29K -- Sold Dec 09
1989 Mercedes 420SEL 99K -- (Sold 4/08)
1968 Mercedes 230S (106K) (Sold 9/06))
1976 Mercedes 450SEL 130K (Just sold - 06)
1961 Mercedes 220Sb (sold years ago)

A buddy bought a previously freshwater flooded 420SEL last year. It was........okay. No signs inside, but plenty outside and on the drivetrain. It had a few funky electical gremlins, but nothing major. When we removed the engine covers to replace the shocks, there was a thick film of schlugunk on the shock towers. There was unusual rust/crud in crevices of the undercarriage in places normally pristine because they're so protected. If you didn't know cars well and didn't know what to look for, most people would never have known it had been flooded. Two months ago, the tranny quit going into final gear, so he auctioned it off out of frustration (and fear).

Two years ago, I bought a theft recovery vehicle. Legally, it showed theft recovery, but I knew the history, and it had actually been abandoned - but the local DMV couldn't figure out how to 'code' the paperwork, so they simply tagged it 'theft.' It was a great car, but I decided to sell after about a year. Just for fun, I ran a Carfax ..........which, among other things stated, "THIS CAR IS IDENTIFIED AS A STOLEN VEHICLE! REPORT THIS INFORMATION TO LAW ENFORCEMENT IMMEDIATELY!', or something to that effect. I sold it without problems, but it certainly soured me on Carfax.

Hmmm or even better than that if you drive a 124 with airbags why not replace your flex discs before they fail and avoid the issues all together?

I personally think its kind of dumb to remove saftey components. I also think its kind of dumb to obsess over a used airbag. The simple fact of the matter is there is no real research about how long an airbag will really last. The replacement suggestions from the car makers are generated out of a need for profit and a need to avoid legal liability NOT on science. The moment you drive your car off the lot your whole car becomes used including your airbag.

I used to work in the supercomputer industry and many of the supercomputers I worked with were used to "simulate" car collisions. Even with the multimillion dollar hardware plugged into all of the most realistic calculations based on the known laws of phyisics the cars sometimes crashed differently than they did in the simulation. This tells us that the universe is far more complex than we can comprehend even with our machines and trained engineers.

My point to this is this. Whats worse an airbag popping in your face and causing a minor fender bender accident or being involved in a collison with a tractor trailer without an airbag and being crushed to death by your steering wheel and dashboard because your airbag did not deploy? Since you can't calculate or reasonably guess everything that may happen to you in the future its best to be somewhat prepared for anything. While its unlikely you would be involved in a severe accident where your airbag would be needed would you be willing to bet your life on that?

The reason no shop would consider a used airbag is because of the possibility of a lawsuit. It cheaper refuse to work on it, then pay to defend ones self in a lawsuit if such a used airbag were to fail.

I suspect in this case more was wrong than just an airbag. As said above when a drivesahft fails lots of things get damaged.

I would never consider a flood car, I don't care what kind of deal I was given.

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2016 Corvette Stingray 2LT
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

If you are not confident in evaluating possible damage, stay away. But, just because it says flood damage in the history does not mean the car got wet. It just means it was towed out of a flood zone. Some of the flood cars are toast and I wouldn't even want many parts off of them. Others are not bad deals. I have no idea what the ratio of good to bad would be.

I have looked at a lot of them but I have never bought a car with a salvage title of any kind.

CARFAX is only moderately trustworthy, I don't think it could be relied upon too much, it is just a pretty good idea as to what may have happened. DMV input errors can mess it up pretty well, I have seen that. Like garbage in, garbage out.

As to Airbags, the Honda Accords and Toyota Camrys are really high up on the theft ladder because of their value for high dollar parts, like AIRBAGS that can be bought by body shops and reinstalled on wrecked cars

I wouldn't want to deal with a car that had been in a flood, I guess its not just a matter of rust, electric gremlins but also one of dirt and uncleanliness!!

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1991 560 SEC AMG, 199k <---- 300 hp 10:1 ECE euro HV ...

1995 E 420, 170k "The Red Plum" (sold)

2015 BMW 535i xdrive awd Stage 1 DINAN, 6k, <----364 hp

1967 Mercury Cougar, 49k

2013 Jaguar XF, 20k <----340 hp Supercharged, All Wheel Drive (sold)

I could spot one a mile away. I simply would not consider a car that has been under any kind of water for any period of time. To many expensive computers I don't want to deal with it.


Take a W211 that was soaked in the sludge known as water that filled New Orleans. Such a car is more or less scrap metal.

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2016 Corvette Stingray 2LT
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

My 126 was filled with water when I bought it. Many of the seals had failed and rainwater had started to pour into the interior over many years. The original owner of my car had passed away and the car had been an asset of his estate stuck in probate court. I almost considered not buying the car for this reason (the condensation on the inside of the windows was quite disconcerting). Once the water was cleaned up and the car was fully dried inside it was absolutely fine. No visiable water damage inside the car at all and its been one of the most reliable and cheap to maintain cars I have ever owned. For all intents and purposes it was a flood car.

People tend to get hysterical when it comes to water damage. They go on and on about toxic mold and the horrible expensive damage that happens to the car. Once you completely dry out the car its not really a big deal. Mold needs moisture to survive. If your car was covered in mold a nice trip to Arizona or Texas would dry the car out in a couple of days and kill all of it.

I also collect antiques and water damage is a fact of life when it comes to a 200+ year old piece of furniture. Even pieces of furniture that are in museums have been wet in some parts of their lives. Air conditioning is a recent invention and it was quite common for moisture to condense inside cool dark places where people like to congregate. Leaky roofs and flood waters also contributed to this. Its good people were not so hysterical over water damage back then otherwise some beautiful treasures would have been tossed in the trash in an effort to score some cash and new furniture from the insurance company.

Sludge and mud are a different story all together. Its nearly impossible to remove that from a car due to all the hidden spaces inside.

Their is a world of difference between that 300SD and a modern car. The SD's most complicated electrical device inside is the radio. Say that 2005 E320CDI that I saw on Ebay a few months back that had been under water for a few days, well maybe $10k could replace enough computers to get it running.

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2016 Corvette Stingray 2LT
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

Perhaps if you used brand new parts. A wrecked donor car could provide a wealth of electronic components and even allow you to profit from the venture by selling off other useful parts. The other thing most people don't keep in mind is electronic components are perfectly ok when they get wet. The thing that gets you is the water shorting the circuits because most modern cars are "always on". Not all the electronic components are going to be powered up at any given time while a car is parked and some of them would be fine if given ample time to dry before attempting to start the car. If you do any long term storage of vehicles you have to do the same kind of "careful starting" that you might have to if your car gets wet. Starting a classic car thats been sitting 20 years is just as destructive as starting a highly electronic car thats just been wet.

Just like any other mechanical issue the price goes up astronomically if you run into the Mercedes dealer or greedy independant mechanic and exclaim "oh my goodness my car got flooded please help me".

My 140 is well designed with a battery mounted low in the trunk and most of its computerized components mounted high behind the dash. Its likely that water would short the battery before moving to the more expensive electronics higher up in the car. In the event that my car got flooded I would disconnect the battery and have it towed to an independant mechanic preferably in a state with low humidity to assess the problems before dooming it to the boneyard.

Sure you can dry it out. What about the smell? The interior usualy is scrap.

Two things I simply refuse to ever buy, a car that has been under water, and a boat that has been under water. Both are a never ending electrical nightmare. I'd rather not put myself through, so I just won't buy one. I'll leave the flood cars to the ambitios people who want a challange.

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2016 Corvette Stingray 2LT
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

My 126 does not smell at all. The smell comes from bacteria. Bacteria need water in order to survive. A month in a low humidity enviroment and there would be no smell.

Again I think we have a communications issue here. You equate a "flood car" as any car that has had water in it at all when in reality the flood cars that are really problematic are the ones that have had salt water in them or muddy water in them.

My 126 has been the most reliable car I have ever owned in my life. I just hate it when old wives tales suddenly become "fact" when it comes to urban legends like the notorious "flood car".

In my book a flood car is any car that has sat in water deep enough for said water to enter the passanger compartment. IE if you were sitting in the drivers seat your feet would be wet.

In my book once the water is up to the dash on a modern computer filled car it is scrap metal.

Salt water of course is the worst. But the sludge that was floating around New Orleans was pretty foul.

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2016 Corvette Stingray 2LT
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200