5 quarts of oil eh? That's gonna be a problem! LOL

 

Not if you do it twice. That's 10 quarts, most of which goes into the car, the rest is great for the lawn mower and edger. Still doesn't add up anywhere near $275.

 

I agree that there shouldn't be a mark-up above retail but this isn't a trivial amount of work and was mentioned above their labor rate is low.

 

Apparently not low for this area, otherwise I'm sure the owner would raise it.

At the current rate, my time has worked out to being worth about $891.00 per hour. My attorney doesn't make that much.

 

You need to get a better/more expensive attorney. When I worked at a law firm over a decade ago with 200+ lawyers, the first year associates were charging over $500 an hour. Some of the partners were over $1000.

 

Wow you have your OWN attorney? What kind of lodging do you provide for it?

That reminds me: what do you call 7 attorneys up to their necks in cement? Not enough cement

 

We just returned from a week long, 2500 mile road trip to several National Parks and National Forests (Yellowstone, Big Horn, Shoshone, Devil's Tower, Black Hills, Badlands, probably a couple I missed). This included Interstate highways, secondary roads, park roads, back roads, and even an unexpected 25-mile stretch of crappy washboard dirt road where the highway was torn up for re-paving. Cruising speeds ranged from long stretches of 35 and 45 MPH in the parks, to a very satisfying stretch with the cruise set at 90 and 100 to cover more ground in the Sandhills of Nebraska. The posted Interstate speed limit in most of the states we visited was 80. I didn't check the trip odometer when we got home, but the last time I did I remember it showed an average fuel economy of something like 20.9 MPG for the week. Not too shabby for high speed cruising, lots of mountain roads, and one morning when I let it sit and idle for half an hour while we chatted with another couple.

We did a trip last year that took 8 days and covered 3000 miles through the Southwest. That experience led us to choose this year's trip, and we were confident enough that we'd do it again that we bought an annual National Parks pass. Once again the car was supremely quiet and comfortable, and utterly reliable. I took along the OBD scanner as well as the DAS laptop and adapter, just because I had just finished a lot of work on the car. I never had to pull out either one. I did pop the hood a couple of days ago to check the coolant levels, since I'd had both the main and intercooler circuits opened up and coolant changed, but neither circuit lost a drop.

What a wonderful, wonderful car to own and drive.

 

Parks! Post pics!

 

I will, but not here... give me a few days to get them into a blog post and I'll post a link. Almost forgot, Devil's Tower. We did the longer hike all the way around, just under 3 miles of what they called "moderately difficult" trail. It's more difficult if you're old and out of shape! I survived though.

 

Forgot to note.... I do have one more repair item now than I did when we left. Yesterday on our way home we took a hit by a chunk of gravel or something big enough to make a nice bulls-eye right dead center in my fiend of vision. Looks like we'll be getting a new windshield. Insurance covers repairs with no deductible, but they "strongly encourage" replacement if the damage is in the driver's FOV. Given how picky I am about windshield visibility and optical defects, I'll probably do that.

 

I'm still not happy with the suspension. The ride to me seems overly harsh, to be honest. Although I do what I can to dodge most road defects, you can't miss everything. I can feel every manhole cover and minor pothole. I don't even have the 20" wheels, so there's a little more sidewall than some have. I think I get a smoother ride in my F150 in town than I do in the Mercedes, and that's just not right. I'm pretty sure there is still a problem, but haven't found exactly what it is yet.

I already replaced the front and rear accumulators and the pulsation damper. Of those, I know for sure the front accumulator was bad. I dumped about half a liter of hydraulic fluid out of it after removing it, it was full -- meaning the diaphragm had ruptured. The rear was probably OK. I know the pump (power steering, ABC, tandem, whatever your preferred term may be) is leaking somewhat and will need to be replaced. I found a thread from this board discussing a possible defective relief valve inside the pump, but I don't know for sure that's the problem. What caught my eye was the discussion of the results of the rodeo test. I believe, based on my recollection from when I did the rodeo test on mine, that the ABC pressure stayed pretty constant close to 195 bar. I'll have to run it again to confirm. At the time I thought it was a good thing, but after reading some of the threads here I wonder if it might actually be pointing to a problem. Of course this is all just the opinions and ideas of SGOTI, I really need to read up and get a better understanding of exactly how the ABC system works and the correct behavior when testing. I've read through this document a couple of times, but of course I don't have a lot of experience with ABC -- so some things are still unclear, and the document may or may not be completely accurate.

It will all have to wait a few more days. I have replacement capacitors for the ignition voltage transformer on the way from Mouser. When I removed the caps, two of them showed definite signs of leakage. Fortunately it wasn't enough to damage the PCB. I decided to replace all of the large electrolytics with new ones, all of which are at least a little better than what they are replacing. Once that is done and the engine can be started again, I can dig deeper into the ABC system.

 

You didn't want to buy a VT from Clark in CA? He replaces and upgrades the components from consumer to automotive level to withstand the heat. Those capacitors are particularly leaky cans in MB.

 

Already tried. Clark doesn't have any available, and won't for a while.

They used a potting compound that makes it slightly inconvenient to DIY a repair, but it's not too terrible. I've been doing electronic repairs and some manufacturing since the late 1970s, so this is really no big deal for me. Just a little bit of an inconvenient time for my 1990s vintage Weller soldering station to go TU, but thanks to the magic of Amazon I'll have that fixed tomorrow as well. The power supply is still working, I just suspect some sagging or ripple under load. We'll see if the new caps fixes it, or not. If not - on to the next suspect.

 

I have one I bought from Clark after my PPI two years ago warned me about coil packs and VT and ABC; and of course, I never used either (yet). I have been holding a coil pack left and VT in a closet. If you need to get your car up, I would consider letting you use it until you get yours repaired. Let me know.