Das Rüstbückette: Mein E-Klasse

[Partridge]

Oh? Before they perfected it and worked out to get it stay on the bloody car?

[NorfolkNWeigh]

Mrs NorfolknWeigh has got a 2001 CLK cab. that has frilly arches, I wouldn't mind but 3 years ago I had front and rear wings painted. My mate who did it spouted that bollocks about dodgy water based paint ' they'll never need doing again ,best paint on the car that is' he proclaimed-twat! He's painting the whole car this winter.

[Partridge]

Gawd knows then.

[Spiny Norman]

The E39 doesn't have it all its own way either to be fair. Nikasil issues caused a lot of grief, as did BMWs claim that the automatic gearboxes were 'sealed for life' and they're not immune to rust either, although nowhere near as bad on the bodywork as the W210.
Mercedes really dropped the quality control ball in the mid 90s when the board of directors started listening to the accountants instead of the engineers and it's cost them dear. They've only recently repaired their reputation in this country.

 

In many ways they make excellent shiter purchases if you know how to tell a good one from a snotter, because they're totally hated by both Merc fans and the pub bore car fan alike. Nobody wants them, particularly the petrol ones, prices are on the floor and they're quite possibly about to disappear completely as the current crop of owners end up scrapping them as soon as they fail their next MOT. I doubt I'll sell mine to anyone who wants 'a car' as opposed to to '1700Kg of ferrous metal', which is a shame in a way because it deserves better.

[fiatdaft]

Mrs NorfolknWeigh has got a 2001 CLK cab. that has frilly arches, I wouldn't mind but 3 years ago I had front and rear wings painted. My mate who did it spouted that bollocks about dodgy water based paint ' they'll never need doing again ,best paint on the car that is' he proclaimed-twat! He's painting the whole car this winter.

Meaning it was early water based paint that caused Mercedes to be shocking in the rusting stakes.

[Partridge]

Bet their paint supplier lost a few contracts over that.

[Tetleysmooth]

Go on, get it done....

 

http://www.carz2.co/merc-e-class-95-02-320-c.asp

[Partridge]

Thanks for the link, mate That may be useful...

[cort16]

I agree the e39 has it's faults but even now you rarely see one totaly hanging and if it is it's all around the same spots. Those Mercs are also grim inside. Having just driven (and bought) another E39 last week they do drive extemely well. Even the mega underpowered 520i feels smooth as it's a straight six aposed to the weezy 4 pot the base model mercs got. THe E39 is probably BMW's finest hour in the last 30 years as the subsequent 5's and 3's aren't as well made in my view anyway.

[Partridge]

I think of the e39 as being the last proper 5 Series...engineering came first not, marketing.

[Junkman]

 

I wonder if Hitler ever had this problem? It would be great to have him on Autoshite, as well.

 

I certainly would not want him here.

He was not an autoshiter, but a keen car lover and a quite accomplished driver as a young man.

However, he loathed those huge Mercedes barges he had assigned to him and frequently requested them to be replaced with something less highfaluting and more practical.

Documents to this extend do exist. However, this was denied, because as a Reichskanzler these were the cars he was entitled to and thus they were assigned to him by the motor pool.

Note that he never looks happy while being transported in one of them, whereas on other photos he often does.

Hitler liked the simple life. He had the bedroom cleared and a camp bed put in in his apartment in Berlin. He hated pompousness and tried to get away from it as much as he could.

[Madman Of The People]

I certainly would not want him here.

He was not an autoshiter, but a keen car lover and a quite accomplished driver as a young man.

However, he loathed those huge Mercedes barges he had assigned to him and frequently requested them to be replaced with something less highfaluting and more practical.

Documents to this extend do exist. However, this was denied, because as a Reichskanzler these were the cars he was entitled to and thus they were assigned to him by the motor pool.

Note that he never looks happy while being transported in one of them, whereas on other photos he often does.

Hitler liked the simple life. He had the bedroom cleared and a camp bed put in in his apartment in Berlin. He hated pompousness and tried to get away from it as much as he could.

 

 

Really?  I had read Hitler never learned to drive.  He did, however, enjoy being driven about.

[stormee]

Old german rhyme: Der Führer war ein armes Schwein, er hatte keinen Führerschein.

[fiatdaft]

I have been compared to hitler on here!

[Shep Shepherd]

When I see E-Classes with that much rust at a relatively young age, they make me glad that I have a Volvo V70

[NorfolkNWeigh]

Meaning it was early water based paint that caused Mercedes to be shocking in the rusting stakes.

 

Not unless he went back to Stuttgart in a time machine and bought a couple of litres when he painted it 3 years ago.

I know someone who had wings and bonnet replaced on a w210 by Merc under warranty. The wings were rusting again within a couple years.

[Spiny Norman]

When I see E-Classes with that much rust at a relatively young age, they make me glad that I have a Volvo V70

 

Having owned a 70 series Volvo I can honestly say I'm glad I now own an E class.

I generally like Volvos but the C70 I had was an utter shitheap, albeit one with a totally unblemished body.

 

It's funny how different people can have different experiences with 'known problem' cars.

I'm a firm believer in K series OMGHGF and wouldn't touch any Rover engined car because it happened to the one I had, but there are a few lucky souls who've got away with it and consequently love the fact that the cars themselves are dirt cheap because no bugger wants them.

The Alfa 156 I had (OMGcambelt failure/wonky electrics/tricky suspension) was a paragon of reliability, but all the VAG products I've come into contact with have been expensive, frequently broken piles of doggy doo.

Go figure, as they say.

 

Those wings in that link are cheap though, and they bolt on so they're easy enough to replace.

[Junkman]

Really?  I had read Hitler never learned to drive.  He did, however, enjoy being driven about.

 

Throughout the 1920s, before he took off in big politics, he had a succession of Mercedes two-seaters, always painted red, and he was infamous among his friends for being quite a spirited driver. This, and his attitude toward the Pompmobiles of the Reichskanzlei fleet, is clearly described in John Toland's biography about him.

[brickwall]

He was the champion of the runabout.

[Shep Shepherd]

Having owned a 70 series Volvo I can honestly say I'm glad I now own an E class.

I generally like Volvos but the C70 I had was an utter shitheap, albeit one with a totally unblemished body.

 

Not a big fan of the 'sporty' Volvos, apart from the 480, which is utterly bonkers. Estate cars FTW

[Partridge]

I certainly would not want him here.

He was not an autoshiter, but a keen car lover and a quite accomplished driver as a young man.

However, he loathed those huge Mercedes barges he had assigned to him and frequently requested them to be replaced with something less highfaluting and more practical.

Documents to this extend do exist. However, this was denied, because as a Reichskanzler these were the cars he was entitled to and thus they were assigned to him by the motor pool.

Note that he never looks happy while being transported in one of them, whereas on other photos he often does.

Hitler liked the simple life. He had the bedroom cleared and a camp bed put in in his apartment in Berlin. He hated pompousness and tried to get away from it as much as he could.

Well, you learn something new everyday

[Mr_Bo11ox]

These things are bloody awful as far as I can tell (admittedly I've never owned one)

[cort16]

I have been compared to hitler on here!

No, it was Mussolini that drove a fiat punto.

[Partridge]

These things are bloody awful as far as I can tell (admittedly I've never owned one)

Yes, it's crap. But from what I do know, they're annoyingly hard to kill.

[Barry Cade]

I've had to scrape up the aftermath of an E300's spring tower breaking at speed... not pretty. Also had one go whilst I was doing an MOT on it, as you have to jack a Merc under the wishbones to check the balljoints properly. I thought the world was going to end the noise it made. Spoke to a Mercedes guy about these (in Germany- no names) and it was a multitude of things, which all were done in the maximisition of profit for Mercedes, which came together in these things to make them shit. water based paint was one, less spot welds was another. much MUCH less seam sealing than the W124, which apparently had 8kg of the stuff and the main one was a different  cheaper process for stamping panels, which damaged the metal's coating leading to rust at folded edges and holes.

[Junkman]

The water-based paint as such is not the real problem. It works fairly well today.

However, one cannot stress enough that the environment in which this paint is applied must be absolutely ambient for the process and ever so slight deviations immediately, irreversibly and inevitably lead to immense quality issues.

When this process was first introduced in the late 80s, there were big problems with properly climatising the painting facilities. The climatisation technology wasn't up to it at the time, something that of course showed its ugly face years later. Since then a lot of effort (read: moolah) was spent to improve said technology and since around the turn of the millennium, sufficient progress had been made to assure a fairly consistent quality, if nothing goes wrong by unforeseen circumstances, which still happens more often than wished for.

 

However, since introducing the W124s, Mercedes has a proven track record of a multitude of severe quality problems irrespective of the painting process, for which no real explanation can be delivered. The entire first generation of W124 250 Diesels comes to mind, which simply OMGRENADED at stroke 60k miles. Then there was the switch from Mercedes Badermatics to ZF supplied ones, which OMGRENADED stroke 50k miles. Then there was the debacle with timing chains that had a shelf life half as long as any cambelt courtesy of IBIS, Mercedes' supplier of said chains, outsourcing production to China and Mercedes, despite being aware of that fact, still procuring those chains. How do I know this? A friend of mine has a taxi company in Berlin. He was operating 50+ Mercedes taxis way back when, nowadays maybe twice that many. It's a little known fact that if you don't provide Mercedes Diesel Badermatic taxis in Berlin, you don't get any drivers. On these grounds, he bought, on average, in excess of 30 new Mercedes cars per year over the past 30 odd years or so. Needless to say that the stories he can tell would fill a book. His verdict: "I wish Mercedes would somewhen improve their quality to at least Alfa Romeo standards". His words, not mine.

 

PHAKT is, Mercedes to this day enjoys a reputation that is in stark contrast with the quality of the products it delivered since the 80s.

I currently own the absolute pinnacle* of the late 80s Mercedes portfolio in form of a 560 SEC, and as such allegedly the Zenith* of the automotive world* at the time, should I subscribe to the hype. All I can say is that what I see when I look at it is that quality-wise it is vastly inferior to a lot of other stuff of the same vintage I have owned over the years.

 

In 2005 I was left with a dizzler 300E (or E300 as they were called all of a sudden) W210 (if I'm not mistaken), because a colleague of mine opted to sod off to Australia, and he entrusted me to keep the car, since he was unable to sell it in time before he left, sell it in my own time, and transfer the proceeds minus a commission once I managed to do so.

The car was three years old at the time and had an impeccable maintenance record with the official Mercedes branch in Reading, not just an ordinary main dealership.

It was atrocious to drive, the seats were anything but comfy, it had no power, my big one who was little back then constantly puked in it, something she never did in any other car I owned, the area around the battery underneath the rear seat was not only etched away by the acid vapours, so were the springs of the rear seat cushion. Yes, a Mercedes (!), the cream of the crop of the automotive world, was still made with sprung cushions in this millennium, can you believe that?

The silvery boxes that caught my eye in the engine compartment had 'Made in Mexico' written on them. I'm prejudist and racist enough to firmly believe that a country with the automotive background of Mexico is not able to supply automotive components fit for a Mercedes, something I am actually feel being entitled to simply on the grounds of the not inconsiderable purchase price.

There also were multiple rust issues and overall, the car had the charisma of a second class compartment of Northwest Trains.

I finally managed to unload it on a divorced copper, who was wiling to pay all but £5500 for it. A three year old Mercedes. I don't even want to know how mindbogglingly excessive the new price was, but at the time I had the gut feeling that pretty much everything that has to do with Mercedes cars is fucked up.

I then proceeded in the Mercedes world by purchasing a 560 SEL Lorinser. More puking child, more rust issues, and more consternation as to what all the hype is about. It took a Rover P6 for me to realise that automotive history actually has some brilliant stuff in petto.

 

On a different note - how are you getting on with your Rüstbückette?

[forddeliveryboy]

I wonder, was it the "Daimler Chrysler"-ication that caused it?

No, the accountants kept banging on about how the W124 made the company no money

 

Early water based paint.

Not just, poorer panel manufacture and shite steel as far as I can tell. Once had a '96 W124 and that was bubbling like an Alfasud.  The whole car felt a lot less strong than an 80s version.

[Partridge]

Wow, Junkman that was pretty eye opening. Is that what the Internet Police would call a "Quality Post"?

 

What you've said about outsourcing does not suprise me. My Dad has been working in complience engineering for years (he puts those little "CE" marks on things) and is always moaning about more and more components being made in China, and like you say Mexico for phones, laptops and pretty much everything else, and being utter rubbish.

Infact, more and complience work and general testing itself is done in developing contries.

 

When you hear about the latest iPhone having its signal bloked by the owner's hand, chances are it's down to some hapless berk in China, not Apple in California.

 

I'm sure it's the same story with a lot of cars.

 

But how am I getting on? Before I do much else I've been considering new boots, as I'm pretty sure these ain't legal...

 

Had a poke around, and other than the outer panels the rust isn't too bad. Yes it's scabby underneath, but it could be caught...depends if I can be arsed. After reading the comments above, now I'm not so sure I can be...

[cort16]

The water based paint is only the base coat the laquer would still be 2-pac. This is still the case now.

 

I think even Mercedes admitted at some point that they lowered their quality standards for profit and went too far.

I've got a year old C-Class Coupe with the 220CDi motor and it feels well made other than the laquer on the wheels is lifting. Only one fault with it so far, which never took me off the road and was fixed at a service.

[Junkman]

Yeah, meanwhile the quality is fairly consistent again, but not really superior to pretty much all other chod out there, something we discussed in the there isn't really any modern shite thread. Quality is something pretty evenly balanced throughout the industry by now, so the question what exactly justifies the premium Mercedes charges for its products remains, although this time around for different reasons than 20 or so years ago.

 

On the other hand, I have seen quite a few Mercedeses looking like Alan's and no matter how neglected a car is, this isn't consistent with age.