Hi fellas, this is my first post to the forum and just want to say how great it is for a DIY mechanic like me for info that I would not be able to get anywhere else..
Sorry to bore you with a long story but this is my tale of woe ….
My dad bought a 2005 C200 CDi in England last summer and imported it to Ireland. Car had 33k now has 45k and service light has been on for about 700 miles.
I said I would do the oil change so last Sat I bought oil and oil filter to do engine oil change
Started sucking oil out of the dipstick (red cap) on right as you look into the engine from front of car
Wasn’t too sure if I was taking it out of the correct dipstick tube so searched on this forum for more info and D’oh! ….. found I was using the wrong one…
At this stage had about 2 litres sucked out so I poured em back in and thought – well at least I am leaving it as I found it….
Then did the engine oil change which went fairly ok… altho cud only suck out about 3 litres – and then had to remove undertray and sump plug to get the rest – and then added up what I had taken out – a whopping 7.8 litres – the car is only supposed to have 6.5 litres as an oil change so I can only presume the last ****** mechanic over-filled it!
But after doing engine oil and filter, I took it for a spin – very slow to take off and wouldn’t change gear. So back to the internet to see what I could find. Most obvious solution was that box was low on fluid. Didn’t have dipstick but had a wire rope – about 8mm in dia. – so used that. Car was fairly cold but the wire rope showed a massive 130mm length of oil on it ! there is a pic on here somewhere of a dipstick and seems to show approx. 65mm as the right place to be once the box is warmed up – so now I’m thinking that maybe the problem is that there is too much oil in it??
Was really annoyed about this now… told my Dad and then he said the car had done this twice in the last 3 months – at least now it looked like this problem was there before I went messing with the car!
Now I remembered another detail re the car – when we brought it home last year I went underneath the car just for a look and noticed an oil leak – didn’t take off the undertray – and wasn’t really sure where the leak had come from -- just told my dad to take the car to a local mechanic. This he did and I can just about remember him saying it was something to do with the dipstick tube on the auto tranny…..
Anyway I made a few calls during the week – 1 really helpful guy was Mike Parsons at Sussex Autos – and most people said u must get it checked on the diagnostic.
So still trying to go down the cheap route (and not goto big Mercedes dealer) I heard about a Polish guy who had a diagnostic kit and called him today.
He found and error code P0730 – Incorrect gear ratio. We drained the pan of the tranny and there was only about 2 or 2.5 litres. He turned the engine looking for a drain plug on the converter but said there was none (think I had seen this mentioned on the forum here already). He said the best thing to do was change the oil and filter & see how it drives. Then he took the pan off so we would have the filter in our hands when seeing if any of the motor factors had one. No surprise that none of the factors had it in stock.
Now he felt around the magnet of the pan with his finger and there was some thick sludgy stuff – he says this is metal fragments – I felt it but didn’t think I cud feel actual metal bits --- suppose I cud just remove pan again after couple of thousand miles and see if there is more build up here (hopefully at least it will drive properly after new oil and filter) - Mike Parsons said if i found any metal bits in the pan that you would HAVE to remove the box and send to a repair shop to see what was wearing as this would wreck the box at some stage in the future.
So a few questions..
Can anyone get me the proper dipstick measurement please – Mike at Sussex Autos is ordering me one but he hasn’t got them in stock yet
Is the wire rope bending in the sump and going further than a dipstick would go.. and therefore “showing too much oil”? draining only 2 litres from the pan wud seem to say too little. And how much should we put in to fill it properly? At the moment is it completely empty or is there some still in the converter? One of the motor factors today had a booklet which said the box had 8 litres capacity?
I must get the engine code from the car – will the gearbox type (722 whatever) be shown somewhere?
Any tips on a good workshop manual – paper or online?
Any thoughts or pointers would be most gratefully received. & thanks for reading this!!!!
Denis
Sorry to bore you with a long story but this is my tale of woe ….
My dad bought a 2005 C200 CDi in England last summer and imported it to Ireland. Car had 33k now has 45k and service light has been on for about 700 miles.
I said I would do the oil change so last Sat I bought oil and oil filter to do engine oil change
Started sucking oil out of the dipstick (red cap) on right as you look into the engine from front of car
Wasn’t too sure if I was taking it out of the correct dipstick tube so searched on this forum for more info and D’oh! ….. found I was using the wrong one…
At this stage had about 2 litres sucked out so I poured em back in and thought – well at least I am leaving it as I found it….
Then did the engine oil change which went fairly ok… altho cud only suck out about 3 litres – and then had to remove undertray and sump plug to get the rest – and then added up what I had taken out – a whopping 7.8 litres – the car is only supposed to have 6.5 litres as an oil change so I can only presume the last ****** mechanic over-filled it!
But after doing engine oil and filter, I took it for a spin – very slow to take off and wouldn’t change gear. So back to the internet to see what I could find. Most obvious solution was that box was low on fluid. Didn’t have dipstick but had a wire rope – about 8mm in dia. – so used that. Car was fairly cold but the wire rope showed a massive 130mm length of oil on it ! there is a pic on here somewhere of a dipstick and seems to show approx. 65mm as the right place to be once the box is warmed up – so now I’m thinking that maybe the problem is that there is too much oil in it??
Was really annoyed about this now… told my Dad and then he said the car had done this twice in the last 3 months – at least now it looked like this problem was there before I went messing with the car!
Now I remembered another detail re the car – when we brought it home last year I went underneath the car just for a look and noticed an oil leak – didn’t take off the undertray – and wasn’t really sure where the leak had come from -- just told my dad to take the car to a local mechanic. This he did and I can just about remember him saying it was something to do with the dipstick tube on the auto tranny…..
Anyway I made a few calls during the week – 1 really helpful guy was Mike Parsons at Sussex Autos – and most people said u must get it checked on the diagnostic.
So still trying to go down the cheap route (and not goto big Mercedes dealer) I heard about a Polish guy who had a diagnostic kit and called him today.
He found and error code P0730 – Incorrect gear ratio. We drained the pan of the tranny and there was only about 2 or 2.5 litres. He turned the engine looking for a drain plug on the converter but said there was none (think I had seen this mentioned on the forum here already). He said the best thing to do was change the oil and filter & see how it drives. Then he took the pan off so we would have the filter in our hands when seeing if any of the motor factors had one. No surprise that none of the factors had it in stock.
Now he felt around the magnet of the pan with his finger and there was some thick sludgy stuff – he says this is metal fragments – I felt it but didn’t think I cud feel actual metal bits --- suppose I cud just remove pan again after couple of thousand miles and see if there is more build up here (hopefully at least it will drive properly after new oil and filter) - Mike Parsons said if i found any metal bits in the pan that you would HAVE to remove the box and send to a repair shop to see what was wearing as this would wreck the box at some stage in the future.
So a few questions..
Can anyone get me the proper dipstick measurement please – Mike at Sussex Autos is ordering me one but he hasn’t got them in stock yet
Is the wire rope bending in the sump and going further than a dipstick would go.. and therefore “showing too much oil”? draining only 2 litres from the pan wud seem to say too little. And how much should we put in to fill it properly? At the moment is it completely empty or is there some still in the converter? One of the motor factors today had a booklet which said the box had 8 litres capacity?
I must get the engine code from the car – will the gearbox type (722 whatever) be shown somewhere?
Any tips on a good workshop manual – paper or online?
Any thoughts or pointers would be most gratefully received. & thanks for reading this!!!!
Denis
