For your clunk in the rear, check your end links. I had a clunk in the front of a car I bought last year and it sounded horrible. It ended up being endlinks. Which are cheap and easy to replace.

Beautiful car! I love that color.

The hot smell may be the belt idler pulley or the belt tensioner pulley. I had the same issue with my 05 and it scared me enough that I didnt drive it much for almost a year because I was worried that it was the harmonic dampner. I had the same smell on a different car and it was the dampner and it eventually failed.

Anyway, those small pulleys spin pretty fast and they are under a good bit of load and the bearings start failing which causes the belt to drag hince the "hot" smell. Look at the top side of your belt for signs of wear such as the lettering wearing off. I changed the bearing rather than the whole assembly and it cost about ten bucks.

The clunk in the right rear may be a bigger issue. Do a search because I remember something about a main rear subassembly bolt that wollows out the attachment hole. IIRC the repair is fairly involved and requires some cutting and welding.

thanks for the info. I'll take a peek at the belts and see if i notice anything. If anything the smell seems to more be coming from under the car, not the engine.....but i'm not even sure of that

the subframe bolt sounds much more serious. just read thru a few threads on it and im not positive i've got the right symptoms (hopefully). i don't notice any looseness in the rear end and i only hear the noise when going over bumpy roads, not under hard acceleration. i saw someone mention 4 bolt points but i think the picture had expired. is this easy to see from under the car or would it need to be jacked up/on a lift?

I had wore out subframe bushings on my old E63, that caused the rear end to move around at highway speeds while going over bumps on the road.
after examination the bolts were fine, just the bushings were worn, which caused the rear end to shift around, wearing out my rear tires.
All was replaced under warranty.

The belt smell will seem to come from different places depending on wind direction. One day it would sem to come from the wheel area, the next it would be the cowling, then the grill. As soon as you detect it it will disappear and it will have you sniffing the cracks around the hood before long.

IDK much about the subframe bolt issue but I get a clunk from the r rear when I back out of the driveway and over the street gutter. I always assume the worst lol.

I bought my car with 18k miles on it and over six years I've added about 34k. I've done all maintenance and repairs myself and so far I've had no issues that I couldnt handle in my driveway. The E55 is an awesome car and I think that you are going to enjoy it. Frankly, I dont think that there is a better bang for the buck out there right now. High quality, fast, comfortable, and pretty bullettproof.

I fully agree. even at 15 years old i don't think there's a comparable car on the market. since purchase, i've stumbled across videos or articles about cool 4 door performance cars and briefly think - damn should i have considered that in my search? then after a bit of research i confirm that e55 was the way to go. audi rs6? wild maintenance costs. rs4? still quite a bit more expensive. b8 s4? 333hp.....childs play. chrysler 300 srt8? not my cup of tea

I've had similar noise on three separate cars (Not Mercedes Cars) and here are what they were:

1ST car is was a worn out sway bar endlink or control arm bushing. I replaced both at the same time so I don't know for sure which one was the problem. Most sway bar endlinks are ball joints with a rubber cover to prevent dirt and water from getting into the ball joint and ruining it. Ball joints seem to have a lot of play once they are ruin/done.

2ND car was the outer tie rod ball joint rubber cover cracked from the heat of the brakes and ruined the ball joint which caused excessive play in the joint which could be heard over bumps. Also when I lifted the front wheels off the ground and grabbed the rim/tire at 3 o'clock & 9 o'clock position there was play. I was told play in the 12 o'clock & 6 o'clock position play is the wheel bearing being bad.

3RD car was the shock mount/bearing wore out and was making clunking noises over bumps.

Hope this helps you.

so i finally took a look at my belt and it you were right - lettering is worn off. Found a good diy by bbirdwell on replacing the idler pulley bearing so I guess I’ll add that to my to do list. Am I at much of a risk of causing serious damage if I don’t get to this for a couple months?

Uh yea. You do not want to drive the car at all until you replace the pulley, especially on an E55. Do a search and see the results of a failed blower pulley.

yikes.

just did a bit of research and i saw a few posts where the idler pulley just broke off and others where the belt whipped around and damaged all sorts of parts. i don't have any squeak and everything else other than the print being worn off the belt seems normal. is there anything specifically i should look for to diagnose exactly what's causing that?

Dont try to over analyze it. Just change the idler pulley and if that doesnt solve the issue do the other small pulleys.

While the belts are off spin all pulleys by hand. Any roughness or noise, replace it. The M8x78 bolt for the supercharger idler pulley should be torqued to 68 Nm. You may need to move the fan shroud to get to the head of the bolt with a torque wrench. If not, use a box-end 8mm? wrench on the shaft of the Torx bit with another box-end wrench on the first wrench so you can get enough leverage to tighten the bolt but you're gonna have to use mechanical empathy to get it close to the proper torque.

For the tensioner on the lower part of the engine, the bolts are 003-990-16-12 and $5 each. I stripped one and it was a b***h to remove so ensure you use the correct Torx bit. There is little room down there to get to the bolt head so be sure you do it right the first time.

"Mechanical empathy" love it!

thanks guys. I'm going to tinker on the tensioner and idler tonight and see which ones need replacement. tensioner looks really easy to do myself, idler i may let a pro handle.

What are your thoughts on Uro parts? pretty decently priced from what i can find

I think it was a false alarm. Took the supercharger belt off and both the pulleys rolled freely and there was verrrry minimal play in the tensioner and zero play in the idler. They definitely get hot tho and the underside of my engine cover has some fine black soot like material flung all over it
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...613963863.jpeg
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...a2a4de0e0.jpeg

That's is supercharger belt dust. I bet the original one is still on there. Good idea to replace.

I've purchased most of my parts through FCP Euro - everything from brake rotors & pads to switches, etc. Always quality original MB parts and very reasonable pricing. The warranty is the best part...

Beautiful Car! Enjoy it!!!

Very nice.
its hard for me to distinguish between Designo/Design Graphite and Flint Grey- are they that similar or am I mistaken?

FCP Euro is the way to go. i actually have pads & rotors in my trunk as well as the crank position sensor that i'll be installing when i visit my parents. supercharger belt is on it's way. I'll clean that dust off and see if this new belt produces any.

flint and disigno are definitely really similar. i think flint is a bit lighter

The surround for the glove box key is super cheap (for MB) and just pops right on and off. When I had it off I cleaned up the key slot. Looks brand new.

Congrats on on your dream car!

Little follow up:
the clunk was in fact bad rear shock. I got 2 remanufactured arnott units from fcp euro and installed them myself last night in about 2.5 hours. Car rides great now and there’s none of that body in the trunk thumping going on anymore.

I’ve also put the brakes on as well as 4 pirelli p-zero all season plus tires and the new ic pump.

Distronic is still acting up unfortunately. Will work great for 2 hours straight then switch off on me 3x in 5 minutes. In fact the other day for the first time I got a messages just saying ‘distronic unavailabile’. Gotta look into that more.

Tomorrow I head to the track for the first time. Will probably make a new thread on that if things go well 🚗 💨