300ce for the skip!

[Lee_1]

Just getting ready to sell the car and it goes and breaks down on me!
once the car is at normal running temp the car misfires and stalls. I then try to restart and It will start until I try to pull away and it stalls again. Call the AA wait for an hour and then hey presto the ****** car starts up! he followed me home for about a mile without any problem . after sitting there for 10 minutes with the car running the problem comes back... the answer... call MB sir that's your best bet. please someone give me an idea as where to look !!(don't want to pay garage prices when im going sell the car as soon as its running... upgrade for a newer model) the last time this problem occurred was about a year ago and it turned out to be the lovely little black box that cost me a grand! any ideas?? :cry:

 

[Barnie]

Hi Lee
Yes, it may well be that expensive little back box, Again, however I'd be looking towards fuel starvation, fuel filter maybe??
Barnie

 

[NDavies4]

Sounds so familiar. Have a '92 300CE-24 myself that ('til last week) had been behaving much the same for nearly 2 years: Ran fine from cold but once warmed up won't idle smoothly or pull at low revs - problem always intermittent plus occasionally got so bad the car would die (and stay dead for around a half hour). 4 garages, a few parts and ££ later I too was ready to put it in the skip!

Have been browsing the various MBZ forums (UK and US) over the last few months and realise this appears to be a fairly common problem across a range of the older models, the thing though is that people either appear to never solve it, or the solution seems to vary widely even though the symptoms are nearly always identical.

My impression is that those that have posted their solution have found the problem to be in one of the less expensive parts such as: distributor cap; ignition leads; plugs; OVP relay; leaky injector; oxygen sensor; coolant temp sensor; fuel filter; air leaks; etc.. and not any of the magic (and expensive) black boxes.... The hard thing though is finding which component in your engine is at fault, and my experience is that most garages (including main MBZ dealers) don't have the skills/knowledge necessary for proper fault finding on a 10+ year old car.

Via a new garage (recommendation picked up from www.******************.co.uk), my problem was identified last week as a faulty crankshaft position sensor. Had a new cable/sensor installed last Friday (£80 + labour) and car appears to be running perfectly.

Was planning to post something in a week or so once I'm fully convinced all is now solved (have had my hopes raised/dashed on too many occasions to start celebrating just yet!). But on reading your post, and seeing the similarity in model/year, I thought I'd better write straight away in case it might help (i.e. saves you the skip hire charge).

 

[LNM]

Just for comment really, I'd second any opinion that MZB dealers don't have necessary skills to detect some of these problems. As an example, mine recently had a very expensive service that identified several MOT failure points but missed completely a broken anti roll bar bracket.

At £75 per hour, things should be a little more thourough.

Also, why are the HT leads so ****** expensive on W124s ?