For what it's worth... here's a picture of the underside of a Coupe with the entire rear end removed. Apparently the owner ran over or smacked something, but I won't speculate out of deference for the owner who might also be a member here.

The dealer is waiting for an entire new rear end because the whole thing had to be replaced. Just thought you might find it interesting...

 

Hey Bos, you keep coming up the "bestest" pictures here lately :p

 

Yeah! Where did you get that pic of the different shifters? Looks not like something you can find on every gas-station or at your local dealer.

 

Been there done that. My daughter spun out of control 2 months ago while not paying attention and tore off the axle shaft when the car slid into the curb. Lucky for her a salvage, caliper to caliper piece for her Mustang was only $475. $500 is the limit in CA where you have to report the accident and have it show up on your record. I didn't count the 4 new wheels she needed because I was going to get them anyway for her b-day. I would imagine that on the MB, a new rear end must cost thousands. It would be fun to take the insurance money and put in a custom Ford 9" rear end with 4.10 gears to spice up the performance a little. In my daughters case we went the other way from a 3.45 to a 2.73 as punishment as well as a full day in high performance driving school. Most boys would thing that was fun and not punishment.

 

Actually it was my local dealer. After all the discussion about shorter throw shifters, C7 vs Stock, I talked to my Service Manager. This was in part to investigate whether UUC could make a shorter throw, but that's another thread. Long story short, he agreed to order both linkages at no cost to me. When they came in, he actually did most of the investigative work and invited me to see for myself. Of course, I had to take pictures to share with the group.

While I was there the above Coupe was on the rack and we discussed what happened, but I didn't get a chance to post the pic until today. On Monday, I'm going to go ahead and have the C7 linkage installed (damn it MB, if I only would have known before hand). I've already discussed it with my Service Manager, and he has no problems with me taking pictures of the process. So I plan to document the process as thoroughly as possible and share it with the group.

Needless to say... I have a very fricken cool Service Manager.

As an addition... the above car should still be there on Monday, so I'll try to take some more detailed pictures if anyone is interested.

 

A rear-end isn't a very involved job to do. There are only 18 bolts that hold it in the car. An experienced tech can have that rear end out and back in in about an hour.

 

I see the next target for modding, carbon fiber drive shaft.

 

Granted, it might be a simple fix, but the more we know the better. The only b|tch is, that the rear end has to come from the original manufacture in Germany, which is not MB. This poor owner has to wait until the 12th for the part to even be shipped.

Basically, given the limited availibility of the rear end from MB, the part is being pulled right from the manufacture's line, which as said, is not MB.

Yes folks... (only Coupe owners need apply) our rear ends are not from MB Germany, but from another contracted partner of MB. Before you ask.. I have no idea who it is.

 

Why are the brake calipers hanging by their lines. . .doesn't just about every service manual call for supporting the calipers? 2 cents worth of zip ties would have come in handy.

 

My guess is that most of parts are outsourced. I wonder if anyone has a statistic on what percentage of the car is actually made in an MB factory by MB employees?

Have you checked salvage yards? There has to be a crashed C-class somewhere. That's how I got my daughters Mustang up and going again quickly.

MBTech208, As for the rear end being a 1 hour job. I don't know what MB dealer you work for but my MB dealer wanted 1 hour labor per side to change a headlamp bulb on a friends C320. On the other hand getting an experienced MB tech is the difficult part. How many hours labor to change the rear gears on the coupe?

 

I'm pretty sure that the rear axle of the W203 is unchanged from the W202 model (one of the few parts the cars share), you think it should have been relatively easy to find a replacement in a scrapeyard. (I can't for the life of me remember the subcontractor though.)

BT

 

Thanks for the great pictures Bos. I don't know about you but I'm bored with seeing pictures of the "shiney-side" of coupes. MBtech sees this stuff everyday so I'm sure he could care less

I had to pull the belly pans off the front of my car a few weeks ago. If you ever wonder why the C230K cost a few thousand more than an Acura RSX or similar: take a look "behind the curtain". Most of the engine compartment and even the transmission tunnel are covered with a fabric sound insulation. The front suspension is attached to a huge cast aluminum subframe. The wife's Honda has everything mounted to the steel unibody. Anyway, there's a bunch of nifty stuff to look at under there if you're into that sort of thing....

Oh.. and look at the engineering that went into that shift mechanism: cast aluminum structure, poly bushings, molded sound insulators. That was a beautiful picture...almost brought a tear to this machine designer's eye.

Most of the parts that I've taken off my car so far (plastic) have had a contractors name on it. I'm willing to bet that MB only does final assy in that Stutgart plant. All subassys are prolly subcontracted out.

 

I don't have any figures, but I know several components are not pure MB

Posted this link about 6 month ago. Quite interesting:

C-class suppliers



I will also post this as a separate thread.

 

That's absurd! A headlamp bulb should never cost more than $20 bucks labor to change, and even that is high. About the brake calipers hanging by the hoses, it's pretty much a thing of the past to support them. The calipers are much lighter in weight than old cars, not to mention the hoses are stronger because of increased fluid pressure requirements from ESP and ABS. I haven't heard of anybody damaging a hose or caliper by letting it hang like that.

 

Your welcome... Wait till you see the pics I took today! I had the C7 shift linkage installed, and the Service Manager let me hang out and take pictures during the whole process. I should be able to get the pics posted tomorrow.

I realize I was stating the obvious (for most members) on the parts supplier thing. I was really just trying to pass on the story and what this owner was dealing with.