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Help Please; Big trouble
Topic Started: Mon May 21, 2007 10:26 pm (1,009 Views)
dwls2
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Hello. I just got a 190e 2.0 auto, 1989 with 69k miles and lots of history. all fine at first, that was a week ago. First was a whine from the back, at a constant 40 and then again at 80. Sounded like blowing across top of a bottle, I assumed it was just diff whirr and OK.

Now the front passenger side has started creaking, under deceleration (not just braking) under 25mph. Does it more setting off with full lock to the right. So i took it to my local franchised merc dealer and they quoted £5k for a full suspension rebuild front and back. All sorts of problems, control arms, ball joings, thrust arms, steering knuckles, both springs, front struts, front wheel bearings, all shocks, 2 wishbones at back, roller bearings and a gearbox mounting.

Any thoughts? By the way, I paid £2.5k, have I been had?
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JensonGB
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I Will Find One That I Keep!
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Think £5000 is well over priced for the work.
Front ball joints £100 for both sides fitted
Front Springs around £40 of ebay.....do them yourself and same for the rear
£200-£300 should get you new shocks all round

Have a look at GSF for the rest and i think you might be pleasantly surprised, a lot of the jobs you can do yourself and if you get stuck someone on the forum will always offer words of advice

GSF Link

Good Luck
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Lee T
Lee
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GSF or eurocarparts, give them the chassis number and I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

I called my local merc dealer a couple of weeks ago for a front prop coupling, they wanted £121 plus vat. I bought one from eurocarparts for £40.00 including vat.

Best regards
Lee <_<
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stwat
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Hello and welcome B)

The last place you wanted to take it to was the main dealers TBH mate. Like has been said GSF and ECP sell parts cheaper(although the quality can sometimes be suspect)

If you cant do the work yourself then try and find a good recommended mechanic who will do you the work much cheaper than the £75 an hour dealer rates.

TBH mate, i think £2.5K was feckin expensive for an 89 2.0l whatever the history etc :o Sorry bud :(

Did you buy it from a dealer? If so id take it straight back with the list of jobs and either get your money back or get them to pay for the jobs that need doing.

Stu
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bow190
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i agree with stu, if you paid that at a dealers you should have some warranty ,plenty of good mechs about the bill will be a lot less with good parts from gsf or europarts
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dwls2
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I bought it from an independent dealer, and am taking it back to him next weekend with a list of what MB thinks is wrong with it. It was meant to come with a warranty but that appears to have 'fallen through'. I'm not very good at DIY so I guess my question was should I bother keeping it or just be boring and sensible and get some sort of French supermini.

Thank you for all your replies - I will let you know what happens.

Just FYI - my local MB franchise was quoting £126 / hr for labour :lol:
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bow190
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was this dealer in the mercedes enthusiast ?
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JensonGB
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Mate if you got it with a warranty, it can't just appear to have fallen through unless the garage is dodgy. Take it back with the faults and push the fact it is not roadworthy, failing that Trading Standards would be my next port of call.


£126 per hour!! do they come round and clean your house for that to?
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cossie connoisseur
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there can be only one ;-)
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one thing i noticed with the labour cost when i was last at MB there could be anything up to 4 people working on any one car and the amont of work they do in an hour is a heck of a lot.

Im not condoning the price or saying other garages dont do the same but mercedes wont rip you off in my opinion.

One thing that does bug me is if you pre arange a time and price to do a job, they will call you and say they are not finnished on the job so have downed tools and will not finish the work unless things are renegotiated which i find a little rude!

Also they may have a set time to do something but will disasemble the component and realise they have used up half of the allocated time so reasemble the part and charge you for work that has not actually fixed the problem.

As far as im concerned there is a computer system which states how long a job takes on the car and if they go over that time which does allow for playing around then there needs to be a bloody good explanation of why the work took longer :)
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pentoman
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Madness, can't see any sense really in having a main Mercedes dealer rebuild the suspension.. get a decent independent to do it. You never know they might even give a crap about your car while they're at it.
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dwls2
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Thank you for all your help. I'll take it back to vendor and get it sorted - hopefully many more miles of 190 motoring ahead of me after these teething problems.
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stwat
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Good luck mate, i hope it turns out OK for you.

Stu
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andycowman
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isnt there a 3 month warrenty on any car bought from any "dealer"?

For shocks you could also try US Ebay, I bought 4 brand new KYB gas shocks for £150 all in (including delivery). Got to love that exchange rate :D

There plenty of advice on doing that work yourself if you felt willing to give it a go.

Good luck

Andy
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dwls2
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Thanks again everyone. Just so I know objectively, how bad is it to have rusted suspension components? OK so the control arms are rusty, but the car is 18 years old - will surface rust affect the strenght / safety of the suspension or is it more a cosmetic thing? Thanks
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Lewis 190E 2.5 16
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W201
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No surface rust is fine, some do grind this off and repaint parts etc.
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andycowman
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Yes you can clean parts up quite easily either wire brushing or theres rust converting paint you can buy which turns it all to an even black coat!

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dwls2
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Cool - MB's argument (and the reason their quote was so high) was 'if it's rusty it's broken and therefore needs replacing'!
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