I'm starting new thread to chronical the progress of my "new" 2002 C230.
I had been waiting to recieve it and now it's here!
Here's a previous thread with some photos.
https://mbworld.org/forums/c-class-w...ming-soon.html
So, I got it home Sunday night, but hadn't recieved the title.
Today it arrived thankfully after some wrangling with the dealership and sending emails to the general manager and other folks.

The car is beautiful but there are a couple problems.
1. The defrost does not work. It's either jammed or just doesn't work, That will require some major dash dissasembling to fix.
2. On the way home I drove it with the transmission in W mode, avoiding 1st gear as the shifting from 1 to 2 and back is very rough.
When I got home I discovered the transmission fluid was way overfilled. So I've drained the pan. The fluid is still red and appears it must've had a full flush. BUT there also were a few sparkly metal flakes in their as well. Uh oh.
I haven't dropped the pan yet.
Anyway, while I had it on the jack stands, next thing was check for oil in the Trans wire loom.
Looks good and previously had checked the TCU as it was easier to check without getting under the car, also good.
Underneath of the car is VERY clean but there is some oil in bottom pans. Hmmm.
It looks like it might be power steering fluid. So that might be coming up.

But the bad news is dagnabbit, it has a Valeo radiator!!!!! ARRRGH! So tomorrow I'm sending a fluid sample to Blackstone.
If there's coolant in the fluid, I'll change the radiator to a Behr about $250 on FCP and do a full fluid flush and hope that fixes it.
At least it will stop any additional damage from occuring. This car was driven so little that the Carfax shows the transmission filter was
replaced back in August 2017 (no mention of fluid but obviously it was) and this was just 4,000 miles ago!
4,000 miles in 8 years! Well the problem must have already existed then but didn't replace the radiator.
If there isn't coolant I'll do a full flush and set the level correctly.

So thats my main thrust right now, seeing if I can fix or at least prevent any further damage to the transmission.
I've read that SDS can do diagnostics and tell you what parts to replace in the transmission.
Just one more reason to invest in the whole set up. I will also of course also disconnected the battery and let it sit for a while to reset the
adaptations once I have fluid in it again.
I won't start transferring parts from my other C until I have this sorted out nor driving it.
Waiting for results from Blackstone.

 

Congrats on the new coupe again!
So whats the plan with the old one?

 

Well for now, still driving "Carly" till I get the trans issue straighted out.
1st step, get the fluid analysed and go from there.

I may pick up an SDS unit from AliExpress.
Always wanted one and now, I'll need it to run the diagnostics on the transmission
though, I really do not know much about the deeper inner workings of an automatic transmission.
It would be nice if perhaps a fluid flush would fix it, or even a conductor plate and selenoids but
I don't want to just throw parts at the problem. Beyond that will require professional help.
But probably worth it since the car is so 'new'.
SDS would at least narrow it down.

I'm kinda pissed I kept asking for an inspection report which they never provided though
without an fluid analyses who'd know? But they definately knew something was up with the trans.
And the frikin' Valeo was never replaced despite a service bulletin.
Clunking bad between 1&2. So if drive in the "W" setting, it's ok, it skips 1st gear just not so
much fun accelerating.

I plan on keeping Carly as a backup vehicle. Once I get the 'new' car sorted out, maybe
I'll fix the gasket issue and install new motor mounts. But labor is so expensive and nobody works on
Mercedes around here closeby.

 

So things are moving slowly but surely. The radiator and seals for the trans connections showed up yesterday.
Today 12 quarts of Shell ATF134 tranny fluid + filter, gasket and 'pilot bushing' ie the connector piece with the
orings, all genuine. showed up as well. Monday I'll have the conductor plate and another
filter, gasket etc, since I thought the 1st one was lost in the mail.
It was supposed to go from LA to the Oregon coast border. But no it
went to Brooklyn NY, Queens, NY and Manhattan before travellling to
Aurora CO and then nothing for 5 days....hours after I purchased another
it showed in Portland, then delivered 2 days later and 1.5 weeks late.
DOH.
Monday is the wifeys B'day and I'm taking her to din din in Bandon.
Tues the G48 antifreeze shows up at the local Napa. So Tues perhaps, I will begin in earnest to replace all this stuff and flush the tranny.
It's been sitting for 2 weeks on jacks since I got it home, but every time I walk in the garage, wow.
My crappy phone cam doesn't do it justice. The paint is such a deep blue, I remember that from when I picked my
original 02 up at the dealer in Feb 2002 right after the pealed off the white plastic that is put in for shipment across the ocean.
It's been a long time since the paint looked so good. Ohhhh baby!

The car is litterally like new. All the rubber weatherstripping, and little details are just as they rolled off the
production line 23 years ago. Nary a single scratch or dent. Freakin' beautiful. The dealer aside from detailing it and making it
scrupulously clean, had a paintless dent guy come, and also touched up any scratch they could find though I can't see anyhing that was done.
The also sent a couple of the rims out to get straightned and subsequently refinished. I can't tell which 2 they are. They all look new.

Once I get it running correctly, I can get on with the transfer of bits from the old car to the new,
starting with sway bars and AMG end links. Crap I just put those on the old car.(end links)
See how they work with stock suspension. Then I'm thinking ASP pulley swap and removing supercharger muffler.
I think I'll leave the frosty headlights, now with LED's as bright as the sun. They look so nice and new, classic! And even the original grill is shiny and new.
Besides I don't have anything to set Bix to present though I did pickup and Launch Creader Elite 2.0. Very cool unit. I already was able to clear the SRS error on Carly from when I swapped the steering wheel so long ago. No Malfunctions on MFD.
I'd like to get a 2nd set of 05 tail lights.
The thought of driving either coupey with the crappy 02-04 tail lights is horrifying.
So I think tails, pulley, sways, end links, LED's and that will be all for now.
But I have to say, I may continue to drive the old car as much as possible, I'd hate for
anything to happen to my 'precious'. Plus I still want to see how long it can seemingly just keep going and going.

 

if the transmission is bad, manual swap??? I love the six speed in mine and it seems pretty chunky for the power the car makes and its wayyy simpler than the auto in these cars.

 

True to some degree. My original 02 C230 was the 1st car I owned with a 722.6 automatic transmission.
Yes, you lose some power but it's a pretty kickass tranny. Click and shift, no clutch. Set the cruise control and go!
I have 261K on my 23 year old car and it still kicks *** with nothing more than fluid changes,
and the 1st full flush not occuring until 120K miles, as Mercedes had claimed it was "sealed for life".
Lying bas turds. Manny is going to need a clutch periodically which I've heard the parts are pretty damn expensive, like $1000?
If it wasn't for the Valeo radiator this one wouldn't have any problems either. It's
amazing no ever noticed. And it turns out someone already replaced the conductor plate, not
many miles ago. Date code is 11/2019. Hmmmmm....am I spinning my wheels?
~$700 worth of parts and fluids. I hope it does some good!!!!
But the numnuts who serviced it all these years, dealers and top notch mercedes shops, did not replace the radiator.
Seriously?

 

That radiator is concerning, makes you wonder when the last time it was properly serviced. The parts for a clutch job arent anything unusual, the clutch disc is like 700$ so thats a real kicker. My biggest problem was actually with the clutch line, i ended up having to replace it because the old one was corroded in place. That was a miserable few days trying to bend up a new line. I also didnt remember to do the rear main seal, so Ill be taking it off again soon to do that. Its pretty light and easy to get out from under the car, the bolts mounting to the engine arent the easiest to get too but its nothing you dont see on other small cars. Im pretty bias towards manual in my own car but I have heard the auto isnt the worst thing and does do its job well.

 

UPDATE: Well progess has been slow. Little niggly things, like the fact that no one online has proper instructions for
removing the radiator from a Kompressor model. To get the radiator out, you have to remove the bumper and
the intercooler. No one mentions this. But the radiator is clipped to thee intercooler, seriously! Can't get to the intercooler without removing the bumper etc.The hoses on the intercooler block access to the radiator and trans return line so the whole thing needs to come out.
I don't know how I got the transmision lines off in the past to do the 2 flushes I did because you have to snap the upper one into a clip on the radiator and you can't put the fitting into the radiator until it's snapped in and you can't snap it in until the fitting is in the hole. You can't get the fan out until the fittings are removed, and on and on. You have to seperate the radiator from the condensor and also the intercooler. My MB Repair CD with all the WIS files in it doesn't have a procedure for removing the radiator at the all! But it turn out the 2003 has one, but says to do stuff you don't need to do on M111. So every step of the way was a PIA things in the way unlike most DIY instruction that say stuff like "remove the fan!" Right. Like it's that easy. NO! Getting the radiator and the condensor to go back together was almost worse than than seperating them.
But as it stands, I have the transmission buttoned up, new conductor plate, new Overlap valve kit in the valvle body (doubt it will do anything) new filter, new pan, gasket, and pilot bushing. Radiator is resting comfortably in on the frame, condensor attached. All hose reconnected except one, new orings for hoses and trans fittings. Radiator is topped up, and tranmission has 4 quarts of new fluid. Just need a length of 1/2" hose to complete the flush (hence the one line not connected the radiator) and then finish buttoning it up. Put the fan in, which may or may not require removing some hoses, we'll see. I hope not, I spent forever getting clip into the lower trans line. Must've taken 50 tries. I'll be happy if it shifts as good as it did before I started all this. I'm so pissed and disheartened that the stealership did NOT inform me of this problem before I signed on the dotted line "as is" paying full asking price. I feel like a total chump with sucker written on my forehead.
Saleperson lied straight up said everything was "perfect". BullS^&*T!
And there's the f'ing "Phantom footprints" thing for close to $300.
So $7k for the car...right. but oh you MUST accept the "phantom footprints" which
of course is something you can't even see but it's supposed to deter thieves? How? They won't know it
exists if it exists at all. I sure can't find any evidence of it. Then it was supposed to be $600 for delivery.
But after several weeks of no delivery they said if I paid ANOTHER $600 that the car DEFINATELY would get delivered.
Right. What happened to $600? Now they want $1200?
So, I flew down to get it. But then I had to pay California sales tax. So now I'm at $8150 out the door.
And another 700-800 for hotels, meals and gas NOT counting m'lady's plan ticket $220.
Plus another $800-900 in parts etc to do this work.
So I'm at just about $10K into it. Wow, if I wanted a 10K car, I coulda got something really nice!
But what can I do. I bought it sight unseen, took the word of a lying car salesman, signed the papers "AS IS" and
got taken but good. So at this point, I'll just be happy if it just operates in W like it did before skipping 1st gear. I don't want to spend any more money. At least the POS Valeo radiator is out, and no more damage will occur.
It's going to be taking a trip to the gun range to make sure nobody ever uses it again.
The only other thing I might try is pick a used valve body and try my hand at rebuilding it. DIdn't want to try on the one I had, afraid I'd screw it up, and no way back. Need to get it off the jack stands. So maybe rebuild a spare and try that eventually. I stupidly figured that it was probably just the fluid level or needing a flush. I never imagined after 23 years, that no one ever thought to replace this known bad Valeo radiator. The dealer had to know, they did most of the service over the years.

 

this frustration is familiar to me, "runs great no problems" a year later and ive replaced half the damn car. But hey at least it looks nice!

 

How many miles on your car an6dk?

 

I don't have any advice to offer since my car has an M271 engine and a manual transmission. If it makes you feel any better, I had to replace my radiator due to a leak, and it was a painful experience. A few weeks before, I had replaced the radiator in my nephew's 2006 Camry. It took me about 2 hours. If I recall correctly, I struggled with the C230 radiator over the course of two days. My conclusion was that the car was designed for ease of assembly and not ease of repair.

 

At least you were able to remove the radiator hoses, I was not, corroded into the plastic connector, so I had to remove the supercharger also, to get the radiator out together with the lower hose, that was fun....... But car looks really clean

 

OK, well it's all back together. Whew! What a job. Just getting the fan out was a PIA.
Then I learned the hard way you have to remove the bumper and the intercooler, to get the radiator out and then in reverse. What a royal pain in the butt. Off jack stands now after 1.5 months.
Took for a short drive, seems to be better.
Something is still not quite right but mostly ok.I'll try doing the adaptation reset via the
diagnostic tool and see if that helps. Still it mostly pretty smooth. Just a little jumpy on 1 to 2.
Shifts instantly to 2. Hmmm. But much smoother now. All other gears feel great.

I have a leak it looks like from the transmission pan after the test drive,
so get back under tomorrow and sort that out. Just when I thought I was done!
Hopefully just need to tighten the bolts a bit more.
Spec says 4nm? Thats not much. I think maybe they need more.
But it drove smooth, nice, engine purrs like a kitten.
Looks and feels like a new car literally. You'd never know its 23 years old.
I think may throw a set of AMG sway bars on it and then leave the rest of the suspension as is.

 

So last week, I got under the car, retorqued the pan bolts and once it got hot,
it spewed more trans fluid than ever! It was leaking all over the driveway and the garage.
I put a pan under it and left it.
I think I lost ~2 quarts. Used up the last of me kitty litter.
So after some thought, and researching the Dorman pan a bit,
I decided not to mess around and ordered a new genuine pan and
a new gasket. It's taking a while to get it. Looks like maybe Thurs.
I never had a problem like this and doing trans service at least 6 times.
Put a off brand part in the mix and suddenly it's 4 quarts of $15 trans fluid spewing out the pan when it gets hot.
NAPA says it's unlikely they'll refund me for the sheety pan that warps when it's hot because I USED IT.
Yeah, I used it, it cost me $60 in lost fluid + $70 for the pan. I wanted to get it quickly. Big Mistake.

So Thurs is the day. I'll see if any of the fluid I caught in drain pan is reusable, as it only had what 5 miles on it?
Strain it through coffee filter?
Otherwise I also purchased another 6 quarts of Shell ATF134.

 

Well I haven't written for a while, but I put the new Genuine Merc trans pan in, AND gasket, torqued to perfection
70 in lbs or 8nm I think it was in a criss cross pattern and it hasn't leaked a drop since.
It took SIX more quarts of fluid to top up the trans, so apparently the short drive I took
the 1st time around, it was spewing like mad! I've been checking the coolant level and it hasn't moved so
I think I'm good!

So I've been driving "Inga" for a few weeks now, shes just a joy to drive.
The car is literally like new, it has new brake pads, new Conti tires, new wiper blades, brake fluid and engine oil are clean.
It even has new engine mounts. It's 2002 all over again.

The interior and exterior are so flawless and clean. No tears, scratches, nothing. Not one scratch.
Seriously.
It's sooo quiet, and smooth. The glass is perfect, no pitts or scratches.
I love it!

I was really pissed and disappointed in the beginning, but I haven't seen a nicer, cleaner,
rust free, C coupe come up for sale in years. I couldn't have done any better.
And it was 'close' to home. Well close enough to get it.

The only thing is I drive in W mode, so it skips 1st; 2-5 shift flawlessly.
I haven't reset the adaptations with scanner yet, but I really don't miss 1st gear at all.
The suspension feels good too. 1st time around I was so into doing mods, I did every mod that came
along.
So so far, I've done the following:

• Fixed the cold solder joints in the IR door sensor so I can use the "Summer convienance feature" open and close all the windows and sunroof with the push of a button.
• Nubby 'sport" E brake cover. For some reason they left that one with a rubber pad when the rest are nubs.
• Installed a new roller blind or rather stole it from the other car. Thats the cover for for the drink holder.
• Swapped the 05 tail lights from the old car to new.
• Put clear yet frosty side markers with LED's. I'm keeping the frosty headlights. They look new. so clear, and I actually like the retro look.
• Put in LED H7 headlight bulbs. As good as HID without the trouble.
• Installed a 3 outlet 12v doo dad in the empty space below the radio.
• Put in seat covers and carpet mats to protect the seats and carpet
• I tried to install the audio 10, but it wouldn't work with the bose speakers for some reason, so I had to put the stock radio back.

I don't plan to change the springs. I'm enjoying actually having a suspension LOL.
But I do plan to swap the AMG sway bar and HR rear bar over to the new car.
Just tighten it up a
bit and less oversteer.
And eventually the AMG brakes. The rotors and pads are almost new. Just a couple thou miles on them.

I'm debating on the ASP pulley. It's runs pretty good as is. But I'll be removing all this stuff from Carly eventually.
I'm going to leave the CO"s in "Carly". They're shot anyway.

So here's a more recent pic of "Inga" before the clear sides. A good German/Swedish name for a sexy car.

 

I'm glad to see that you have turned the corner with your build.

 

I had to laugh as I went through the same thing with my '78 Trans Am. I had car with a what seemed like a million miles on it. The paint didn't quite match on the fenders and there was a lot of wear and tear but overall it was presentable and well sorted. It was my beloved daily driver. I was thinking about restoring it but instead bought a nearly identical 23k mile time capsule show car. It looked great and drove ok but all the hoses, brake lines, and shocks were shot as was the radiator etc. EVERYTHING was original and just died of old age. It took a while to get it all dialed in. Over the last 20 years or so I haven't driven it much (now has 49k miles on it). Now it just goes to an occasional car show or cars and coffee.

I have similar pictures of both of my babies together :-).

 

Uh OK, and they are where are they?

 

I didn't want to hijack your thread with something most would find irrelevant. Here's a few:

 

Thats awesome! Well I'm not the only one that liked a certain car so much to have bought another identical car.
I'm guessing you've done some work to it? I think they had abysmal HP back in the day.
I saw a black one the other day, either completely restored or just a time capsule.
The engine was completely built, cams etc. Sounded great. The way it was meant to be.
It looked better than new. No smog where I live.