mmirshahi

Drove a 2002 CL500 for 7 years. Sold it and purchased a 2005 SL500 yesterday from a Benz Dealer in MD for $23500 with 52,000 miles

Black on Black. Added a 2 year extended warranty for $4000 with United Auto Care (through dealer). After all the ABC nightmares with the CL, I didn't think twice about adding a warranty.

Service records were clean except for a AC Compressor replacement at 49k miles. So the tandem pump hasn't failed...YET

Going to drop the car off at the dealer for a ABC flush next week.

I have a few questions..

Is it me or does this car feel very heavy?

Is a rodeo required every time you flush the ABC system or change the pump or strut?

Thanks!

TTtodd

Congrats on the new ride

Yes, it is heavy. An SL500 is about 4,100lbs. But I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing. The weight of the car makes it very stable at very high speeds. Personally I like the more heavy stable feeling at speed, especially when the road get bumpy.

Yes a rodeo should be done and is the recommended procedure. However .... I recently replaced my rear right strut.
After install I started the car and it lifted up like nothing ever happened.
No lights on the dash or anything. I did the calibration and rodeo because I have a star computer. Truthfully I think I would have been fine without it.

There are many that have successfully completed the flush of ABC system without it. Do a search, many DIYs out there.

carguyshu

$4,000 seems awfully steep for a 2 year warranty. A lot would have to go wrong for you to have more repairs than $4,000 worth in 2 years. That's like adding an extra $333/month to a car payment. Are you planning on keeping it past those 2 years? What are you going to do then?

Vader1

I looked into the warranty. Too much money for too little insurance. I figured what happens , happens and I'll deal with it.

Snipex

Agreed on $4k being steep for 2 years, mine was $3200 for 4 years

imtheking

Haha- this car is long gone. Now I own a 2003 SL500. The shape and design is timeless. I skipped the warranty this time. I only drive it on the weekends and many parts you can now get aftermarket for much cheaper. I decided to just put some money aside and live with whatever problems come along. So far I replaced the motor mounts/transmission mount and did a brake flush- $1200

I do have Strutmaster installed (bought the car that way) and want to go back to ABC- I decided the car is ok for now and will probably go back to ABC next Spring. I anticipate other ABC issues will need to be addressed once the original struts are put back on- pump, hoses, fluid etc....not looking forward to that bill

mirza88

Why do you want to go back to the ABC? Isn't is cheaper to maintain the car and doesn't it make the car lighter?

I've been thinking of swapping my ABC out thats why I'm asking

Would love to see a pic of your car

Rudeney

Maybe he likes the ride of ABC better. Personally, I'd never give up ABC in my SL. It makes it fun drive but still giveS me that luxurious MBZ ride on rough roads. I posted in another thread about this the other day. There is a back road I travel that leads from my neighborhood to the closest shopping center. It is in poor condition with a lot of dips and bucked surfaces. I just raise the car and go. I can do 40mph without really noticing how bad the road is, and still enjoy its curves and hills. My neighbor who was behind me the other day asked me how I go go that fast in a sports car because his Asian SUV was bottoming out. AB, of course!

moretech

To Imtheking. If you do that ABC job let us know how it all turns out. Sounds like a complex job.

moretech

bobterry99

Yes, a conventional suspension is cheaper to maintain. But it also seriously compromises the quality of the handling and/or ride comfort depending on the setup.

I bought an R230 because it has ABC. Like Rodney, I would not own one that had ABC replaced with some aftermarket system. In my view such a car is a hybrid Mercedes. Is there anyone here that thinks Strutmasters and other sources have products which can match the engineering of the world's oldest car company?

imtheking

I owned a CL for many years- only ABC part I replaced was the pump and a sensor in the rear. Maybe I was lucky but like I stated before the parts are not that expensive anymore- aftermarket pump is around $350, Arnott struts are $500 after CORE etc...I have a good mechanic with reasonable prices so cost is not really a concern.

When I bought the car, it was sight unseen- I sent a mobile benz specialist to inspect the vehicle and was told the car is in immaculate condition except that the suspension had been replaced with Strustmaster and that ride quality had been compromised. I just didn't think it was going to be this bad based on reviews I had read online. The car does not hug the road and there was one time where I braked hard to avoid hitting another car and the car lunged forward; huge safety concern for me- it's not engineered to have Strutmasters installed.

Will the car ride better with struts from VVK or some other company? Maybe. But the other issue I've had living in the DMV is that the few local shops I called (including speed shops) didn't want to take on the job of replacing the suspension with aftermarket struts and dropping the frame to install sway bars etc....not worth the liability.

alk247

I did the same recently (along with other maintenance) and spent about $200 for parts and pressure bleeder. So saved $1000 have paid for SDS and would have paid for half of the lift, but that one had been paid off already with savings from my other cars.

okhmbldr

.

Sean@VVK

We have sold at least 4 kits where the customer told me they had Strutmaster's conversion and couldn't stand it anymore. With a quality coilover setup like ours or the SL65 Blackseries, your car will handle properly; it's all in the valving and anti-roll bars. Yes to change the suspension firmness you will have to manually do it by popping the hood and trunk, but it really is a nice conversion with anti-rollbars engineered for the application and balanced handling. The VVK coilover conversion saves significant weight compared to the ABC system, removes the headache & worry of expensive ABC repairs and also has the correct appearance (all the strutmaster conversion customers have said the car sits way too high).


ABC controls body-roll hydraulically.

I have spoken to so many potential customers who said XYZ conversion company says "YOU DONT NEED SWAY BARS". This is utter nonsense, the R230 chassis was engineered to have some form of ROLL-CONTROL. On the SL350 and Black Series it was done via traditional spring steel torsional anti-roll bars, aka "sway bars". On the SL350 and Black Series it was done via traditional spring steel torsional anti-roll bars, aka "sway bars". The current SL (R231) is available in the US without ABC, I believe it's only offered on AMG models. Again, when ABC is not optioned, Mercedes-Benz installs normal sway bars. Any company offering a conversion that says you don't need anti-roll bars is telling you to make your car unsafe.


The ABC concept is great, but Mercedes were too ambitious with the system. By 2009 McLaren were putting a similar system on their street cars, but processing speeds had come so far forward that they made it work much better. If you really go do some spirited driving in a first-gen SL, you will notice that the system has a slight delay in responding to quick turn-in and overall damping control. There is no response time to a torsion anti-roll bar, it is physically there; always doing it's job, mechanically linked to each wheel directly. Another thing about the McLaren hydraulic suspension is they simplified the system greatly by putting the valves on each shock individually, and massively simplified the piping system.

Ultimately ABC on any older Mercedes is almost a guaranteed maintenance headache. Because of the interlinked nature of the system, you run the likely risk of one component damaging several others when it fails and contaminates the entire system. Any failure of any ABC component should be followed up with a complete system flush after the bad part has been replaced. Driving even a few miles on a damaged ABC system will cause significant circulation of hydraulic fluid within the system, basically spreading the virus if you will, and then may require accumulators, shocks, valves, valve blocks, distribution units etc to be replaced.

In my mind though, the worst part is you could have a simple failure, fix it and flush the system completely, and still have unknown damage to other components which rears it's head 3months later with another expensive repair and another $250 worth of Pentosin fluid. The only real way to know for sure is to change every component in the system (except the lines, they just need flushing), and even with re-manufactured parts that easily totals over $5,000, or about $12,000 for brand new Mercedes components.


All the best,
Sean

seven_out

If ABC were not available on the R230, I'd be driving another model. I've owned R129 cars, and the ride quality is annoyingly bad to me. I've never driven an R230 Black Series, but Jeremy Clarkson did, and he positively hated the lack of ride comfort.

The only concern I have is ABC springing a leak when I am far from home. I had a leak once -- cost me $10 to fix -- and I was lucky to be at my job where there was an hydraulic jack and basic hand tools. Had I been somewhere in the New Mexico desert...

imtheking

I was unable to locate a single speed shop or indy mechanic in the DC, MD, Va area willing to take on this job- specifically the sway bars- so I gave up. No one wanted to be liable knowing a single screw up would cost thousands to repair.

brucewane

The SL65 Black Series is basically an attempt to make a 4100 pound car handle like a Ferrari. The ride quality is going to suffer when maintaining super-tight control over that kind of weight, there's just no avoiding it.

Likewise, if Ferrari tried to give their lightweight cars a luxuriously smooth ride, the tight, quick handling would suffer.

ABC is an attempt to have the best of both worlds, and it mostly succeeds, the trade-off being expense and reliability.

You can certainly have a 4000+ pound car with a traditional spring/shock suspension that rides nicely and has pretty good handling, it's just not going to win any road course races.

My point is, there's nothing in the general suspension design of the R230 that would cause a coilover conversion to inherently result in a poor ride - nothing in the control arm geometry, etc., it's just a matter of tuning the spring rates, damping rates, and sway bars to the desired point somewhere between a luxuriously smooth ride and super-tight, super-precise handling. In other words, coilovers do not necessarily mean poor ride quality.