Engineered like no other car. Not a single one like it. Thankfully.

[Talbot]

30 years of internet experience has an effect...

[mat_the_cat]

10 hours ago, Talbot said:

another E300 in for breaking, which is both complete and a runner

I've been in the embarrassing situation (several times) when the car being broken is in far better condition than the one I'm trying to keep on the road!

[Talbot]

1 hour ago, mat_the_cat said:

I've been in the embarrassing situation (several times) when the car being broken is in far better condition than the one I'm trying to keep on the road!

Would be lying if I said this had not happened to me.  On several occasions in the past I have bought a "breaker" for it's engine or some other part, and ended up keeping the breaker and breaking my keeper.

In this case the rot in the donor car is pretty extensive, and it's a lesser spec car, so I have no problems nicking bits off it.  Thankfully the owner (merc specialist I've mentioned before) is happy for me to use bits from it to sort mine.

[Talbot]

I've not got any more photos at the moment, as I'm still *utterly* pissed off about the wiring loom fire, but all the welding is now finished.  It looks half-decent, and if I hadn't had the unintended high-speed oxidation incident, I'd probably have been looking at MOT on Monday.

 

Having had time to look at the damage to the loom.. it's pretty bad, and not as localised as I'd hoped for.  It looks like there is a fairly beefy "live" through the area that burned, and that has shorted to several of the grounds that run through that same area.  Consequently, the grounds and the live have all overheated further up the loom away from the "thermal incident" location, so it's going to necessitate the removal of most of the interior to be able to trace cables and make sure there's no other damage.

The Polypropylene trunking that the 210 uses as it's loom containment was completely melted and burned away for about 150mm, which has not only stuck to a lot of the cabling, it's also plastic-coated a surprising amount of the floor, which will all need chipping off.  The heat also also burned through several of the vacuum pipes that this car relies on not only for central locking, but also for most of the heater control surfaces and the headlamp leveling.  The 20-odd thin cables that ran through that area are a complete knot of exposed copped, melted PVC and remnants of loom tape.

It's a *proper* mess, which is going to take me a little while to get sorted.  I'll get some pics tomorrow.  (which I need for reference anyway..)

So I've bought another car to tide me over.  Had a couple of offers of loan cars, which has been most appreciated, but I have a feeling this isn't going to be a weekend's work, so I would feel wrong imposing on a lent vehicle.  It was blind luck that there was a car available to buy for very cheap, which I could agree to, get MOT'd today, and it be ready for Monday morning.  It's not what I would have chosen, but given how obscenely expensive "cheap" cars are now, this was a no-brainer.

.... another silver Mercedes. 🙄

[LightBulbFun]

3 hours ago, Talbot said:

.... another silver Mercedes. 🙄

 

one of these then?  (I mean the wheels are silver!)

with a very lost @MorrisItalSLX onboard who just wanted to go to Bunnings and made the mistake of falling asleep just before the last stop...

[Crackers]

12 hours ago, Talbot said:

another silver Mercedes

❓

[Talbot]

Given that I need to drive approx 1000 miles next week, that would be just about the worst possible "another silver Merc" possible!

Tis a 2005 C180 Kompressor saloon.  Surprisingly with a gearbox from Barcelona.  It's also been sat under a tree for about 3 months, so is in dire need of a decent wash.  Passed it's MOT yesterday, pick up tomorrow.  Thus far I've driven it about 4 miles, and it just feels like any other Mercedes.

I'd have preferred something a little less similar to the car I already have, but it presented itself at exactly the right moment, so I would have been a fool to say no.

[Six-cylinder]

1 hour ago, Talbot said:

Given that I need to drive approx 1000 miles next week, that would be just about the worst possible "another silver Merc" possible!

Tis a 2005 C180 Kompressor saloon.  Surprisingly with a gearbox from Barcelona.  It's also been sat under a tree for about 3 months, so is in dire need of a decent wash.  Passed it's MOT yesterday, pick up tomorrow.  Thus far I've driven it about 4 miles, and it just feels like any other Mercedes.

I'd have preferred something a little less similar to the car I already have, but it presented itself at exactly the right moment, so I would have been a fool to say no.

Wow a supercharged Mercedes!👍

[Rusty Pelican]

3 hours ago, Talbot said:

Given that I need to drive approx 1000 miles next week, that would be just about the worst possible "another silver Merc" possible!

Tis a 2005 C180 Kompressor saloon.  Surprisingly with a gearbox from Barcelona.  It's also been sat under a tree for about 3 months, so is in dire need of a decent wash.  Passed it's MOT yesterday, pick up tomorrow.  Thus far I've driven it about 4 miles, and it just feels like any other Mercedes.

I'd have preferred something a little less similar to the car I already have, but it presented itself at exactly the right moment, so I would have been a fool to say no.

Have fun with that , same model as mine , mine was built in S Africa !!!

[Talbot]

It never ends...

Got all the Sill painting done, mainly so I can get the wheelarch liner back in, the front wheel back on and get the car back on it's wheels and out of the garage.  Not because I'm finished, but so it looks less like I've crashed into the garage!

Except the NSF window is down, and I dare not reconnect the battery to wind it up due to all the loom damage.  So I'll pull the doorcard off and jump 12v direct to the motor.  So of course I broke off several bonded plastic parts from the doorcard as it's 27 years old now and has all gone brittle.  Fabulous.  Then also notice that the door card has been scorched and blackened in a few places by the fire too.  So that's going to need a replacement card. 

Got the window up.  Superb.  Brake off, roll the car backwards out of the garage, and what's that crescent-shaped mark on the OSR door?  Ah balls, that will be where the garage door mechanism has been rubbing on the car and has scraped all the paint off.  For fucks'sssss ssssssakes!

I, a little while back said:

I need a beer.

I feel that may be true again.

[chaseracer]

To cheer you up, Mr R, here's some more excellent garmentry:

We've "got your back"... 😁

[Talbot]

I've not yet got a photo of the welding, as despite it being OK, and I'm pleased with the finish, I've been too annoyed to get a picture.  Plus I only remember when it's dark, which will give a crappy pic.  I'll get it at some point though.

The couple of pics I do have:  This was a lot of rot cut out of the car:

Someone paid a lot of money for that metal back in the 90s.  I'm glad it wasn't me.

Car out of the garage, as mentioned above.  This wasn't really enough space to work with:

Once the car was out and in the daylight, I could have a proper look at the wiring loom and the damage that has occurred.  It's ugly.

First thing I found was that the hole in the sill(s) has let an astonishing amount of water into the car.  As such the carpets (more accurately, the backers) are all saturated, so the lot got removed.  They're astonishingly heavy:

but then there's probably 5kg of water in there.

Same with the front carpets, which are a lot smaller:

On to the wiring.  Since the Thermal Incident, I've pulled all the trunking out of the way and binned it.  It was ruined.  The cables were all melted together in one big lump of homogenousness, so I've broken all the melted PP away where I can, and have separated all the cables into either singles, or pairs, depending on how they should be:

Mama Mia! That's some horrible Spaghetti!

Urgh.

Turns out that the permanently live cable that has caused this is a battery live that runs from the battery +ve terminal to a sub-fuse-box under the bonnet.  That means there's a completely un-fused live running through the car (battery is under the offside rear seat) which only has to short on something to then set fire to any part of the loom it feels like.  Seems like a massive oversight on the part of the designers TBH.  Given that this car has umpteen fuses in it, including some fairly large (50A and 100A ones) on other sub-main cables, this one will likely get a fuse added to it.  Now I know it's there, I'll just be permanently worrying about it, especially as it's overheated along it's entire length, and has softened all of the insulation.   I've found a couple of places where it's melted to other cables elsewhere in the loom.  Eg, this was under the driver's seat area:

Look carefully at a small-diameter red cable towards the centre bottom of the image, and you can see bare copper where I've pulled it apart.  That will need repair too.

That damaged area again:

The liquid is screenwash.  One of the other services that goes through the area is the front-to-rear pipe, which will need changing as I don't want a join under there to leak.  That will be hilarious* to fit, as the reservoir is behind the headlamp, and it's one piece all the way into the tailgate.  Le Arse.  It's burned right through and hence is siphoning into the car!  Same is true of several vacuum pipes that are no longer one piece in that area:  They'll have to be changed as a vacuum leak would be very boring. Those, thankfully, have connectors before they go into the door, so I can change complete sections from joiner to joiner.

And to top it all off.  I've noticed a stone smash mark in the windscreen with associated spider's legs running from it.  Not sure if this would be an MOT fail or not.. it's right in the middle of the screen, and is definitely in the wiper sweep:

If I can get the car sorted, that is only another £some as an insurance claim, but what a bloody ballache.

[Talbot]

So.  As mentioned above, I had to go to Glasgow last week, and the 210 was never going to be able to do that journey.  Mentioned this to the guy down at my local Merc specialist.

"So, you need a car?"
"Yes.  Have you got one?"
"There's a C-class outside.  Only issue is it's a manual.  Want it?"
"Is it alright?"
"Yeah, it's ok."
"I'll have it".

We found was that it was a few days out of MOT.  So I inflate all the tyres, as they were a bit flat, pull as much dead tree out of the scuttle and rear boot area as I can, and run it up to the localish MOT centre.  Left it with him on the Friday.  Got a note on Saturday to say it had passed with one advisory of tyres close to the limit on one edge.  Walked down there on Monday lunchtime from work, paid for the MOT and drove it away.  Filled it with fuel that evening, and then on Tuesday morning loaded it up with kit and drove it 435 miles up to Glasgow.  Still with green ick in all the trim lines and moss around some of the glass.  DILLIGAF?
I had an interim stop at a supplier just near PeatBogHorror, which is where I realised I'd not yet got a photo of it:

Filthy, but functional wheels.

Got up to my hotel that night, with a rather surprising statistic:

Seriously?  45.1 MPG?  I know it's "only" a 1.8, but it's a supercharged 1.8 with 140-ish BHP, and drives as such.  The power delivery is really linear and smooth.  It just feels like a 2.5-ish litre engine.  And I wasn't dawdling about, as the average speed of 60MPH shows.  Considering I had to faff about in town at this end and in PeatBogHorror, those figures are amazing.  Assuming they are to be believed...

Off to the customer, and shall I park as far away as I can?  Nope, right in front of their door..

Looking even more dirty now.  The motorways were absolutely filthy.  I used an entire tank of screenwash on the journey.  That's not saying a lot though as the tank appears to be only 2 litres from it's warning level to full-to-overflowing.

So after having then faffed about somewhat around Glasgow,  I needed fuel.  The tankful came back with these statistics:

Which were borne out with the tank-to-tank consumption calc.  The fuel computer is accurate to within a few %, which is quite frankly amazing.

Leaving the hotel on the Thursday morning, it would appear that all the cool* kids have cars with blacked out rear windows:

TBH, I really don't like it.  It's been done with tinting paper, so if I get a chance I'll get a hairdrier out and see if I can peel it off.  At least from the side windows if not also from the rear windscreen, as I keep looking over my shoulder to be met with a much darker view of the road.  Plus the auto-dip rear view mirror is having a bit of a hard time interpreting when there is a car behind.   The rear window might not get removed, as I've head it can often tear the HRW elements off at the same time, which would be irritating, as they all work.

The return journey was more of the same.  Did part of it on Thursday evening after a simply superb Burns night dinner with the julaaaaars.   Stayed overnight and visited another company (supplier this time) north of Manchester and then made the return journey home.  I didn't quite make it all the way home on that tank, as I'd had a fair bit of mileage on the Thursday before driving down.  Just at fill up, I had the best statistic so far:

Which was for the leg down from the supplier to just into London.  Yes, I was hypermileing it a bit, mainly to see what I could get out of it, but as the 57MPH average shows, I wasn't being absurd.  It also seems like the Supercharger is a bit of a restriction below about 2kRPM, so best economy is had by keeping the engine above this.  In several sections of 50mph road, this meant *not* being in top gear.  It's the first supercharged engine I've ever really driven properly, so there's a learning curve for me to get the best out of it.  That fuel-up gave another superb entire-tank consumption figure:

Yet again borne out by the pump fuel reading.  If driven sensibly, this is a shockingly economic car!  Yes, you can get the figure down into the low 20s when schlepping about town, and if you're not on a long run, it's hard to get any more than mid-high 30s out of it.  It seems to have a massive range of fuel economy.  More so than I think just about any car I've owned before.  Drive like a bellend?  18mpg.  Hypermile on the motorway?  48mpg.

So, a completely unknown car to me has just done 1130 miles with nothing more than 1 litre of oil added when the know-it-all display asked for it, and three entire tanks of screenwash.  Oh, and about 120 litres of fuel.  Which is amazing, as the E300 would probably have needed nearer 150 litres of diesel fuel for the same journey, at about 20p/litre more than the petrol needed for the C180K.  I'm sure the main difference is the manual gearbox.  You can almost feel the torque converter losses in the E300.  That and the fact that the C180K is a much lighter car, and has better aerodynamics, being a saloon.  And fractionally narrower tyres.  But mainly the gearbox I think.

... which is a 6-speed.  Initially this felt like it has too many ratios to me, and around town / B-roads, you feel like you're constantly changing gear.  There were some points I agreed with W who sold me the car that it might be better as an automatic.  But, after some experience with it, you tend to block-change an awful lot more than you would with a 5-speed box, which does give you more options.  I found myself skipping gears all the time, especially where you can accelerate up to say 50mph, then block change from 3rd to 5th, or indeed if you're not quite at a full stop, you can use 2nd-4th-6th to accelerate onto a motorway or dual carriageway.  A 5-speed box with the same ratios for 1st and top would have been quite adequate, but possibly not as flexible.  TBH, it spent most of it's time in 6th gear with the cruise control set at a GPS-indicated 70mph (dash showed 71/72 or 115kmh) at which speed top gear is about 2300/2400 RPM, so ideal for keeping the supercharger spinning.

It's been washed now, and looks amazing for a 18 year old 160k mile car.  There's absolutely no rust I can find,  no lacquer peel, no damaged trim, no significant scrapes or marks, no interior damage and no significant squeaks or rattles.  The worst "damage" on the car is the gear knob is quite badly worn.  That's it.  It looks and drives like a car with half it's miles and years.

As a car.. I would not have chosen it.  The S210 is much more comfortable for me, and with it being a saloon is hopelessly inflexible (rear seats do not fold at all).  However, as "an car", bought in bit of an emergency, it's been absolutely superb.

[loserone]

That looks ace, to be honest.  It's exactly what I *should* buy

[horriblemercedes]

I'm really impressed with that C Class. I thought it would be rubbish on fuel. Now added to my shortlist for future consideration 

[Talbot]

I suspect an Automatic one (which the majority are) would not be as good.  Probably similar around town, but I doubt would top 40mpg on the motoway, maybe high 30s at best.

I've yet to see what it will do with my "normal" mileage, but I'm expecting a solid 35, given what I've seen.

[Rust Collector]

That’s some impressive performance from the C class. I’ve always really fancied one in estate guise. I think they did a larger 2.2 petrol as well but can’t remember if that was supercharged too, they always seemed like bargains though.

[Talbot]

There were many other options that I'm aware of in the C-class of this type (W203 I think?).   My ideal would be a diesel manual estate, but then it would still be a C-class, and I like larger cars.  If I could have the 6-speed gearbox from this in my E300, that really would be ideal for me.  I've considered a manual conversion on it before, but it would be a lot of work, and I've no idea how to sort the electronics out so that it all still works, and I'd still have the cruise control / limit drive and all the other niceties that come with the car as standard.

[horriblemercedes]

Just read your request for Bluetooth help on another thread. Can you take a picture of the head unit? 

 

If it's the one I'm thinking of, there's a knack. I mean a very specific thing you have to do which is obvious when you know how. We have a Vito with such a head unit at work so I can have a look to remind myself and try to write some instructions. 

 

I had a friend whose wife had an A Class from new for ten years and they thought the Bluetooth was broken from new. I connected my friend's phone to it about two weeks before they traded it in against a new Volvo 

[dome]

Excellent writeup on the C class. I'll add a manual 180 estate to the list of sensible cars I should own.

[108]

I had a 200CLK auto which was criminally bad on fuel (300 miles on a tank even on long runs) but lovely to drive. It had been fitted with wider tyres by a previous owner and put me off Mercs. 
I’ll reconsider based on your report. 
A supercharged C class manual estate would be ideal for day to day hauling and road trips as well. 

[Talbot]

On 1/30/2023 at 6:38 AM, horriblemercedes said:

Just read your request for Bluetooth help on another thread. Can you take a picture of the head unit?

Yes:

And when you prod the button that says "tel" on the right, it does this:

There are also buttons on the steering wheel for pick up and hang up.  Either of these prodded makes the display on the dashboard say "function not available" or something similar.

Any clues?

 

[Rust Collector]

11 minutes ago, Talbot said:

There are also buttons on the steering wheel for pick up and hang up.  Either of these prodded makes the display on the dashboard say "function not available" or something similar.

I have Mercedes Comand with the navigation screen in my E430, it wasn't specced with a phone from factory though so despite having the phone buttons on the steering wheel and head unit pressing them results in the same message - I think the functionality needs to be added through STAR but I'm going from memory on this. I seem to recall it involved shittery including getting one of the phone modules that clipped into the arm rest and then a Bluetooth adapter to plug into that but that could be a peculiarity of the W210 as a slightly older platform.

[horriblemercedes]

1 hour ago, Talbot said:

Yes:

And when you prod the button that says "tel" on the right, it does this:

There are also buttons on the steering wheel for pick up and hang up.  Either of these prodded makes the display on the dashboard say "function not available" or something similar.

Any clues?

 

Ah sorry, I was thinking of a slightly more modern unit. I think that means the phone module isn't there

 

I've had a few cars from this era with phone buttons but without the optional module and they all do something similar 

[chaseracer]

[Talbot]

Might have to see what said phone module looks like and then look through some breaker vehicles and hope to get lucky.

[Talbot]

Actually, there appear to be loads of "phone" modules for sale on ebay.  Several different types though.  Does anyone know what would be needed for this car to add bluetooth connectivity to the factory radio?

[Rust Collector]

30 minutes ago, Talbot said:

Actually, there appear to be loads of "phone" modules for sale on ebay.  Several different types though.  Does anyone know what would be needed for this car to add bluetooth connectivity to the factory radio?

When I was trying to figure out what was needed for the W210 I think this website shone some light on the matter:

https://www.commandonline.co.uk/Mercedes-Bluetooth/

[Talbot]

S'pose I really should do an update on the E-class. It's been sat outside for three weeks now, but there has been progress.

Having pinched as much cabling as made sense from another E-class, and splicing that in, several hours were then spent cutting out and shortening by about 6" all the cables that simply pass through the location of the fire.  Felt like about a million cables, but was probably only 30.  Still a lot though.  Every one of them was soldered and heat-shrink sealed, as I really don't want to be chasing issues.

With the exception of one cable.  It had nowhere to terminate.  Every other cable could be identified by colour and by the bit of burned copper linking the two sides, but one just stopped.  Something wrong there I felt, so nipped down to Mateyboy down the road to have a look in the car he's breaking.  Found the cable in question... and sure enough it doesn't go anywhere.  Presumably it's for some other function that neither my car or the breaker has.  Ok, that's good news.

Charged the battery up, as it had been shorted quite a bit, and then left for 3 weeks.   Also (finally) added a fuel priming bulb on the pipe up from the tank, as it has a horrible habit of draining back.  It's been like that for the whole time I've had it (and clearly for longer, as someone has fitted a non-standard non-return valve in the feed line, which has not fixed the problem)  Primed the system, and after a few attempts, it burbled back into life.  Huzzah!

.... but was accompanied by a fairly good show of warning lamp bingo:

That's BAS, ASR, ABS and SRS.  Ah.  Plus the interior lamps seem stuck on, but only the rear half.  Something is a bit screwy there.

I'm hoping that the warning lamp bingo is going to be due to various shorts happening during the fire, and hence all the modules having stored codes that keep the warning lamps on.  As long as I can get it to move under it's own power, I can get it to the specialist for them to talk to it nicely with STAR and see what's going on.

... and the interior lamps seem related to the fact that the car seems to think the passenger door is permanently open.  Once the lamps eventually go out (after about 20 minutes.. anti-battery-drain mode) any of the doors being opened will trigger the lamps back on, Except the passenger door.  Hence that's clearly the door switch that is keeping them on.  Still not sure why the front lamps won't turn on though.  It's possible the control module had a nasty spike when the car shorted, as the passenger door was open at the time.  A spiked and damaged input channel from that door might explain a lot.

Still.  Having the engine running for the first time since the "incident" is a major step forward.  Last thing I need to do before putting the interior back in is replace the two pipes that go through the car.  One vacuum line, and (oddly) the front-to-rear screenwash line, which goes from the tank, down the passenger side, then under both front seats, and continues down the driver's side to the back of the car.  Bizzare routing!

[Stanky]

Well done getting it back running again and the wires soldered up. if you wanted to use my Delphi DS150e clone to see what codes its showing/try and knock some of them out you are more than welcome? It'll definitely talk to an W210, I assume it has the standard OBD2 port?