Militant-Grunt

He actually has these cars *******, I know him in person, Got to see his C coupe and his ML in person when installing a new radio for my Discovery. I don't doubt one bit he also has the other mb's.

NO_WUR_E

Hey, if you can vouch for him, more power to him and credibility. However, based on your reply, you only saw 2 of the 4 which doesn't really prove that he owns the cars. Seeing and owning are two different things. In addition, a majority of his 274 post are all in the W203 forums.
Whatever.....enough said.
Advans....hope you get your car fixed.

Arn560

I hope you didn't use my name. how about Prestige in NYC did you try them?

Tishers

I know that the maintenance intervals have really been extended by better metullurgy, chemistry, machining and design but it still weirds me out to go so long on fluid changes.

I guess it's like the light bulb in the refrigerator. How do you know for sure it goes out when you close the door?

There were a few years where I was a process controls engineer for an oil company. We went through a vicious cycle of breakdowns caused by poor maintenance intervals. It was tough to catch back up, to fix what was broken and more importantly to get the mechanics back into the routine of preventive activities. In that time we cooked a few 1500 Hp pumps due to oil contamination.

This was blamed on a multitude of problems, vibration, bad alignment between the pump and the motor, the alignment of the stars...

When routine maintenance was being done, oil samples were sent off to the lab, oil was being changed, cooling lines were cleaned out and levels checked regularly the problems dropped dramatically.

I can't "see" the oil in my car. I can't touch it, I can't smell it. There is a high tech "idiot light" that tells me of an A service or a B service. It may cost me a few hundred dollars a year to change my oil twice as much as the manufacturer says it needs but I will do it anyway.

The same thing with the transmission fluid, transfer case (or whatever a 4MATIC has), differential, etc... I don't have to do the "same" things I did to maintain previous automobiles but neither am I going to just look at the idiot light.

Everyone on forums such as this one is an enthusiast about his or her automobile. We love cars, we love to drive. If we didn't we would all own Dodge Neon's or Pontiac's. This forum is like Modders Anonymous, look at poor Sunman, he needs help quick! <grin>

My point is that if we were just owners of automobiles the idiot light would be just fine. I expect that in 20 years a great many of the cars that people who are this forum today own will be sitting in air conditioned garages , being washed with Perrier and dried with a baby diaper.

I love my car and am going to take the extra steps to make sure it's with me for years to come.

Militant-Grunt

We're actually meeting up for a photo shoot of the ML's, Ill gladly snap a pic of his fleet for you. :v

Militant-Grunt

oh Cmon. Mbmanhattan never dissapointed me yet, fixed everything up to spec.. My service advisor worked hard to cover everything on my factory warranty.

mleskovar

I'm sure there's a help group for this sort of thing.... Actually, quite a few on this forum should be approaching 100K miles, if not already there. It will be interesting how our cars do with the different maintenance philosophies. I've been following the recommended and at 90K miles it burns no measurable oil, the tranny works as new, and gas mileage and power have remained the same. I realize driving styles have a great impact on wear but we should be able to come to some conclusions. My bet is after 9 years + (?) of FSS data from many cars MB has already concluded it works.