pnoski

Hi all, thought I'd post my recent experience of a very drawn out repair of my 2001 CLK 320 W208. First thing of note I'd say is make sure if you do have a fault with your convertible roof that you give yourself plenty of time, either by having a back up vehicle or ensure that you know how to manually put the roof up on your vehicle so you're not exposed to the elements whilst your repair is in progress which my car has been for probably 6 weeks now.... so this particular car has been with my family for 10 years now and recently come in my possession.

The roof wasn't used very much before I got hold of the car, the first sign of trouble I had was that to operate the roof I had to raise and lower the rear headrest / roll-bar before the roof would retract. I suspect that this was as a result of the roll-bar solenoid being on the way out, but we'll come to that a little later. After a week or so the roof stopped working completely, but luckily is was raised and locked so wasn't a massive urgency to repair. Looking through inspection hole at rear of boot / trunk bulkhead I could see I was loosing hydraulic fluid and this had dropped below lower level which must have a sensor preventing further operation. On my hunt for the offending leak I noticed there was fluid on the top side of external paintwork of the trunk / boot lid which dust had stuck to leaving a tell tale dark stain, clearly visible on the silver paintwork. Further inspection showed that the hydraulic latch securing the rear of the soft top was shot and would need replacement / repair.

First iteration was to look at repairing the rear latch and I purchased a seal kit on line as clearly the original seal had perished. However when I got the replacement seals they were just o-rings, which my experience as a hydraulic power steering engineer would suggest were not really suitable for dynamic, particularly piston type operations, so I relented and purchased the brand new OEM piston assembly from Mercedes, think that set me back circa US$300 from the US (but still half the price of the part bought in Australia).

Next fitted the new part to the car, topped up the the official Mercedes convertible hood hydraulic oil .... please note getting access to the hydraulic oil reservoir is an absolute pain, you have to pull out an absolute ton of trim and remove the rear boot segregation mechanism and rear bulk-head which must have more than 20 bolts securing it. Please note when you refit the hydraulic hoses that they are fully seated in the clips, don't do what I did and not have them in fully seated as when I tried to operate the roof I ended up pumping 1/2 of my very expensive Mercedes convertible hydraulic oil over my spare wheel... plus I suspect introduced air into the system which caused my next heart-ache.

So following this small error (some very non-forum expletives were uttered) I tried again, the roof indicator just flashed (as in an error) so following the issue I had previously with the roll-bar I tried to move this up and down and it made a really nasty loud ratcheting type noise and then just stopped .... ahhhhhh!!! (more expletives). Searching through the forums it was clear that my issue now lay with my roll-bar headrest solenoid and this time I thought I'd approach the most visible advertiser for re-manufactured units Top Hydraulics for some help, I'd avoided them before as they were based in US (and I'm in Australia) and thought it would take too long and postage would be prohibitive, but despite reservations I went for it (to get to the roll-bar head-rest solenoid your back seat has to come out). Also please note for those of you with W208 convertibles there is no mechanical release mechanism for the headrests / roll-bars ... I spent a good deal of time poking and prodding for a release mechanism that was only introduced on the W209 model. The W208's hydraulic system is fighting against the massive spring deployment mechanism in the roll bar, but there's no headrest latch to release.

I ordered a core exchange roll-bar solenoid from Top Hydraulics on Sunday and the replacement was delivered to me in Australia by Thursday, in fact the re-manufactured unit got to me before I'd even posted my core unit to them, since then I've manged to get my finger out and received the core refund which was processed very efficiently by the guys at Top Hydraulics.

Oh yes and it goes on.... refitted the replacement solenoid and could hear valves "clicking" but no hydraulic pump motor (expletives x 7), got in touch with the folks at Top Hydraulics for some trouble shooting, I got a response from Klaus within a couple of hours (despite the time zone difference and it being the weekend!!) and we went through fuse (OK), then swapped the relay from fuel pump & hydraulic pump (conveniently placed close by in boot / trunk) & voila!! back in action. Have purchased new relay from Merc (about US$30) and I'm now merrily back in wind in the hair convertible heaven. Many thanks to the guys at Top Hydraulics, I wouldn't go anywhere else for my convertible hood parts & the help and service are unparalleled.