W210 E320CDi owner's blog/maintenance costs

[toby1]

I thought I'd post up my repair and maintenace costs since acquiring the car in December 2009. It might be of interest to current or prospective owners of the W210 E320 Cdi.

Previous service history as stamped in the book prior to my ownership:

Car registered new on 04/03/2002

1st service at 11,771 miles ; 11/04/03
2nd service at 19,364 miles ; 03/03/04
3rd service at 30,210 miles ; 19/05/05
4th service at 42,117 miles ; 21/05/06
5th service at 54,316 miles ; 16/07/07
6th service at 69,112 miles ; 11/02/08
7th service at 83,417 miles ; 23/03/09

Now on to my records:

09/12/2009 ; Headlamp aim all over the place plus a rear bulb blown: £62.97

18/12/2009 ; 90,904 miles, car running too cold, new thermostat and coolant: £160.00

23/12/2009 ; 4 new tyres, Avon 235/45 ZR17 £347.30

13/02/2010 ; WIM geometery check, unable to adjust as broken front spring £30.00

06/05/2010 ; Pierburg MAS from ECP, self fitted £53.42

08/03/2010 ; 92,592 miles, B service at MB Indy, 2xbelt pulleys and V belt, pollen filter. Advisory: requires 2 bottom arms & alternator pulley £348.21

30/03/2010 ; 93,424 miles, replace 2 x front lower arms, 2 x front springs, 2 x drop links, alternator pulley, reseat NSR spring £626.85

21/05/2010 ; 94,908 miles, replace plastic fuel lines and clips as leaking £200.70

20/08/2010 ; 97,271 miles, breakdown! Recovered from jct 18 on M4, blue smoke from rear and high temperature. Recover back home. No charge (passenger friend was in AA, (bought her a few drinks)

27/08/2010 ; 97,278 miles, replace water pump as pulley seized, plus new V belt as heat damaged, new thermostat, 2 x pulleys and coolant £489.97

18/10/2010 ; Disabled EGR as per [thread=68928]this thread[/thread] (page 11) under £20.00 inc tools bought

22/10/2010 ; 98,133 miles, MoT FAIL. Blocked washer jets, front side lamp bulb. Three advisories: Front tyres close to limit, rear brake hose slightly deteriorated. 4 wheel alignment (separate request) £85.14

12/02/2011 ; visited tyre specialist for geometry check, unable to do as no camber bolts, noticed very hot NSF brake disc, possibly seized caliper, carried out remove-refit of pad and cleaned caliper £30.00

26/02/2011 ; 100,728 miles, WIM full geometry adjustment with 3 camber bolts £222.00

10/03/2011 ; 2 x Uniroyal Rainsport2 front tyres £204.24

27/05/2011 ; Excessive brake pad dust on NSR wheel, both front calipers cleaned plus 2 front discs fitted £180.02

07/07/2011 ; 104,488 miles, Viscous coupling seized, part bought from ECP, garage fitted £127.05

I have a few outstanding jobs I'd like to sort too. I have a service due soon-ish so I think I'll have the transmission fluid replaced at the same time as there's no record of it ever being done.

Rust! Have a [thread=82193]look here[/thread] I haven't got around to estimates yet.
OSF headlamp has broken mounts. Been offered a 2nd hand one for £150 from a member on here (it's Xenon).
And excessive fuel consumption, in my opinion, 28-35 mpg is too low. Still scratching my head on that one.

 

[S500 Pete]

Blimey,

That's over £3K !!

 

[toby1]

bugger it! I hadn't totted it up for that reason! Not far off the price I paid to change. Not MB's finest hour this model, it has to be said.

 

[Xtractorfan]

The broken headlamp mounts can be plastic welded or even repaired with cold weld adhesive.. shouldn't cost anywhere near £150.. for cold weld adhesive try Wurth or Tereson...

 

[Naraic]

I got my car in Feb 2009, with 76216 miles on it. It has now got 106,100 miles and has cost £1730 in total service and repairs.

BTW. Yours is a W210? It's just you mention W211 in the first sentence of your post.

 

[toby1]

Corrected, thanks R12. It is a W210

 

[toby1]

headlamp

Here are some pics of the headlamp. It is also loose if you try to move it by hand. It was like this when I bought it.

 

[Naraic]

What a bodge job that is! Who put the "new" bracket on?

 

[toby1]

No idea but it's a real mess, I think. Definitely ruins the front-end look but surprisingly it passed the MoT like that. As I haven't taken the bumper off yet I just hope there's no major issues below.

Without question this is the most expensive car I've ever run!

 

[tjamesbo]

Some similarities Mine is a 2001 with 112k I bought in June 2010 and had to do the thermostat immediately. Drop links were done at purchase. The MAF has just failed . Lower arms were advised at inspection when car was bought ( Not done yet ) and I still havent done anything about the pixels (both sides ).
ATF wil be done this summer .

 

[teabag]

Luckily they weren't all like that, this was my experience of the W210 E320CDi http://forums.mercedesclub.org.uk/showthread.php?t=49878 and if I recall correctly, Blobcat had a similar experience.

In my opinion the major downfall of the W210 was the rust, otherwise it was one of the best cars I have owned.

 

[Myros]

It is scary to see what can be spent

our first one had two thermostats, the front BBJs, an injector, a crankshaft sensor and several wheel alignments and two sets of tyres and the back exhaust bracket welding on. Two resprays by MB in our hands, and three by MB in earlier hands. Not bad for 55,000 miles of our ownership.

The current one has had BBJs, a new thermostat, two wheel alignments, two sets of tyres ( one set only just on though) a set of glowplugs, and a respray not under warranty (which is holding up much better than the cheap job MB did),the back box bracket welding up, a new combi wiper/indicator this week, and a bit of faffing with the steering wheel sensor which wasn't necessary, so I don't really count it. 30,000 miles so far

Both cars have had new windscreens as well.

I have the tranny fluid out on any car I acquire, and on the 210s, a 30,000 mile drain and refill and new filter regime seems to be about right. ( to be adopted on the S320, asi t has the same box)

 

[television]

I fail to see why MB use such crappy ball joints and drop link parts, cheap they may be to buy but you have to pay to have them put on, a Drop link for the V70R is £69 but they will go 200k miles or more, but then I suppose that to have a car where the body has rusted away and dropped off would look stupid if all the suspension and steering gear was in good order.

 

[dieselman]

Blimey,

That's over £3K !!

bugger it! I hadn't totted it up for that reason! Not far off the price I paid to change. Not MB's finest hour this model, it has to be said.

You should have bought a 300TD, mine has cost £7100 in 11 years, including Dealer servicing, tyres, hire cars, bonnet respray, complete new suspension, etc.
It's had a few expensive jobs this year, new wheel bearings and one stub axle, new brake pipes front to rear, so the next year will be cheaper again.

 

[Dosco]

You should have bought a 300TD, mine has cost £7100 in 11 years, including Dealer servicing, tyres, hire cars, bonnet respray, complete new suspension, etc.
It's had a few expensive jobs this year, new wheel bearings and one stub axle, new brake pipes front to rear, so the next year will be cheaper again.

Not bad at all, around £12 a week, sounds very reasonable. However if Pete reads this he might just disagree with you given his experience with a 300TD

 

[dieselman]

Not bad at all, around £12 a week, sounds very reasonable. However if Pete reads this he might just disagree with you given his experience with a 300TD

He obviously didn't keep it long enough, mine's tripped 162k miles now.

 

[toby1]

09/07/2011 ; two new key remote batteries £7.58

 

[toby1]

29/07/11: 105,000 miles approx, NSF brake caliper and flexi hose replaced; brake fluid change. £325.00

 

[jberks]

To be fair, it does look like a lot, but, the benefit of the parts replaced were taken by the previous owner. Spread many of those repair costs over the mileage that these parts have covered and its not too bad. The stat for example. If you'd had it from new, the changing a stat after 9 years and 100k wouldn't be cause for complaint. Tyres really don't count too.
Same really goes for the suspension components. If they were original and you had to replace them afte 100-120,000 miles of dutiful service over 9 years, would you be as critical?
A lot of the above is simply catching up and getting the car to a level that you're happy with and will be confident doing another 100k on. If you were thinking of moving it on in the next few months, the bill may have been substantially different.

I've had mine for 6 years and have personally covered over 100,000 miles in it. If, say, a news set of injectors were needed for, say £800, I'd not be complaining. They'd worled hard for me over the last few years and I'd be figuring it was a one off. 4 years ago, I had to replace the MAF and air intake pipe for nearly £400. But that was 4 years ago and not a peep since. If I had just bought it however, and I was hit with such bills, I'd probably be complaining about 'expensive to run' and 'unreliable'. Its often more a question of context.

I've just come back from holiday in the ME. I took a lot of taxis whilst I was out there. They're fairly evenly split between Skodas and Mercs. The things both had in common was high mileages (obviously) and pretty much every car I got into has some engine warning lights or messages on. But they all seemed to run perfectly anyway. The thing that struck me though was the difference in how the cars felt. The mercs, generally older, rode smoothly and were pretty much creak and squeak free. Shut your eyes and you'd be forgiven for thinking they were quite new. (And we're talking mostly 2000 era 210s here) whilst most of the newer skodas had creaks and rattles and felt quite rough in the most part. As I[ve said many times, the quality often doesn't show until you realise your car is running like new whilst competitor cars are becoming 'sheds'.

 

[toby1]

I tend to agree jberks. I'd considered chopping it in for a CLS or CLK but now as I see it, what I spend now is for another 100,000 miles / xyz more years ahead.

I won't see any value from it unless I stick with it, maybe until it rusts away into oblivion, although I intend to sort that before it goes too far.

As a side note I was on the M25 the other week and I saw a mint W210 E220 CDi facelift. It was spotless and looked great - something I have plenty of time to achieve.