My 2004 Mercedes Benz E320 aka The Benz

[friskyfrankie]

Dave does great work. If he is ever down my way, he's hired!

[87gtVIC]

Dave does great work. If he is ever down my way, he's hired!

Thanks.

Looks like you've been busy. That color is tough to match.

I'm assuming this car sees salt? How's it holding up?

Certainly been busy. You know the feeling first hand because of your wagon situation.

I went into this not being concerned about matching.

Panels on this car have been repainted already by professional shops and they did not match.

I figured I could get that result myself and not have to pay them for the disappointment.

To be honest things are better than I thought they would have turned out so I cannot complain.

I know I could have wetsanded adjacent panels with 800 and blended color into them and then recleared the entire panel but I am no professional so I have to accept what I can do and be happy with it, which I am.

once both front fenders are repainted everything will look very close again.

yes this car is my year round daily driver. Surprisingly looks pretty damn nice underneath for having that duty here up north. Tranny pan has some rust scale as so do some tranny cooler lines but the body is perfect which really counts.

Treated the aforementioned areas the other day with fluid film while doing an oil change the other day. 171,500 on this car!

[87gtVIC]

Electrical troubleshooting, clunking front end and new air filters!


Had a recent (with the last couple months) issue pop up on the Mercedes where interior lights, alarm siren and exterior alarm lights would begin to go off without any apparent reason.

Nearly caused the battery to go dead one morning on me as I was not aware the interior cabin lights had been on for some time before my father noticed when he was coming home one evening.

He simply unlocked and then locked the car with the key fob and the light went out.

Funny enough after that incident the alarm horn never worked again. Guess the batteries went dead.

Researching the issue leads me to find out that an alarm module located behind the drivers side fender can become corrupt. It has hard mounted batteries that begin to ooze and corrode the circuit board. The reason for internal batteries is so that thief's stealing the car cannot simply cut a battery cable or easily access this module which emits a very ear piercing tone!




The module is about 140 bucks but a car battery is much more so I went out ordered one and luckily it was indeed the issue.

Just take a look inside. ( I nipped the speaker wires when opening up the module).






Ugly in there


My next issue was a clunking coming from the front end at low speeds while going over bumps.

I purchased front sway bar end links and a passengers side lower front thrust arm ( on a guess these units were at fault (knowing that I have not changed the passenger side thrust arm under my ownership but only the drivers side)) and again I came out ahead! The thrust arm was oozing its guts.

end links.



thrust arms old and new. Upside down from normal orientation. Can see the leakage from the big bushing.





All quiet again so I splurged for a new set of air filters even though the old ones were not terrible I don’t recall the last time I have changed them.

[sly]

yeah... I detest PCB mounted batteries. Many an old PC motherboard killed by battery acid.

[Tynnerstroem]

This is a really sweet car, and I really like the color combination on it. Over here you don't really see these cars anymore, as most of them were run into the ground as cabs (both the wagons and sedans).

I think the W211 has aged super well in a way the W210 never did (still a really great looking car). The W220 S-class is another one that has just aged like fine wine. I remember trying to trade in an E500 W211 when I was in the car business, super nice car and was a real hot rod with the V8.

[87gtVIC]

Car reached 175K the other morning into work! Got her with 90ishk ten years ago back in April of 2014.

[87gtVIC]

My under seat storage bins latch had recently malfunctioned and would no longer latch. Picked up two used ones and that is all better now.





also swapped in some black door striker bezels

before


after





and I picked up some perfect condition front fenders to repaint as the ones on my car are fading away and need to be repainted.







This allows me to repaint them at my leisure and not rush. Just prep these factory parts for primer, paint and clear and then swap them on.

[87gtVIC]

Swapped in some more black interior accent pieces.

all dash ac vents, headlight switch, all four door panel speaker grilles, rear of center console ac vent and lower trim as well as added some jy sourced (6bucks total!) weathertech vent shades...new seat armor seat cover towel thing as well.

some highlights and a quick video containing more photos.

Before:



during:





after:



and a video!

Still on the list is black rear deck speaker trim, kick panel speaker trim, interior door sill trims, steering wheel buttons and some other bits and doo-dads. Just little things here are there to spruce up/change up the look after owning it for 10 years.

[87gtVIC]

Picked up a couple other black interior bits.



Interior door sill trims, proper black ( was previously dark charcoal) door striker trims, proper black glove box key cover and slide out drawer face, as well as a black rear deck speaker cover!

before:



after some dye:



rear deck before and after






the rear deck speaker cover faded to a purple/blue color. A quick splash of black paint brought it back to life.

and some before and after of the various other trims

[87gtVIC]

I have been looking for factory fitting mudflaps since I had purchased the car back in 2014. Finally found a set just under 11 years later. lol.

Better late than never I suppose.

Cost a small fortune and they needed work (one being torn, missing hardware and all being pretty beat up from years of use) but was something I couldn’t pass up.

first three pics are from the eBay ad:







this was the torn passengers side front flap.

all the flaps bottoms looked like this:



I was able to fix it by cleaning up the crack, forcing some flexible bumper and plastic repair epoxy in the crack then lining the crack up and using a hot staple to secure the leading edge. Finished up the repair with more flexible bumper and plastic filler and she came out like new.

All scratches were sanded out. I tried coating the raw plastic after using adhesion promoter with trim paint but raw plastic, even when sanded out to 320 grit is very rough. It did not look good initially so I used the trim black paint as a primer and block sanded it smooth and then finished it out with the SEM texture coat and trim black paint.

some random stages of repair:






They all came out looking really good. I am very happy with the final results. Just what I had wanted.

[mitymerc]

Nice work as always!