Mercedes, Worth It?

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Originally Posted by 2015_PSD
After owning 2 MB cars (2018 C300 and 2018 AMG GLC43), I have only 2 words for you---maintenance and cost. Case in point, the C300 needed 4 new tires after 13K miles (yes, 13,000 miles), the AMG needed a 4 wheel brake job at 26K miles. I would avoid it like the plague, but that is just me.

I was wondering why you got rid of the MB's.
 
Originally Posted by 2015_PSD
Originally Posted by madRiver
Originally Posted by 2015_PSD
After owning 2 MB cars (2018 C300 and 2018 AMG GLC43), I have only 2 words for you---maintenance and cost. Case in point, the C300 needed 4 new tires after 13K miles (yes, 13,000 miles), the AMG needed a 4 wheel brake job at 26K miles. I would avoid it like the plague, but that is just me.
I buy a uber performance vehicle but want to average brakes. 26k is a decent life for likely Brembo or equivalent. The tires is another story, guessing you bought the one with the ultra high performance tires installed. Both are not MB issues but more buyer naivety on what they are getting and seller not disclosing what you are getting. Unfortunate vehicle for you. That all being said MB makes more average run of the mill cars like the CLA, C class and even E class which is a screaming bargain certified used. If you buy the non performance versions the cost of ownership is similar to regular Audi.

Baloney - the cheapest Ford or Chevy on the planet would not have these type issues.I have owned multiple Corvettes with high performance everything and the brakes typically lasted 50K miles under the same driving conditions. MB wanted nearly $2200USD to do a 4 wheel brake job? Give me a break, I did it myself for $225USD. Point of fact is, modern MB cars are not built for longevity and leasing them makes a whole lot more sense than buying them. When the lease is up on the C300, I will be saying "Adios" to Mercedes.

You are exactly right. MB's are built to be leased until the warranty is up. They require little maintenance for the original owner. If repairs are needed, they give them nice loaners. It's the second owner that gets screwed. Some of the older models will last a long time if you do your research. I have a 2000 CLK 430 Cabrio. That drivetrain has the reputation of being one of the best ever built by MB. Their are a lot of them still on the road.
 
Originally Posted by CT8
With a Mercedes the people will look at you and think wow the guy has his credit maxed or ,,,wow what a fool.


Just like those people rolling around in Ford Raptors eh?
cool.gif
 
Originally Posted by 2015_PSD
... Case in point, the C300 needed 4 new tires after 13K miles (yes, 13,000 miles),...

Except for the first set I don't think it's fair to pin tire problems on a vehicle. The vehicle manufacturer may have made a poor choice on specifying the first set of tires from the tire manufacturer. I think subsequent sets would last much longer.
 
Originally Posted by Kestas
Originally Posted by 2015_PSD
... Case in point, the C300 needed 4 new tires after 13K miles (yes, 13,000 miles),...

Except for the first set I don't think it's fair to pin tire problems on a vehicle. The vehicle manufacturer may have made a poor choice on specifying the first set of tires from the tire manufacturer. I think subsequent sets would last much longer.
Yup. Most OEM tires are designed with low noise and comfort in mind. Longevity is last on the list of requirements.

Still, 13K sounds a bit low, especially if they were rotated.
 
I'm one of the older folks on this forum. I've owned something like 30 cars so far, many bought new.

I bought a new 2006 MB C230 for my wife on her birthday (She is soooo worth it! Seriously). It was one of the worst cars I've every owned. I finally traded it in on a new BMW for less then the price of repairs i had made in the last 90 days. Understand, this car (like all our cars) was treated with respect and impeccably maintained. For example, I don't rev cold motors, I bleed brakes every year, I R&R transmission fluid every 15K miles, I R&R coolant every 2 or 3 years, etc. The average age of our current fleet is 9 years and 98k miles. I am 100% confident that any one of our cars could make a 3k mile cross country trip without anything more than gasoline and a windshield wash! Right now, with no prep whatsoever. Even when new, I didn't have that confidence in our MB.

Here is the list of problems we had with it.

1) From day one it had a drive train vibration @ 65-70mph. The MB service manager eventually admitted that MB had a problem with this. After several warranty repair attempts MB never provided a solution (in hindsight I should have used this opportunity to Lemon Law the thing).
2) The car had a tendency to overheat the right front brake rotor. I'd jack up the car in the garage with the engine off and find the RF brake dragging. Repeated warranty repairs were unsuccessful I finally "fixed" the problem by pulling the ABS fuse. Problem gone! We drove the car without ABS for 75K miles.
3) It swallowed some plastic bits that reside INSIDE the multi-stage intake manifold, which hammered one of the spark plugs closed. It needed a new intake manifold. And even though the car was driven just 3 or 4 miles after the malfunction, it killed the right side catalytic converter. The car was out of warranty at this point. This was an expensive repair.
4) The "conductor plate" inside the 7-speed auto failed, leaving the trans stuck in 7th gear. The conductor plate is a very large electrical component INSIDE the oiled part of the transmission. It sits above the valve body. This was an expensive repair.
5) Later, the valve body failed in the transmission, resulting in extremely harsh 1-2 upshifts. This required another expensive repair.

At this point I gave up on it and traded it in. It had 117k miles on it, far to soon for a well treated and maintained car to require so many expensive repairs. I consider a car with 117k miles on it "middle-aged", not "old".

The conductor plate and valve body are known weak points. At least our M272 motor didn't have the faulty balance shaft gears, which is another known problem (and a $6K repair). I thought that era C-class was a good looking car, but it was a total POS.

My son made a recent comment to me. You don't see these cars on the road anymore! When they were new you saw them everywhere. No more. They've all been recycled and have been reincarnated as trunk lids on something new.

Scott

PS Attached is a mug shot of that POS.


2006 C230 Rear Quarter.JPG
 
Originally Posted by 2015_PSD
Baloney - the cheapest Ford or Chevy on the planet would not have these type issues.I have owned multiple Corvettes with high performance everything and the brakes typically lasted 50K miles under the same driving conditions. MB wanted nearly $2200USD to do a 4 wheel brake job? Give me a break, I did it myself for $225USD. Point of fact is, modern MB cars are not built for longevity and leasing them makes a whole lot more sense than buying them. When the lease is up on the C300, I will be saying "Adios" to Mercedes.

AMG = ZR1 Corvette not the plebeian version. They happen to both share track pads which don't last.

Not a fair comparison to a sub $35k entry level luxury car.
 
Originally Posted by madRiver
Originally Posted by 2015_PSD
Baloney - the cheapest Ford or Chevy on the planet would not have these type issues.I have owned multiple Corvettes with high performance everything and the brakes typically lasted 50K miles under the same driving conditions. MB wanted nearly $2200USD to do a 4 wheel brake job? Give me a break, I did it myself for $225USD. Point of fact is, modern MB cars are not built for longevity and leasing them makes a whole lot more sense than buying them. When the lease is up on the C300, I will be saying "Adios" to Mercedes.

AMG = ZR1 Corvette not the plebeian version. They happen to both share track pads which don't last.

Not a fair comparison to a sub $35k entry level luxury car.

I have owned a ZR1 so yeah, fair comparison.
 
Originally Posted by Quattro Pete
Yup. Most OEM tires are designed with low noise and comfort in mind. Longevity is last on the list of requirements.

Still, 13K sounds a bit low, especially if they were rotated.

My wife was only able to get 15k miles out of her 19" Continentals on her C300. The lack of alternatives royal PITA. They make the car handle like a dream but that comes with a cost to longevity. Pay to play as they say.
 
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As to whether or not the hood ornament is worth the extra $12,000, one will have to weigh his/her affection for such things versus economic diligence.
 
Originally Posted by SLO_Town
I'm one of the older folks on this forum. I've owned something like 30 cars so far, many bought new.

I bought a new 2006 MB C230 for my wife on her birthday (She is soooo worth it! Seriously). It was one of the worst cars I've every owned. I finally traded it in on a new BMW for less then the price of repairs i had made in the last 90 days. Understand, this car (like all our cars) was treated with respect and impeccably maintained. For example, I don't rev cold motors, I bleed brakes every year, I R&R transmission fluid every 15K miles, I R&R coolant every 2 or 3 years, etc. The average age of our current fleet is 9 years and 98k miles. I am 100% confident that any one of our cars could make a 3k mile cross country trip without anything more than gasoline and a windshield wash! Right now, with no prep whatsoever. Even when new, I didn't have that confidence in our MB.

Here is the list of problems we had with it.

1) From day one it had a drive train vibration @ 65-70mph. The MB service manager eventually admitted that MB had a problem with this. After several warranty repair attempts MB never provided a solution (in hindsight I should have used this opportunity to Lemon Law the thing).
2) The car had a tendency to overheat the right front brake rotor. I'd jack up the car in the garage with the engine off and find the RF brake dragging. Repeated warranty repairs were unsuccessful I finally "fixed" the problem by pulling the ABS fuse. Problem gone! We drove the car without ABS for 75K miles.
3) It swallowed some plastic bits that reside INSIDE the multi-stage intake manifold, which hammered one of the spark plugs closed. It needed a new intake manifold. And even though the car was driven just 3 or 4 miles after the malfunction, it killed the right side catalytic converter. The car was out of warranty at this point. This was an expensive repair.
4) The "conductor plate" inside the 7-speed auto failed, leaving the trans stuck in 7th gear. The conductor plate is a very large electrical component INSIDE the oiled part of the transmission. It sits above the valve body. This was an expensive repair.
5) Later, the valve body failed in the transmission, resulting in extremely harsh 1-2 upshifts. This required another expensive repair.

At this point I gave up on it and traded it in. It had 117k miles on it, far to soon for a well treated and maintained car to require so many expensive repairs. I consider a car with 117k miles on it "middle-aged", not "old".

The conductor plate and valve body are known weak points. At least our M272 motor didn't have the faulty balance shaft gears, which is another known problem (and a $6K repair). I thought that era C-class was a good looking car, but it was a total POS.

My son made a recent comment to me. You don't see these cars on the road anymore! When they were new you saw them everywhere. No more. They've all been recycled and have been reincarnated as trunk lids on something new.

Scott

PS Attached is a mug shot of that POS.


Cost cutting from the Chrysler merger?
 
Well I've owned two E classes, the 2008 E350 for about 5 years, the 2011 E350 for about 3 years. The older models were worse, some of the worst years for the E-350 was 2006 and 2003 when they first came out. The later years were better so just because a 2006 or earlier was bad doesn't really mean that much when talking about a 2015. Probably a different set of problems. They do say their lower end cars tend to have more issues or maybe people at that end complain more as they expect more as they step up from a Toyota/Honda. I tend to like mine loaded as both are somewhat loaded. The base models like the CLA didn't have a lot of luxury options. In terms of maintenance, my older 2008 needs more than the newer 2011 and the more recent years 2014+ seem to be better although with start/stop, the aux battery they use tends to die early. If you take it to the dealer, it can be expense, but I've had things done at an indy that were probably 1/3 to 1/4 the cost of the dealer. Like front brakes will easily run 1k at the dealer, but I've gotten new rotors and pads and had them installed for under $300 and when I get them from FCPeuro, all the parts they sell have a lifetime warranty so my next set will cost me less than $100 installed with labor. But I think even for other makes, they're also close to the 1k mark for rotors and pads. MB uses different brakes on different lines, the cheapest setup is the E350, then the E550 had more expensive brakes and when you go to an AMG, they have super fancy brakes where they're a few thousand, but when the car is over 100k, I guess they figure you can afford it. Mine haven't left me stranded and they're both over 100k at this point. I'm starting to do more expensive maintenance on them like springs/struts are coming up and I've done things like ball joints, control arms, tie rods, thermostats, steering angle sensors, pulleys/tensioners, oil cooler gaskets, cv joints, brakes etc.

In terms of warranty if you pick up an MB, they come with a 4 year/50k warranty and if you get a CPO warranty, they go up to 7 years, unlimited miles. If you pick up a private party use one that still has the original warranty left, you can go up to 7 years/100k on the MB warranty, just have to check with the dealer to make sure it's still eligible. They have weird rules as to what's eligible and what's not, like if an MB dealer wholesaled it off to the auction, it might not be.
 
Originally Posted by BMWTurboDzl
Cost cutting from the Chrysler merger?

Hardly. There was no "merger of equals". Daimler bought Chrysler. Bob Eaton, head of Chrysler, threw Chrysler under the bus. He was a very weak executive officer. There are some good books about this charade and how Eaton sold out. Our car was MB all the way.

As you can see in my signature, I like German cars. That said, MB is a brand I will never own again. Comparing our E46 and E90 BMWs to our W203 MB was eye opening, especially the undercarriage area. The BMWs are superior in every respect; floor pan stampings, fasteners, suspension bushings, suspension arms, etc., everything was better on the BMWs.

Another big thing I hated about our MB - it didn't have enough suspension travel on the front end! It smacked the bump stops far too often.

Scott
 
After reading through all of this, it's hard to believe these cars are this bad. Especially when they sell them based on their, "advanced German engineering". Yet experience doesn't lie. It's amazing that in spite of it all, they still manage to keep selling them. Unbelievable.
 
Oh here's a few things to check into. Use this vin decoder to see what options a particular car has.

https://www.datamb.com/

Motor Trend is also good listing the features for a particular year.

https://www.motortrend.com/cars/mercedes-benz/cla-class/2015/

For parts and the repair manual, there's EPC for the electronic parts catalog and the WIS for the repair manuals that the dealers use. You can get a knock off copy on eBay for $6.60. You'd be hard pressed to find this with other makes.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Latest-201...orkshop-Manual-Full-version/123679649919

In terms of the suspension, that depends on whether you get the sports package or not. On the E350, the sports packages had a 1 inch lower suspension. I would have preferred the luxury package for a softer ride but all the cars that have a lot of options were always sports model. Drawback of this is that there's 3 different set of springs that go with the car so you're stuck with MB as there aren't a lot of aftermarket options. That's the drawback of a low volume car. Same deal as other makes though, there are dealers that will sell parts online for 25-30% off list price. Some local MB dealers mark their parts up above list price. In terms of repairs, sometimes they're nice and pretty straight forward, othertimes they're too complex. I don't know about the CLA, but in general MB's tend to like to eat motor mounts because they use liquid filled mounts that tend to break and once the liquid leaks out, you get a vibration. But when they're working, it's a very smooth and quiet ride. The CLA is a cheaper class so I don't know if that's still true.

As for tires, depends on the car and the driving I guess. I've gotten about 30k out of the first set of tires that came with the car, don't know how many it had before I got it. The other car came with Contiential Truecontact and the previous owner got about 60k out of them. Also use the vin decoder and get the car you want. On the forums I see people all the time who want to add bixenons or keyless go and all those components cost a lot more than just buying the car with the options you want.

The CLA has a decent set of options, parktronic, pano roof, keyless go, bixenons. Mine have the active curve illumination, headlamp washers, power trunk closer, auto high beams, massage seats etc which I don't think the CLA has.

Originally Posted by Silver
As to whether or not the hood ornament is worth the extra $12,000, one will have to weigh his/her affection for such things versus economic diligence.


Well the hood ornament is about $40 and they pretty much use the same one across the entire car line.

laugh.gif
 
Originally Posted by SLO_Town
I'm one of the older folks on this forum. I've owned something like 30 cars so far, many bought new.

I bought a new 2006 MB C230 for my wife on her birthday (She is soooo worth it! Seriously). It was one of the worst cars I've every owned. I finally traded it in on a new BMW for less then the price of repairs i had made in the last 90 days. Understand, this car (like all our cars) was treated with respect and impeccably maintained. For example, I don't rev cold motors, I bleed brakes every year, I R&R transmission fluid every 15K miles, I R&R coolant every 2 or 3 years, etc. The average age of our current fleet is 9 years and 98k miles. I am 100% confident that any one of our cars could make a 3k mile cross country trip without anything more than gasoline and a windshield wash! Right now, with no prep whatsoever. Even when new, I didn't have that confidence in our MB.

Here is the list of problems we had with it.

1) From day one it had a drive train vibration @ 65-70mph. The MB service manager eventually admitted that MB had a problem with this. After several warranty repair attempts MB never provided a solution (in hindsight I should have used this opportunity to Lemon Law the thing).
2) The car had a tendency to overheat the right front brake rotor. I'd jack up the car in the garage with the engine off and find the RF brake dragging. Repeated warranty repairs were unsuccessful I finally "fixed" the problem by pulling the ABS fuse. Problem gone! We drove the car without ABS for 75K miles.
3) It swallowed some plastic bits that reside INSIDE the multi-stage intake manifold, which hammered one of the spark plugs closed. It needed a new intake manifold. And even though the car was driven just 3 or 4 miles after the malfunction, it killed the right side catalytic converter. The car was out of warranty at this point. This was an expensive repair.
4) The "conductor plate" inside the 7-speed auto failed, leaving the trans stuck in 7th gear. The conductor plate is a very large electrical component INSIDE the oiled part of the transmission. It sits above the valve body. This was an expensive repair.
5) Later, the valve body failed in the transmission, resulting in extremely harsh 1-2 upshifts. This required another expensive repair.

At this point I gave up on it and traded it in. It had 117k miles on it, far to soon for a well treated and maintained car to require so many expensive repairs. I consider a car with 117k miles on it "middle-aged", not "old".

The conductor plate and valve body are known weak points. At least our M272 motor didn't have the faulty balance shaft gears, which is another known problem (and a $6K repair). I thought that era C-class was a good looking car, but it was a total POS.


Yeah, I guess the C class was more problematic than the E class. Those first two issues weren't an issue on the E class. I can see about #2 though, Mercedes has several brake safety systems, one of them keeps the rotors dry by applying the brakes when it detects rain, can't remember how, maybe if your wipers are going on. With the intake manifold, yes, that's a known problem with the M272. You usually get error messages before the bits of the intake manifold break off and fall into the engine causing damage, the manifold is about $600 from Pieirburg, but the MB one is over 1k. I have the 5 speed which was better in the 4matic than the 7 speed. I think they updated the transmission in 2010+ so the conductor plate issue was fixed. I had wanted to buy a 2006 E-350 initially but after reading the forums and finding out about the balance shaft, got a 2008 model. Some early 2007 still had the balance shaft issue and all of them had that on the 2006 E-350. You must have been lucky if your engine was outside the range in 2006. They got rid of the M272 engine in 2012 when they went with direct injection. Completely different design, 60 degree V6 instead of the 90 degree V6 in the M272.

Also in terms of it shifting slowly, you can do an ECU reset which erases the transmission shift memory and it usually shifts more responsively after that as it relearns your driving style.
 
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