Rear Inner/Subframe Bushes

[C250TDSportAuto]

Last Summer I had an awful creaking at the rear drivers side of the car. I took it into a so called BMW/Mercedes specialist. They diagnosed it as being the Rear Inner Bushes. Thye told me it was a pain of a job and had to strip the rear right down to get to them. Anyway £350 later the creaking was cured, or so I thought. Recently, only 10 months later, the creaking has started again just on the drivers side rear again so I returned the car to them asking them to find out what was causing it. I have had a phonecall from them today and they've said it is the rear subframe bushes.

Are these, the rear subframe bushes the same as the rear inner bushes, or are they something completely different.

He's told me it's a pain of a job and loads needs stripping and it's going to cost me about £350. Hmmm I thought, that sounds familiar, so I asked him if they keep records of previous work on their system, he said yes, and i told him I'm pretty sure you did the same job for me about 10 months ago, he said he'll double check their system and get back to me. He didn't get back to me. That leads me to believe they've screwed up. I doubt very much they'll admit it.

I'm going for the car in the morning and I need to be armed, any advice would be welcome.

I'm thinking I'll ask them to get my car on a ramp and show me the job done last year and the on they're wanting to do this.

Maybe they should have advised me last year to replace other bushes while the car was stripped if there are other bushes in that area, all, i assume of a similar age and similar material.

I feel like i'm going to get screwed over anyway:sad: or am I just paranoid in thinking everyone is out to screw me over.

 

[wireman]

Hows about telling us which model it is for starters please.

201 & 124 (most are similar) have four rubber bush mountings on the rear frame which fix it to the body shell, one pressed into each corner of the sub frame and they are not easy to access or install.
The 4 sub frame mounts have one vertical 12mm bolt (19mm head) with big washers (~70mm dia) holding the entire rear end on. If its one of these thats dud they should all be changed because it takes ages to get it to bits and put back together.

There are also 5 suspension links or arms on each side with rubber at each end. It among these where I would expect an inner bush to be fitted.

The anti roll bar is also rubber infested with 2 mount bushes and 4 link bushes.

So far the back sub frame rubber count is 30, it could be any of them but to creak it will probably be a suspension arm bush.

The diff has 3 more mounting bushes but that is most unlikely to be the source of your creak, and to make it 34 rubber bits there's one for the exhaust as well.

Other folks with more knowledge and experience of doing these repairs may have better info for you but they will need to know which model and year it is.

An indie may be able to provide a decent repair at a sensible man hour rate.