samaritrey

Hello W211 Owners and Matt (LILBENZ230)!! Today I joined in on the fun by purchasing a 2008 E320 Bluetec. I traded in a g8 gt that was supposed to replace my C320 but due to poor fuel economy I didn't want it. I come from the w203 section and have a 2001 c320 that I have had for around 7 Years and now has 214,000 Miles! The c320 has AMG sway bars, Tein springs with Koni rear and Renntech front shocks (rear Renntech shocks started leaking). I also installed a set of OEM bi-xenon lights and purchased a set of sport rims to complete the look. I am not crazy with modifying cars and only did most of that because of worn parts and if your going to replace them might as well make it drive better. Sadly I have been having issues recently with worn control arms and timing chain noise and really just needed something newer so I don't have to work on car every week.
So a little about me I am about to turn 24 and live in NOVA (Northern Virginia) I am about to finish at community college as got a job for a few years but realized I really needed to finish my education. Once that is done I will continue to a 4 year school and get myself educated fully. I come from a family of car fanatics and was raised with at least one cool car in the garage at all times. My other passion is computers so of course I own a star system which is fun to play with but also makes working on your own Mercedes so much easier. I will get some pics up of my new car ASAP and here is a link to my C320 Thread if any of you are interested https://mbworld.org/forums/c-class-w...trey-cars.html

PICS of G8 and E320 I will get better pictures soon

LemonSqueezy

Woah man! It's bout time you joined this side of the forums. Welcome!

LILBENZ230

glad you could join me over on this side.

samaritrey

Lol yes matt still can't believe we ended up with similar cars again after you going rouge for so long.

samaritrey

Got oil changed today as I am going on a 2,000 mile road trip next Saturday! of course dealer overfilled it so I have to take it back Monday to get corrected... I knew I should have done it myself. They also decided to spill oil all over the place under the hood. I really wonder how their are people in this world who don't care about their jobs enough to do it right the first time. When I was working I treated every client like they were royalty and treated their computers with the utmost respect I guess I am a dying bread. I also had a low beam bulb go out who designed the headlights for the w211 they are so hard to get to compared to my w203. I will say that the underbody plastic is easier to remove and deal with then on the w203. I also took the car on a 100 mile trip to visit GF and averaged 36mpg which is not bad considering the idiots on the road who could not figure out what speed to drive and what lane they should be in.

boardboy330

Nice ride. Welcome to this forum.

AMGAffalterbach

Very cool! She's sure one sexy girl!

rediesel

Welcome to the W211 forum family - looks like you'll fit right in.

samaritrey

Thanks guys!

Glyn M Ruck

Nice ride!!! enjoy.

BenzKraft

Hello Trey, I just joined this forum today and I also own a 2008 E320 Bluetec. I've had trouble looking for the Star Factory Repair manual on DVD and I read you have the Star system. Is it basically the same thing as the DVD? Does the Star system show repair procedures for everything that's on the DVD?

Anyone else know where to find the repair DVD or recommend the Star system?

Thanks,

BK

Khan28

Nice. How do you like the ride quality? How does it compare to the W203?

samaritrey

Well you have DAS and then you have WIS. Das is for diagnostics Wis is for service documents. I have never needed WIS and don't think my copy is working right now will have to investigate that. I think every mercedes owner that does any DIY type of work should get a star system so yeah go for it!!

Khan28
The ride quality is like night and day! My C320 has been modified though so not really fare comparison. It has Rentech and Koni shocks with Tein Springs and AMG bars so the ride is very firm but the car feels like a race car in comparison to the W211. My W211 has the old man suspension so it rides amazingly good and bumps are absorbed wonderfully. Once it all wears out though I will firm up the suspension and make it worse!

BenzKraft

Cool, thanks for the info! So you've never needed WIS, is that because the DAS tells you enough info and you're familiar enough with Benz to fix the problems yourself as they arise? Where do you suggest can I buy the DAS/WIS system?

samaritrey

Well I usually have used the Mb repair cd for the w203 but it looks like Mb stopped supporting that after 07. Guess the 08 would be very similar will have to check it out. I learned almost everything I know just reading the w203 section as it has lots of smart people and DIY guides. I see the w211 community is quieter and not as many DIY from what i have seen will have to make some as I work on mine. As for purchasing a unit google is your friend I don't have any recommendations as the place I got mine is gone and I wouldn't recommend them anyway.

samaritrey

Just got back last week from my VA to Fl with a stop in GA trip! Car did great with amazing fuel economy for such a heavy and loaded down car! One tank averaged 37 another 36 and for the whole trip with lots of city driving averaged 34.5mpg overall. Still can't believe how quiet the car is even though I read the OEM tires are supposed to be really noisy guess I got lucky. I do need to figure out why the rain sensor is acting strange. With rain on windshield at first click it sometimes won't wipe unless I take it to second click then first works properly?

BenzKraft

That's great fuel economy for a V6, gotta love turbo diesels! I noticed the same thing with my wipers. The first setting seems to be "very low sensitivity" for the rain sensors. When it rains harder/more consistently they come on quite a bit though. When you first click it to "on" in the first position the wipers always cycle once and then cycle again when there is enough water hitting the sensors. It sounds normal.

samaritrey

So I decided to have a little fun!! I wanted BIX (The factory bi-xenon lights) but could not find a nice pair for under $1,000. So I decided to retrofit in E55 Bi-Xenon Projectors with clear lenses . Since the w211 light already uses a halogen E55 or whatever its called it makes it a direct bolt on job. The hardest part of the whole thing was mounting the ballasts in the bottom. If I were to do the job again I would buy a aftermarket hid kit with slim ballasts and shove it inside the light as making a nice circular hole for the Matsu****a ballasts was a huge pain and using a Dremel I messed up when it got away from me so had to do lots of fill work as it was not a nice circle. All in all took about 6 hours which includes 2 for bumper removal as it was poring like no other outside at the beginning. Opening the lights was easy and installing the wiring and projector was dead simple the only hard part was the hole.



Yes it had jack stands under the lift points on the side the jack was just for safety.



Helper puppy!!



Love those magnetic bolt holders



Put them in over at 175 for 5 minutes and they were very easy to pry apart. I also used the same temperature and time to reseal. I have heard of some using like 250 but that scares me as I don't have good gloves and don't want to burn myself.



Reseal



Layed out all my stuff the projectors 2 sets of Philips d2s bulbs (both older so have new pair on the way) The clear lenses in the box (worth the money) and the Matsu****a gen 3 ballasts.



Sorry for blurry picture Ballasts again and the bolts I used to mount the ballasts.


Close up picture of the e55 bix projector with bulbs installed. The wire on the bottom is for the shield that moves when you put your high beams on so the projector releases more light. You just have to tap into the high beam socket and it doesn't mater which way you wire it and it draws so little power that the high beam bulb is unaffected.



Crappy cell phone pic better pics to come



Crappy cell phone pic better pics to come



Haven't aligned beams yet and the car was still in the air when I took picture. Will go out and align soon and align them better!

samaritrey

The clear lenses make it so much better wish my old w203 had them! Very happy with them I did notice that it looks like one of the projectors has a shield that the other doesn't which blocks light from first few feet may have to take that light apart again to remove it as it bothers me but really doesn't effect the output as from the drivers seat you can't tell. Also the high beams are amazing even better than the bix on my w203 which surprised me.
This is before I aligned it BTW.

rediesel

Well done. So does the projector put our more light when the high beam is activated, and does the halogen high beam still come on? Your pattern looks well defined.

samaritrey

Well it has a shield that moves out of the way and lets all the light out of the projector instead of just part of the light. The halogen bulb works the same as it did before so high beam looks like day time.

samaritrey

So a price list
E55 BIX projectors $40
ZKW-R Clear lenses $25
Matsu****a Gen 3 Ballasts $60
Matsu****a Ballast Input Pigtails $15
Philips 85122 Bulbs $74 (just ordered should arrive Friday using old 85122 bulbs I had in my junk bin)
H7 Connector Free (already had from very very old hid kit)
Bolts and other miscellaneous supplies $15
+ $15 shipping
Total $229

samaritrey

Update time!
Made it to just over 100,750 miles haven't been driving much the last few weeks.
Last week I changed the Transmission fluid using a weed sprayer, plastic tubing and the 722.9 adapter. I used a pair of vice grips as a valve as my local hardware store wanted over $20 for a suitable valve (will get one for next time though as it would make it much easier). The fluid had been in the car about 45-50k miles so way over due but I didn't have time to do the change before then. The transmission had begun to shift poorly sometimes and you could tell it was time. I did get a sample and will probably send it off along with an engine oil sample in the next few weeks to see how bad it really was. I put in about 9quarts of shell 134 ATF and figure about 3/4q came back out when doing the leveling procedure. I plan to do another pan drop and change in about 20k to help keep it clean but probably won't do Torque converter again as that made a mess but we shall see I may change my mind.

I also changed the Timing Chain tensioner as I was having a little bit of rattle on cold starts. I am happy to say that the issue is now gone but getting the tensioner back in was a huge PIA! You don't have tons of space and compressing it down enough is also a challenge with very little leverage. Then you want to be careful you don't cross thread anything.

Next on the list is dropping the engine oil pan to see how clean it is as well as do power steering fluid and rear diff (was done at 53k). Want to make sure the drivetrain lasts as well as my w203 did.

samaritrey

Well car is now at 110,000 Spent my spring break doing the oil cooler repair and found that my air filters had gotten very dirty over the last 10k since I had last checked them (they had like 30k on them) wonder if that made the leak worse as some say... Oh well. I also ended up somehow breaking one of the intake flaps and had to fix that with some very carefully applied JBweld. I then decided that the fix was so good that i would put it back on the car with a metal reinforcement. Sadly I had already bought a replacement intake for $200 (that still hasn't shown up over a week later lol.) So yeah that was an interesting repair to say the least as I was putting everything back together I somehow also broke the return fuel line from each injector. So that meant going to the dealer and spending $150 plus having to loosen the driver side fuel rail and prying it out of the way to feed the new line though. So I learned my lesson on brittle plastic parts. I think in the end I spent about ~$200 on all the gaskets and such $150 on the broken fuel line thing and then $200 on the new passenger side intake (hopefully i can get some money back on it) Oh and about 20 hours of my time lol. I did have a bolt strip on me but I was lucky that I could get a nut on the other side so just bought a replacement bolt at the hardware store and used a nut to fix that issue. I think I may have overtightened it before I got the torque wrench out but should have known better with this soft aluminum. I also used some older MB coolant that I couldent remember if I had mixed with water yet or not to refill the car and check for leaks. I put about 30 miles on it and then changed the coolant and Oil just in case something got in either systems. Okay well here are tons of random pictures.
I will also say that either new air filters, cleaned intake or new 0w-30 oil seem to have improved fuel mileage and yes I did verify the numbers and they seem to be correct.

samaritrey

Figured now that I am back on here I should update my thread. As soon as I finished the oil cooler repair I had to have the timing chain replaced as it had stretched. I believe it cost around $2250 which sucked but since then knock on wood she has been doing great.
I am currently at 118,000 miles and about 1k miles ago I did have to have the engine mounts replaced (I did the trans mount a few hundred miles before because I had time) because in reverse I thought the engine was going to fall out as the shacking was so violent. Sadly since I am away at school I had to have a shop do that that but in the end I believe it costed me around $375 so not so bad and I have a felling my driving style along with the massive amounts of torque is what did the mounts in.
Well that's about it sadly I don't drive much right now as I live in a city and walk everywhere and a Tank of Diesel lasts over a month which includes some long drives back home and on adventures lol