mgw_300e

I have a 1993 300e 2.8

The body and interior are in excellent condition.

The headgasket needs to be replaced.

The transmission is slowly on the way out.

Repairs are starting to sound like $4000-$5000 if I have to pay someone to do it.

Should I fix it, just sell it, or something else?? What do you guys think?


Selling it would mean replacing it with another w124.

Koolwipski

Dont know - sounds like a lot. I would be compelled to sell it; however, it would cost a great deal more for a luxury benzo. With that said - I am probably going to sell my 1992 400E. I am in San Antonio, Texas. Anyone interested, let me know. 104k miles, new tranny, new a/c, new Alpine, new tires, new tint, et...etc.... I have it advertised locally for $9k (I know - it is high, but the latest round of repairs set me back over $4,000). Like the car but got too much going on right now.

CDP

why is your car advertised SO expensive?

I picked up my 1995 E420 Special Edition which has been fully maintanence and the owner has put over 3K in repairs within the last month and didn't charge me extra. also came with 17" amg monoblocks and she only charged me $6,700.

I not trying to make you lose business or anything like that... just curious and looking out for my buddies.

anyways, Matt ... the way I see it ... if the service amounts are greater than what the car is worth then I would much rather sell the car and jump into something better. you can do what I did. lol

oneill_1

Sell it, get what you can out of it, and look for something that suits you at this point in time....it will be hard to let her go .

-OG

mgw_300e

yeah, I've been thinking about that...

I checked out Adsitco and they have rebuilt trans for $1400. I talked to someone today who told me that it's pretty easy to swap it out.

The main thing is the cost of the head gasket repair. Right now it's running great, but I've noticed oil residue in the expansion tank and it's leaking oil. Has anyone ever done their own head gasket replacement? How much were parts and how hard was it to do?

How long will the head gasket hold out? If I keep the oil level up will it keep on running?

Koolwipski

It is a bit high ( like i said, I am aware of that) - One of those deals where if you want to get $7k you have to ask for $9k. Its very clean, 104k miles, runs like a top, you've got the same Alpine head unit with the iPod/XM set up (which is sweet)... Hell, the more I write about it, makes me want to keep it. That is another reason for the high price - not in a hurry to let her go.
Bottom line - your point is well taken.
Steve

CDP

When I had a blown head gasket ... I ran it for over half a year. LOL

and by the way ... I don't recommend doing that either as well. haha

YNVDIZW124

Buy a engine with the tranny attached to it from a wrecking yard and that's it. That way you can sell it running in ok condition.

myfirstbenz

I agree, you can often find low mileage motor/tranny combos, and you might find that you still like the car again.

I honestly feel like it is a shame to let a good benz go. Once you leave it, it will have a down hill spiral to death, bring it back to life with a parts yard combo. Shop around on www.car-part.com.

ptoro01

fix it, bite the bullet now. Try to do your own work which is not so complex on these cars and you can do it for under 1k and learn about your car. Then you have a car that has a good engine, good tranny and good for many new miles. A new car will be a ******* for its first 6 months until you get everything worked out and you will end up with the same amount spent at the end.

mgw_300e

what would be the best engine/trans combo to go with?

3.2L? another 2.8L? which one would be best (meaning easiest/cheapest)?

before you all start saying V8, I've researched it and I'd be better buying a 420 than trying that.

Brian_I.

If you love the car and it is exactly how you like and you would just replace it with another w124 only to spend more time and money to try and get it back to where you're at with your current car now, fix and keep your car.

archeryblackdog

To me is an easy anwser FIX IT!, I have alway like to take broken things and fix them, up grade them, mathem better, or faster.

4K is alot of money but, in all reality, even if you change your ride you are still going to kill that money.

So IMO bite the Bullet

mgw_300e

I'm leaning towards biting the bullet





I just need to get more input so I can erase all doubt from my mind. I feel dumb enough that I bought this car before I knew anything about it or even w124s in general. Don't get me wrong, I love this car and it's by far the coolest ride I've ever owned, but once I start expanding my arsenal of Benzes, they'll all be researched prior to buying.

At least I got a decent price when I bought it...

Please keep the opinions coming!

shadowgriffen

Matt keep the benz, belive me you will regret it once you buy something else. NOTHING feels like a good solid w124, and that feeling will ooze itself in once you have long forgotten your w124.

Here my advice.

I have two kids therefore I cannot just spend money on rims and ***** like that. When I first bought my wagon she needed and Alternator, Battery, and a serpentine Belt.

I busted my *** to save enough money and not use my savings in order to fix all things at once, but it wasnt a 4K total like yours so I could finagle it.

The headgasket (like 95% of us here) you can live with for a while, **** it, keep topping off. If Chris was playing ****in Mario Andretti for a year and his car didn't self-destruct then driving around town or in the office wont kill you either...

you know what I mean...if you can't tackle everything at once then I'm afraid your just going to have to live with certain bugs until you have everything in check.

just don't wait a ****ing year in between fixes.

mhorn

I was in your same boat about a month ago, My 1993 300E needed a new tranny. It has 140K miles. Everything else worked great, but I know that a head gasket job is looming. I decided to replace the tranny and keep the car. If you try and dump the car, the difference between what you would get for a "Broke" benz and what you could sell it for after the repair is probably more than the cost of the repair. In other words whether you sell the car or not you're better off fixing it. The way I look at it, you can't replace what you've got for the price of the reapirs. The problem I ran into with buying salvaged parts is, these cars are all over 10 years old, so the odds of finding a low mileage engine and or tranny in a wreck is fairly low. I would advise against doing a rebuild with the existing tranny. It may fix the problem for now, but then down the road something else in it will break and you'll still end up having to replace it. Get a totally rebuilt tranny from a reputable shop. Mine came from a guy in atlanta and has a 30k mile 2 year warranty which is better than the factory rebuild. If you want to try and find a slavaged engine and tranny, shipping is going to eat up most of your savings unless you can find it locally. I don't know where you are but Potomac German Auto is a mercedes salvage yard in maryland I would give them a call and see if they have any motors or trannys. their number is 888-236-9727.

Here's how I justified my actions:

Option 1: sell the car as is- Might get around $1000. Nobody wants to buy a high mileage car with known major repairs issues unless they're going to slavage it for parts. Take your $1,000 and get a new ride. You still run the risk of buying a used car with problems again.

Option 2: Fix the engine and tranny, then sell the car. Cost $4k-$5k. Money from sale of car, maybee $6000. You might net $2k but you still have to buy another car that could problems again.

Option 3: Fix car and keep: Cost $4-5K. Once fixed it should last you another 100k miles at least. That's about 4 or 5 years worth of driving, so figure it cost you around $1,000 a year for the cost of the repair.

Good luck

YNVDIZW124

I would put this engine in there...i say 2-3k to install it and 1600 for the engine!
300hp!!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/JDM-2...QQcmdZViewItem

Brian McL

Are you SURE the tranny needs to be replaced? There are a couple of cheap mods to the valve body that will make it shift like new. I think it is the B2 piston. Do some research on that before you go spending alot of money on the tranny. BTW...your local tranny shop may not be the best people to ask. There is a guy in Miami who really knows these trannies...I'll try and get his details...but he is shop, so you may be able to locate him.

Mazinger

Swap in a carbed Chevy 350 with TH400 gearbox, wont cost you too much, reliable, cheap spare parts and not very difficult.

mgw_300e

To me, this type of swap is like a chick with a dik. No one wants to find something that doesn't belong on that car under the hood.

It just doesn't seem right to do that. Any Mercedes engine, yes. A Toyota or, yuck, a Chevy? No thanks

myfirstbenz

LOL, that is so true, chick with a dik. Well put, I always felt that way when I would see people take a nice XJ6 or XJS and take the v12 out and put a 350 in there because they couldn't afford to work on the v12. What a dumb idea. SO many analogies, so little time.

Mazinger

Engine swaps are cool, just look at the FD3s RX-7 rotary engine swapped with the GM LS-1 engine, and look at the results, very impressive.

NorCal124

In its current state, its obvious you're not going to get what the car is worth. So expect to get less than half of KBB value. In other words, don't get your hopes up of making money off it even if it is a MB. Now if you fix it sure you will pay around $5K to get everything done but you'll have a reliable running car when you do. If this is your primary vehicle then you have some serious thinking to do. Now if you have a commuter or back-up car then maybe you should set it aside and have it worked on when funds permit. Regardless which route you take you're going to eat it financially in some form or another.

Saijin_Naib

Keep it! Its your benzo, and thats how it should stay!

Bigpete123

I voted "other", which probably reflects my indecisiveness about my 300ce. I'm a very similar situation, although I'm probably in much deeper than you are.

I have owned my coupe for around 2.5 years. I totalled up my invoices the other day and was shocked to find that I have spent over $9,500 in NECESSARY repairs during my ownership. For some reason, $7,500 was my ballpark guess. This doesn't count rims, suspension, tires, stereo system, etc etc.

My car recently failed emmissions. I had it adjusted (which requires some parts to be replaced). They wer able to get the car through emissions with flying colors, but the car now idles HORRIBLY, hesitates to the point where it's dangerous, and takes many tries to get it to start.

Just when I thought it couldn't get worse, the day before I left for my honeymoon a few weeks ago, the car decided that it didn't want to go into reverse anymore. So the engine will rev as if I'm in neutral even when I'm in reverse. Sometimes the tranny will kick in and my tires will chirp (due to the revving). Imagine trying to parrallel park the car when it's like this. ugh.

I'm hoping that an OVP relay will solve my problem cuz I'm sick of paying my indy $95/hr to troubleshoot things.

Anyway, here's what freaks me out. My car is a 1990 w/200k miles on the clock. It's worth about $4k blue book, assuming it's in excellent condition, or $3k in poor condition (which it's currently in based on the mechanical issues- body and interior are in very good shape).

If I sell the car for $3k, I lose $9.5k in repair costs and $2.5k in depreciation. $12k is a lot of money to me!!! I keep rationalizing that I should fix the car because "what else could go wrong after this??". But then something goes wrong, of course.

It's an extremely tough decision. At some point, you have to just stop the bleeding. In business school, they called these types of costs "sunk costs". The theory is that you should never let past expenses or investments steer your decisions for the future. If a better (less expensive, more profitable, etc) option exists, you shouldn't stick with something simply because you spent a lot of money on it.

But on the other hand, you have the concept of some future benefit as a result of those repairs that you have yet to realize. This is what makes me keep my car. I keep thinking that I will get over this hump and my love for this car will reignite. But I with that rationale, I could just keep digging the hole deeper and deeper.

When I think of all of the money I have spent trying to get my car to run correctly, it makes me sick. Honestly, at this point, I regret doing major repairs to this car. It has costed me a fortune!!! But if the OVP relay fixes my problem and my tranny just needs a little maintenance, maybe I'll be singing a different tune.

Just my $.02. Or should I say $5,