Oldspanners
Senior Member
- Joined
- Oct 30, 2017
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- 1,489
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- Location
- Normandy
- Your Mercedes
- C CLASS 2004 C180
Wish I had thought of that and the wiring harness blockers are just solid pieces of wire with the male and female connectors. I seen some people cut open the harness and solder the braided wire solid to stop the oil.This is one of a number of threads that discuss the cam magnet oil leak and the consequences as the oil heads off around your wiring loom to cause poor connections at any number of connectors and generally mess up your engine so I will add my two cents here.
There are loads of these engines out there and its a question of when not if you are going to get caught by it. MB have invented the retrofit additional wiring loop to prevent the oil getting into the main loom but after years of main dealer servicing never has the fitting of these been recommended for the car I'm working on. That's shameful customer service in my view. They knew it could be an eventual costly problem -£2500 quoted in this case - wiring loom, ECU, sensors etc etc.
I've got O2 sensor error and this appears to be the favourite destination for the oil according to most threads. At the lowest point I guess this is natural what with gravity and all. I cleaned up the connector but I'm going to replace the sensor anyway. There's a larger, squarer wiring connector located immediately above the round post-cat O2 sensor connector and when I opened that one up I nearly got an eye full of 5W-30. Its true - always wear safety glasses.
There is a thread on MBWorld I think, where someone has fixed the cam magnet leak rather than replace the things at £loads each. I have followed suit and hacksawed off the three aluminium rivet heads which hold it together. The thin silicone washers inside are what have failed and let the oil past. I have added a suitable flexible gasket cement to each side of these and put the sandwich together again - my expectation is this repair makes it considerably better than the original device - I will update in the future when I'm proven wrong (or right). The O-ring behind the cam magnet needs replacing but I can't be doing with paying 6 or 7 quid for something that costs less than $2 stateside - why is it we are always being fleeced in the UK ? This too will get the gasket cement treatment.
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