I have a 05 C230 Sedan with 53,900 miles. I bought it October of 2004. I have been through a full set of tires and I just bought my 5th and 6th tire. Thanks to the tire thread I saved a few bucks. I put 2 BF Goodrich G-Sport tires on the rear for $250 out the door. Other than tires I have put front brakes on myself.

I have always taken my car to the dealer for scheduled maintenance. So far I have had no service problems with my car. I am wondering....now that I am out of warranty, should I be on the look out for anything. Is there any preventative maintenance that I can perform to ensure my good fortune when it comes to repairs?

thing will just start to break down when time comes.
but it prob won't be happening for another 40k+ miles

or you can get extended warranty

Nope. I drive too many miles. They wanted $4,000 for another 50,000 miles. At the rate I am going I will pass that in a few months. Plus I have had such good luck I figured I would save the 4k until something went wrong. Was that a bad gamble? I just figured that it would be better to spend the 4k directly on a repair than on an extended warranty that I might not use.

When things start to go wrong....what are the usual things that I should expect to see?

i don't know about w203
but for example on my bimmers
from about 100k and on
you will see these types of problem, these are the short list of what i repaired on my bimmer
entire transmission, radiator, coolant expansion tank (basically I replace everything related to coolant), flex disk, valv cover gasket, oil pan gasket..etc

if the tranny doesn't go out, then 4k will be more than enough to fix these

If you've had good luck with the car so far, bank the $4000 in an ING account and earn some interest while its there. More than likely, repairs won't get near your savings amount.

I'm at 52k on my A4 that I got Sept 2004 and am in the same boat as you.

good thing is that i have 6years 100 extended warraty for MBUSA

still more then 55k to go
^^

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