Hi Guys,

New member here from the UK! Back in 2014 my company had a partnership with Mercedes Benz and I was able to have from new a C63 507 Edition Coupe and fell in love with this car and this engine! (KS64 HJD black coupe if anyone has seen it?) Had it for a year and sadly after a very enjoyable 12k miles it had to go back to Mercedes.

Since then I've been waiting for the opportunity to buy another one. I told myself that I didn't mind one with a few issues as I am a reasonably competent mechanic and figured these are becoming old cars now so most of them will have a few issues anyway.
However my musts were, a high spec, low milage, ideally black, not wood trim, 4 door or estate and with the 16 spoke 19" wheels. And I had roughly £16k to spend.

This is what I bought!
A late 2008 saloon with the performance pack, very high spec (I can't actually think of an option it doesn't have) with 67k miles on the clock, full MB service history apart from one.




So the bad bits, the driver side front bumper has one of the louvres has been broken off. Luckily no other damage so hopefully for a paint shop shouldn't be too bad a job. The lacquer on the wheels has starter to peel in the centre and one has been kerbed pretty bad, not actually sure what to with these as I want them to look original but I've seen wheels re-diamond cut before and something doesn't look right with them. Maybe I can get them welded up where the kerb marks are and then only a small diamond cut would be needed?

Two problems I have attempted to fix already is the headlights are constantly on, the switch doesn't seem to do anything. Read it was a common problem, bought a second hand one from Silverlake automotive recycling in Southampton and here's how it went.

Used a pry tool to lever off the little cover panel by the light switch. There's actually a little notch in the plastic right where my tool is in the picture

Uncovered this and pushed the clip down on the fuse board

Reached inside and there is 3 metal tangs around the outside of the switch. Depress these one by one and switch pops out dashboard side.

Un-clip these 2 little tangs on the new switch and the centre pops out. I couldn't just use this as is, as this one had the headlight adjust on it and mine didn't need that as is has the bi zenons.

The centre then just pops out and I used my case and repeated all the steps to put it back in.

Et Voila!
However this only worked for one day and now were back to lights being on all the time. Any ideas?

The other issue I have and have actually resolved is that once I got the car home I noticed the little drip of oil under the drivers side front bumper.
Looked like a stone chip had hit the auxiliary oil cooler that the 63's have and was weeping a bit. Bought a second hand one off Ebay and here's how it went.


Took the wheel off and started to remove the inner wheel arch liner. You have to do both halfs starting with the back one. Lots of push clips and 8 & 10mm screws. You can also see my broken louvre here.

With the liner out you can see where the leak was coming from. There was various E style bolts holding this in and after removing all of them we were ready to remove the rad.

I unbolted this bottom hose however is was stuck solid! So made the decision to take off the front undertray and unbolt the hose from the other end which is attached to the main oil cooler.

Disaster! The bolt sheared off. Least the oil cooler can now come out, however I have this problem to sort now.

Ended up taking the whole bumper off to gain access to the oil rad so I could drill out the the broken bolt.

I filed off the end flat, centre punched it and drilled it out with at first a 3mm drill then with a 5mm drill then tapped it out to M6. Robbed an old bolt off the old oil cooler and she's good as new!

If anyone does this then I recommend taking pictures of where the wiring looms lie as there's a few of them around this rad. I reversed all the steps and reinstalled the new rad and all the bodywork. Filled it up with oil and its been drip free since!

Thanks to anyone who made it this far, I know its been a long post. Got a few more things to do so I will try and do write ups on those too. Have some diff seals to replace if anyone has done those before?

Regards,

Iain

 

Looks great! Looking forward to seeing the progress. As for the headlights, you need to have the cluster coded to give you the option to turn off daylights. Check your cluster to see if there's an option already there. Once it's coded, the light switch can be used as intended.

 

Thanks! So when you say the cluster do you mean the dashboard i.e instrument cluster? And how would I get it coded? Seems strange that it worked for a day then stopped working, I thought maybe there was a deeper fault that's blowing the switch.

 

Yes, in the instrument cluster where you can change certain vehicle options such as power folding mirror, exterior light delay etc.

I had a local shop to me code the option to turn off day lights. The dealer may be able to do this for you. It's possible that it worked for a day and then stopped because the car was re-coding the switch to the vehicles settings but not entirely sure.