W211 E Reg 54 Problems!

[Jensen]

I asked a guy parked up if he had any problems with his E class, it was an E220 CDI. Expecting him to say No I was supprised and disappointed when he said yes.
Car has 99k miles on clock but turbo blew and had problems with steering rack.
I thought that the late 04 build quality had improved but this gave me a nasty shock

 

[television]

Things can go wrong with any car , and thats life

 

[hawk20]

I asked a guy parked up if he had any problems with his E class, it was an E220 CDI. Expecting him to say No I was supprised and disappointed when he said yes.
Car has 99k miles on clock but turbo blew and had problems with steering rack.
I thought that the late 04 build quality had improved but this gave me a nasty shock

Doessn't sound much to me in 100k miles. Did it have FullMBSH? Do you know how well it had been looked after?

Have alook at the 'sticky' on Blobcats E320cdi.

 

[jberks]

Doesn't sound like the end of the world to me either.
A steering rack and a turbo.
The rack - it can happen - I had one replaced on my 2000 E class, though it was rare on the 210 and equally rare on the 211 (I've not heard of a single one failing before this one).
Turbo - show me any manufacturer of CDIs that doesn't replace turbos with alarming regularity. That said, mine and my Dads are fine. One friend has been through 3 on his Golf and its quite common on BMWs I hear.
Ok not perfect but not a long list of woes either. You can replace a rack because it squeaks a bit (why mine was replaced) and turbos are incredibly complex things that spin at staggering speeds. The engineering tolerances can't be much slacker than those required in jet engines, yet rather than thousands, we pay a few hundred for them. Hardly surprising that the odd one or two don't make it.

04 wasn't a switch over point as such, merely a time when improvements were coming through in sufficent volume. An early 04 for example isn't as good as a late one and a late 04 is not as good as a mid 05 - its a steady climb but you have to put a flag in the ground somewhere and 04 is when things like galvanisation came back and nano paint came on the market.
If you want vastly greater reliability - something to rival the Japanese dullards, you really need to be late 06-, but I wouldn't describe my 04 E as unreliable. Yes, things have been fixed, but I class reliability as a recurrent serious problem or being let down at the side of the road. I've never had so much as a safe mode incident, let alone a breakdown and the issues that have come up, have been minor and repaired satisfactorily at my convenience.

So I stand by the 04 date.

 

[Blobcat]

I've had my tyre pressure warning go off twice in 33K miles, the radio reception gets noisy when the rear demister is used and one 6" element in the rear window isn't working. I think I must have a case for a new car due to the inhere ant unreliability...:roll:

 

[hawk20]

I suppose someone needs to give the standard warning that samples of one are useless and hoping to get a representative view by asking one bloke at a traffic light is not a reliable test.

I agree with Jberks on dates. Galvanising began for some models in 2002 but was for all the main ones by 2003. Then came nano paints.

But I think time will show that the biggest leap forward in reliability on the E class came with the facelift. Over 2000 changes were made. It was more changed than many new models are. And all the time, reliability was what they were searching for.

And according to the technical people at my local MB dealer, the new models since 2003 have been amazingly reliable -the A class, the S class, the facelifted E and so on. Will be interesting to see how the new C fares.

 

[hawk20]

To show the continuous improvement process Jberks refers to here are the details on the facelifted E class from What Car:-

Mercedes claims the updated E-Class will be free of the reliability bugs that have affected the current model since launch in 2002.

The revised car has been put through the most intensive testing schedule Mercedes has ever undertaken with a single model.

It features 2000 new parts compared with the outgoing car, including five new or revised engines and improved safety aids (see separate stories).

Mercedes has also been working with component suppliers to ensure uniform quality standards at every company which provides parts for the E-Class.

Its target is to reduce warranty claims to a lower level than those at Toyota, a company renowned for outstanding reliability.

Electrical glitches are among the most common problems experienced by the current E-Class. Mercedes claims to have ironed these out by testing every component separately outside the car to ensure durability under all conditions.

The braking system has also been changed. The 2002 E-Class had a part-electronic mechanism that was the subject of a recall campaign, but this has been dropped. Mercedes says it can now get the same braking effectiveness by conventional means.

In all, 1000 pre-production versions of the new E-Class were tested for a total distance of nearly three million miles. This will now become the schedule for every new Mercedes.

http://forums.mercedesclub.org.uk/showthread.php?t=19952

 

[Jensen]

Agreed, but I can't afford the facelift which is what some 1 year old. Thats why I was trying to gauge an impression of a 54reg to see how it fitted in with the estimated improvement date of late 04

 

[jberks]

Well, as the owner of a 54 reg, my experiences -
after 2 1/2 years and 40,000 miles I've had the following.
1) Air filter mounts (damaged by oil contamination following over zelous oil fill)
2) Engine mounts - it's a 270 thing more than an E class thing - ML270s are notorious.
3) Dash cluster - (A bulb went!!!)
4) ESP - Wheel position sensor - it failed.

So, 1 was damage so it doesn't count, 2 an inherent issue with that engine (now out of production) and since replacement with post 04 mounts it's been fine, 3 just silly - no dount easily repaired by the likes of speedofixer but MB were paying, and 4 - yes a genuine, actual fault.

I need at least one 'failed to start', a refusal to change gear or at the very least a judder requiring me to urgently visit the workshop before I class a car as unreliable, but apart from an ESP warning that had me scurrying back to the dealer, and even then it had no detrimental effect on the running so easily waited until it was convenient, there's been nothing.
Compared to my sky box, PC, several mobile phones, pentax camera and even the tumble dryer to name a few, my merc has been a picture of reliability.
It's all relative.