PJMusgrave

Do you garage your SL or leave it outside at night ?

WIldcat465

Mine (I mean my wife's) hardly ever leaves the garage.

RadSteve

always garage at night if possible, and in day if available.

Florida Chris

Is this a trick question? Of course I garage it! Who wouldn't?

joec1101

Mine stays in the garage whenever I'm not driving it.

Hey FloridaChris, nice list of cars you got there. I saw a Ford GT Blue/White stripes this past weekend in Palm Springs. Beautiful looking car - had manufacturer license plates on it.

I know this is a Benz forum, but it would be great if you could post a few pics of your GT here for all of us to see.

Chris 45971

Always garaged. Will never spend a night outside.

CASL55

Of course. When I was working, I drove Porsches. I always put a cover on them at work. I'd even cover them in my garage if I was out of town for a while. When I'd park them at valet parking at the airport, I'd tip the attendant extra to put the cover on. Pretty ****, but they were in great demand when it came time to sell them, partially because the paint looked so good.

Jim

StephenK

In the Garage when at home.

lkirchner

Always garaged; at night and during the day in a climate controlled secured building along with my other toys.

Florida Chris

I don't want to hijack this thread. Already happened on another thread. Scroll through this thread for some photos: https://mbworld.org/forums/sl55-amg-sl63-amg-sl65-amg-r230/108605-sl-quality-issues.html

vraa

Dads car (SL) is garaged. The Lexus is garaged.

My car is in the driveway because I gotta make runs to school in the morning and usually I come home much later than both mom and dad.

vkapoormd

garaged as often as possible; we are house hunting in LA and have turend down several houses, because they didn't have enough or any garages for our cars...i think this is important to most SL owners

PA55AMG

Mine is garaged every night with cover, for bat droppings, and mouse traps underneath!

monty

every night garaged and all weekend, use family car to carry the troops on weekends

NeilC123

Monty? You have any army? Planning to invade anywhere? May I suggest a tank - much more useful for troops

Tony Musgrave

Actually, there was a motive when my son posted this topic !

It is a quick survey which confirms that a very high percentage of SL's are garaged.

Now for the story behind why he wanted to know;

In November 2001, I bought a new 500SL, which was always garaged. The Trunk, or Boot as we call them in th UK, to my knowledge never leaked water.

In April 2002 I took delivery of another SL 500 which I had specified, and passed the first one down to my son. The car was not garaged as his garage is full of Go Karts ! After a week he discovered the Trunk had been leaking after heavy rainfall. The car went backwards and forward to the dealer, but they could not rectify the problem. In between times, my second SL was happy in it's garage, and no water leaks were evident.

In February 2004 I bought a SL55 and handed my second car down to my son, and the first car was sold.

My son's second car was not Garaged, and lo and behold, the trunk leaked water after heay rainfall. Since then the SL has been into the dealers countless times, and to this day still leaks water.

On Friday the car is back at the dealers, and MBUK are sending a specialist in water ingress to inspect the car.

Now for my speculation : All SL Trunks leak, but owners are not aware of the problem as their cars are generally garaged. For owners who's cars do get caught in a rainstorm are generally travelling quite quickly and the rain bypasses the point of ingress somehow. Even if ones car was parked in torrential rain, it is unlikely that the owner would notice the puddles as the water would be below the spare wheel. The reason why the water leaks are so apparent in my son's car is because the car has the tyrefit system and no spare, and he uses the 'Compartment for his posessions to stop the being loose in the trunk.

If your car is parked outside and subject to heavy rain, it may be worthwhile to see if yours leaks too.

As for my SL55, I do not know if that one leaks, but I am sure to find out if I pass it onto my son.

PS, The water has caused damage to the interior panels, the hydraulic pump, about 6 toolrolls,and quite a few other items. the dealer has given me copies of the warranty repair bills submitted to MBUK which total in the region of £4,000.00.

Scotsman

Car's outside most of the time during the day(but never at night) and the boot/trunk is completely dry. If it had a leak I'm pretty sure it would have shown up by now as this may come as a surprise to you but it has been known to rain now and again in Scotland.

Tony Musgrave

Maybe the 2005 models have different seals ?

I would be interested to hear from others that own earlier SL's and leave them out.

Rain in Scotland............ surely not

jettie1767

Garaged all the time. My lex stays on the driveway as it is my daily driver.

Bigdot

my 129 is out side most of the time, E500 and Porsche get the inside, but some times the 129Goose will lay down inside at night.

Mark

NeilC123

Actually i did find this quite interesting. As an experiment i left a coat inside my SLK for a week. And lo and behold - it is outside on the driveway. After two weeks I noticed the coat had wet patches on it. So maybe the seals are not as good but because most people have the car garaged or just have things in and then take them out within a few days they do not notice.

blueSL

My SL is garaged all the time and I can count on the fingers of one hand how many nights it has spent outside, mainly staying in hotels where there's no garaging.

I don't think it's at all **** to put a car cover on - I put a seat cover on when anyone else is going to drive it, konwing how easily damaged the nappa leather is.

As for water ingress, I've tested mine by playing a hose on the rear window and it's fine but I may be lucky. I expect making the trunk watertight was one of the big design headaches with this car.

PJMusgrave

I was told this week that a new SL55 2005 Model was parked outside at Gatwick Airport during a two week holiday and the owner return to a very wet boot (Trunk). Normally this car is garaged all the time.

Also last week I spoke to a guy regarding an SL500 R230 that his friend has. He said it's been back to the dealer countless times for boot leaks. He doesn't garage his car at night and his has also had the central locking pump get wet in the boot and pack up.

Maybe the water ingress into the boot is a bigger problem than MB let on.

My car has been away 2 weeks now at the dealer and it's still not fixed.

To answer Blue SL. The dealer has hose tested my car many times and it doesn't leak. However when it rains it leaks. The dealer said that rain water is different to hose pipe water (work that one out please, awaiting comments)

Does any one at Mercedes Benz read the forum posts that can put answers to this problem ?

blueSL

Do you think the car fills up when you are driving in the wet or does it get wet of it's own accord when left out in the rain? If the latter, I cannot for the life of me see what the difference between rain and a hose would be.

Is the water clean? That would suggest ingress from around the top somewhere. If dirty, it would suggest water thrown up by the wheels is leaking into the trunk from the wheel wells.

I had exactly this problem with a VW Scirocco some years ago where the passenger footwell was sodden as a result of water thrown up by the front wheels leaking into the passenger compartment.

benzboy

Actually lots of comment on this problem. https://mbworld.org/forums/sl-class-r230/26245-damp-wet-boot.html