Almost there

645,000 kilometers

And on we go.

It has been a long road, to coin a phrase. There appears to be no regular 400,000 service, but the regular 100,000 mile service ran $2,500 including the new starter motor and motor mounts. We cannot find a record of installing a starter before - although I thought we had. - so it may have been factory original. I do know this was the first time for motor mounts.

Tens of thousands of dollars has been spent keeping this on the road these 15 plus years, with tires being the biggest single item; I am on my 12th set. On the other the number of factory original parts is surprising. Glow plugs, injectors, injector pump, hvac system (except compressor), entire drive train (except transfer case), audio system, the entire exhaust system and much more are factory original.

The body is still very handsome, with only a few road chips here and there. I am going to have those touched up in a couple of weeks; the estimate is $225. The interior shows very little wear. There are a couple of cracks in the driver's arm rest and some of the plastic on the steering wheel has suffered from so many hours of use. I have had to replace the front windshield twice due to road grit abrasion.

Would I do it again? Well, I intend to carry on. It is fit to drive anywhere at all. Everything works as it should, even the small things. I still do not know of any car at any price that fulfills my requirements as well as this one does. The handling remains tight, the ride quality is as good as ever was, the ergonomics are still excellent.

I no longer drive the mega miles I once did and at just 20,000 miles per year I may not make it to 500,000. If I do, I'll report back in five years or so.

 

Congrats on the mileage. Odds are water intrusion will take it out. Be on watch.

 

WOW thats impresive!

My wifes 320 cdi just passed 260,000kms (162,000 miles). Still going strong.

 

Impressive. Have you stuck to the MB service schedule or done extra oil changes in between? Clearly not an airmatic car.

 

The pre-Bluetec (07-08) diesels are good. Or so I am told. OP is obviously omitting the air suspension maintenance, perhaps because he did a coil conversion. Freeway miles put very little strain on the transmission - and starter, for obvious reasons. It is a little surprising the transfer case went out; I would think the chain and gears would be under very little strain putt-putting along on the freeway.

I am curious how OP managed to go two miles at zero miles per hour in just four minutes.

You guys know, with a bidirectional tool you can make the odometer read whatever you want. It won't change the ECU mileage, so genuine odo rollback (or rollforward) is not possible. But yeah, I've been tempted to make it read some absurd mileage just for the wows.

I am also curious what OP does that makes 20k miles per year seem like low mileage.

 

Some answers:

I got Arnott replacement air shocks at about 110,000 miles, and the Arnott were replaced again at around 350,000. This was reported here: https://mbworld.org/forums/gl-class-...ic-update.html

At that time the factory claimed the transfer case did not need service - it was "lifetime". Probably true if you define lifetime as 180,000 miles. It was replaced by a rebuilt unit and has been serviced every 100,000 miles since.

I use the factory oil change intervals: 8 to 10 thousand miles. Anything than can be poured gets changed every 100,000 miles. The engine wants a quart of oil every 7-8 thousand miles, so sometimes I just change it then.

I drove 35 to 45 thousand miles for business for 40 years. I no longer do that as of 2022, but it is a 50 mile round trip from our house to anywhere at all and we still have a 1600 mile round trip to a vacation house four or five times a year, so 20,000 miles a year is not many for me.

The car has probably not spent 100 days in a garage. It sits out in all weathers.

 

You've done very well. I'm sure there will be many who can only wish for such service from their car. Congratulations. The "lifetime" rubbish MB talk is just that. They said the same for the transmissions but have now changed their tune. Short lifetimes indeed.

 

Yeah, nicely done. Just goes to show that once you let these go to cold steel bad things happen.
it is possible to run a CDI to these lengths, even with all the known faults of that engine.

You either gotta just continue driving it, and give it regular preemptive maintenance, or chase all kinds of gremlins with reactive maintenance.
It’s the latter crowd who end up dumping vehicles and the owner after them who drives them into the ground very quickly.

 

And there are some who assume anyone so lucky must obviously be a liar.