Sorry if this is too long, wanted to get everything down while I still remember....

4 months into ownership of my 2003 CLK500 with the AMG package/wheels/whateva which I could't pass up for $2500 with a clean title and an immaculate interior+exterior. The old girl has just over 198k miles on the clock and I'm now the 3rd owner. I got a huge binder of receipts and every little repair done to this car since new. YES it did have the notorious Valeo radiator and YES it caused a failure for the original owner at 48k miles. He took it in to the dealer for hard shifting and sure enough there was glycol in the trans fluid. They did a full flush and claimed that it was caught early enough, to my knowledge the original trans is still in it.

After inspecting it I could see that it just needs some TLC and some deferred maintenance done. The previous owner had the car for roughly 7-8 years but in the last 5 years or so, the car was driven by the PO's elderly mother who racked up a whopping 5k miles average per year.

It had horrible valve cover gasket leaks when I first got it and would actually drip oil onto the headers causing smoke to billow out at stop lights (a great look btw). Looking through the service records, I found a comment by a previous mechanic saying that the VC gaskets were starting to leak and that was 40k miles ago ha!! So I changed all 16 plugs, VC gaskets, breather cover seals, replaced all breather hoses, did air filters and cabin filters (there was literally a small bucket worth of sand, leaves, and dead bugs on either side of the air box where the filters sit), thoroughly cleaned the MAF. Ended up having to get a new oil filler cap. After all leaks were sealed, it started spewing out the oil filler cap after each drive.

I'm really happy with FCPEuro, where I got most of the parts. They kitted things up nicely and I thought the prices were reasonable.

I was relieved to see that everything under the rocker covers was glistening and clean after nearly 200k miles. Once the little tune up was done, I did see my average mpg go up by about 1.2 from 20.2 to 21.4ish (this is %75 highway, and fairly hilly residential streets for the rest) and the car idles WAY smoother. It had this little hiccup at idle that would rock the car from side to side a bit before.

That being said there are several problems I need to take care of. I believe one of the rear struts is on its way out ( the car yaws strangely when hitting sharp bumps in a left turn). It could use all sorts of bushings in the front suspension and sway bar links. The rotors aren't bad, have a lip after all those miles, but id like drilled ones for front and rear. Rear main seal definitely needs replacement soon, but it's not dripping on the ground and oil level is always OK. I've got a tranny service kit with new filter and gasket ready to go. Needs some new tires too. There is a grimy residue all over the diff, so that probably needs some tlc...

Other than that, the car is immaculate for its age and pulls really strong. I fell almost obligated to chop the muffler off, despite wanting to keep this classic beauty stock. It just seems like a sin to keep that M113 quiet though...

That's all for now...look forward to being apart of this community. Any recs for good threads on this site, or other sites in general would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers!






Got a set of nice looking Affalterbach wheels caps for $20

 

Welcome! Looks great. I would not delete the muffler.

 

First post haha. I just went in for a quote for my CLK500 and the resonator was $75 and the muffler $150. I'm going to start with the resonator and if it isn't loud enough, move to the muffler. Hope for the best. Here's a pic of my girl lol.

 

Looks great!