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This is a new thread for me. I found a marketplace ad a few weeks ago for a too-good-to-be-true offer of a 2006 Mercedes E55 AMG. Car was listed as non-running for years, clear title, close to me, and far too low price to be right. I sent a message to the seller, thinking that this is either a scam, or that the car had to be gone. To my surprise, the seller responded with more pics, info, and yes, the car was still available. I made arrangements to go look at the car the following day. I went and sure enough, there was a very neglected E55. It hadn't run in three years, a family of rats was living under the hood (they were there when we opened it) and then the real kicker: the owner had a "friend" who 'knew electronics' work on the car. This gets to the real reason the car was so cheap. Every single electronic module imaginable was opened up, and laying out. Many had been disassembled, and the ECU had been soldered on in truly bizarre ways. The AIRmatic suspension had lost all of its air, and the car was more or less sitting on the ground. The steering was hopelessly locked. Providing battery power did absolutely nothing. I gave the man his money, and it took six adults and a 12000# winch 90 minutes to get the car on my trailer.
I had my own, true to life barn find! My son and I stopped to eat, and to bask in the glory of our new prize!
We got the car home, but not before we stopped at a car wash, and knocked down the filth at least one level, and made the car a bit more appealing to Donna. It didn't matter. She declared the car hopeless. Oh, challenge accepted. Game on! With the help of MB gurus @Dave2302 and Deplore, we spent the next two weeks going through all imaginable tests. I did manage to repair the ECU, and bench checked it. However we found that the front right Pre-fuse, front SAM, EIS, ELV, and a ton of other smaller items all needed replacing and/or reprogramming. Stepping me through DAS and making heavy use of the XHorse VVDI MB key tool, I am happy to report that the engine sprang to life! And it runs beautifully!
The steering was still locked, and I had a ton of error codes from throughout the car. In addition the car's suspension refused to lift, so the car was at this point stuck in the middle of my yard where we managed to get it unloaded from the trailer. After a few more days of tinkering, Deplore delivered the 'secret sauce' it took to unlock the steering (and I didn't even need a cutter, drill or jackhammer!). After repairing a few air lines, the rear and front left of the car rose. Unfortunately a fitting in the front right is broken, and I am currently awaiting replacement. However, the other three corners came up enough to be able to move the car, and that's what I did. The car moved all of 40 feet under its own power for the first time in years.
After inspecting things it appears the car has a few tasty mods, in addition to the nice BBS wheels on it. There are headers and big downpipes, and a larger crank pulley, along with an ECU tune. The A/C blows cold, and even the radio decided to work! Three of the four rats were eliminated, and I am hoping that traps set for the fourth are successful, soon. As soon as the rodents are confirmed to be deceased, the car can come in the shop for the usual litany of M112/M113 fix ups. New belts, plugs, valve cover gaskets, oil, filters, and in this car's case: the addition of an engine mount. That's right, addition! The right side engine mount is not in the car! Perfect opportunity to raise up the engine, and also address an E-class weakness of oil pump pickup tube o-rings. This is a common high mileage failure that results in a blown engine. We don't want that to happen, so the oil pan will be coming off, and the o-rings replaced. After that, new motor mounts, fluids, and a LOT of cleaning.
Next up will be roadworthiness fixes, and interior deep clean, along with a headliner replacement. A ton of thanks to both @Dave2302 and @Deplore. Without them, this would have been most assuredly a parts car. They have helped me meet Donna's challenge! BTW, now she is hoping this will become her daily driver. Keep watching here for more progress!
Appreciate both of you guys! This car would have already flown to pieces without your constant encouragement and knowledge! Crossfire people: Look to these two guys. They've forgotten more about our cars than most will ever know.
It is amazing how a parked car becomes a home to vermin in no time... 1-2 months and a few will take up residence. 2-3 years? Heck, they've turned that car into a condo for all their friends and family! How many times have all of us gone a little deeper to do a repair on a car that has sat for a while and found a mouse nest made of the fluffy pink fiberglass home insulation or something else. I've said it before and I'll say it again to everyone who parks one of these cars for the winter... Throw a mouse bait in an interior footwell on the floor mat, one in the trunk well, and one on top of air intake housing in the engine compartment. That is preventative maintenance as the last thing anyone wants is trying to diagnose problems caused by vermin chewing on wiring... There is nothing worse than that.
So, the rodent seems to be dead. The barn cats earned their pay. Found a dead rat in the yard, and the latest trap is undisturbed. This means that the car can now come in the shop, where a host of new parts are waiting for it. In the mean time, since I couldn't bring it in to do mechanical work, I have removed the front seats to clean the carpet, and get ready to pull the A, B, C pillars and headliner for recovering. All of that is in the works, but it will be next week some time before I can pick it up again. At that point I expect to make steady and fast progress on the car. It is my goal to have this car looking good and road worthy by the middle of May.
I've been super busy lately, and unable to post, so here's an update. A few weeks ago, I brought the E55 into the shop, and put it up in the air for major work. Up first were remaining electrical issues. Rats had chewed 8 wires under the hood, all in different areas, but the worst were two wires in the engine wiring harness. They actually chewed a section out of each of these, and so they could not just be soldered back together. To make matters worse, the wire harness in this case disappears under the left side intake plenum, and under the front of the supercharger. I had to remove the plenum to get enough access to the harness to effect a repair. @QuadPrism changed the rear end fluid and the transmission fluid and filter. We discovered that the main plug to the transmission was disconnected, so that was put back in place. With a little more troubleshooting, it was discovered that the starter relay was bad, so that was replaced. With all of this done, the engine now starts with a key! Major step forward, and the cause of the original complaint the previous owner had.
Focus then shifted to a common E55 problem. This problem results in blown engines, and I didn't want to join those ranks. The issue is the oil pump pickup has an o-ring in it that gets old, hard and then breaks. When it does, the oil pump sucks up air, and not oil. Predictable results after that. Unlike our Crossfires, the W211 chassis uses a dual sump oil pan, with two drain plugs. The oil pump pumps oil from the rear sump to the front, and then pumps oil into the engine. The o-ring seals this elaborate pipe to the rear sump. Easy enough to change, right? Wrong!
To get to this, the lower oil pan must come off. Of course, it is big, and will not just drop nicely like the Crossfire will. No, no, no, no, no! First, lower the front subframe (yup!). Then unbolt the lower oil pan. It is stuck to the upper pan with glue. OK, RTV (glue). After prying forever, and swearing there is another bolt stuck somewhere, if finally comes off. Oil dumps in your face. Now, remove the windage tray (easy). Now remove the upper oil pan. Yeah. That lower pan? Total warm up for the final boss. Remove 300 screws, and then pry. And Pry. Pry some more. Finally pops off. Oil dipstick will prevent you from removing it. No joke, took another hour after getting the pan loose to get it separated from the dipstick. Get it out. Remove the oil pump. Have a bunch more oil in your face (keeps the skin soft, supple, youthful). Get the assembly on the bench, and you have this:
If you've ever seen the insides of your Crossfire's M112/M112K, you know your oil pump does not look like this. After disassembly of the E55 oil pump, this is what you have:
If you look, you'll see the new green o-ring on the oil pump pickup tube. In the middle is the hard-as-a-rock old o-ring, and then the oil check valve. This valve DOES exist in your Crossfire, and it prevents oil from back flowing into the pan at shutdown. This is held into the block with a rubber seal, which like the o-ring, was hard as a rock. Was it leaking? Probably not much, but both it and the o-ring are failures waiting to happen. I don't have a lift, and I only have two hands. This job took me over 9 hours to complete. Ton of work, but the knowledge that this engine will not fail because of a dried up O-ring is peace of mind that makes the work worth it.
Next up was the Airmatic. Airmatic seems like a brilliant system when it works. When it doesn't (which is the only mode I have so far experienced) the car sits on the ground. Getting this car up onto the trailer was a mess due to the suspension. I found most of the fittings to the air springs disconnected. After reconnecting them, I got three corners to go up, but not the front right. The fitting in the air strut was hopelessly stripped, and would not hold air.
The brass fitting was ok, it was the plastic threads in the strut that were stripped. Amazon.com to the rescue, and a new air strut arrived. Changed the strut out. Car is still on jack stands, so we'll find out if this fixes the system when the car comes down in a few days.
Moving on to the front of the car, the front bumper was destroyed, but the previous owner had found another one, and even had it painted. I spent a couple of hours swapping all of the little bits over to the 'new' bumper, and prepped it for install. Before installing the bumper, I wanted to test the intercooler pump. Logging into DAS, I activated the pump, and sure enough, it's bad. *sigh* Ordered one from FCP Euro, and will tend to that this weekend, then the bumper can go back on. I should be able to button all of that up, and put the car on the ground. Before I do that, though, there's one pesky and fun task waiting for me. There's a horrible dead animal smell emanating from the left side of the car. I have finally isolated it to the side skirt. Think there is a dead rat in there. I have to pull the side skirt and deal with that. Yay!
Also this weekend, I will be pulling the head liner, and the A, B, and C pillars to be redone. The pillars in these are wrapped in the same pseudo-suede material that the headliner is done in. That will help the interior cosmetics, and much better to do while the front seats are already out at the upholsterer.
Next week, I need to tackle one more mechanical problem. The supercharger bypass valve keeps throwing fault codes, and sure enough, it's not moving. I acquired a new one, and need to replace it. Unfortunately, that means removing the supercharger/intercooler assembly, and separating the two. I am awaiting gaskets and a few other goodies to tackle that one. I've had the supercharger off of my V8 Crossfire so many times that this should be a breeze. However, had I known I would be pulling this apart, the wiring I mentioned earlier would have been soooooo easy to fix at that point.
So, if you've stuck with me this long, I appreciate it! If all goes well, this should-have-been-a-parts-car E55 should be running and driving in about a week!
Thanks so much for the write up Neil! Refreshing to read honest true working times and frustrations. Been there done that. In fact just today what should have been an easy couple hours got all bogged down when getting to a hose clamp just wasn't possible from the angle I had to work from and required the removal of four other items just to get to the that clamp. Needless to say I ditched the OEM spring clamp and went with a stainless screw clamp which gives room enough should the need arise in the future to remove the clamp without taking apart half the heating system. These guys that can do a four hour job in one are just amazing.
That will be a really nice ride when all is completed, enjoy. Then again you might sell it and get the lift you need.
p.s. - Just pulled the headliner out. If you ever thought the Crossfire was the worst headliner you've ever worked on, then don't EVER approach a W211 yourself! Pay someone. WOW was that a ridiculous amount of work! Also, was very surprised how many quality corners MB cut with such a high end car. Glue down the wiring harnesses to the headliner board? Come'on Mercedes!
p.s. - Just pulled the headliner out. If you ever thought the Crossfire was the worst headliner you've ever worked on, then don't EVER approach a W211 yourself! Pay someone. WOW was that a ridiculous amount of work! Also, was very surprised how many quality corners MB cut with such a high end car. Glue down the wiring harnesses to the headliner board? Come'on Mercedes!
It's all perspective, I guess. I'm pretty numb to stupid MB designs or decisions by now. Seems that every new generation they have to top themselves or top other manufacturers for ridiculousness. W211 had the rear airbag and the balance shaft on the M272, next gen is more ridiculous, the one after that even more, and so on. Removing headliner and disconnecting various crap and/or prying out glue is fairly old hat to me...especially since so many W205 C-classes come in with broken pano roof and the rare few times it's actually the worm cable which requires removing the entire pano assembly as a unit... now THAT is a pain.
I'm told that to replace the pano sunroof assembly as a whole on W253 (that would be the GLC) requires you to remove the tailgate completely, because the hinges prevent you from taking it out.
Still, that's pretty decent progress you're making, despite the whole car being a basket case. Out of curiosity, have you seen how much a good E55 (by good I mean actually good and with everything working) goes for? Factor in the parts, the labor you put in, are you ahead or far behind?
Great to see all the progress along the way Neil, and the pain and suffering of undoing all the "Hicksville" bodges and the pro active works will soon be forgotten when you are driving and enjoying what is a rapidly appreciating classic MB
I'll post up some pics soon, but work on the headliner has progressed. I do have the board cleaned, and yes, I did use a garden hose on it. It seems that the glue is at least partially water soluble, so a little scrubbing and some Simple Green, and the board is much better off looking. Since I am in the rather humid Gulf Coast area, I brought the board into a back room inside the house, where I have a dehumidifier running at all times. The board dried out for several days, and then moved back out to the shop for recovering. I have to admit that while I have done many headliners, I am actually quite terrible at it. There are multiple "Humility Patches" on this one, but it is finally recovered. One difference between the E-series and the Crossfire headliners is the plastic pillar covers. In the Crossfire (and indeed most cars) the A-, B- and C-Pillars are simply plastic covers that snap into place, and are usually colored or painted to match the interior. The E-series is the same, except that they are covered in the same pseudo-suede material that the headliner is made from. In addition, the B-pillar lower panels (think: below where the front seatbelts attach behind the front doors) is covered in a black coarse weave fabric. On this car, the suede was intact all around, but filthy. The black fabric was ripped. I didn't think about the black fabric when I ordered the headliner material, so I went to Walmart, went to the fabric section, and found the closest match I could find, which was a very dark grey, but the weave was similar. Good enough!
Here's the thing I learned, though: Headliner material is made to move and stretch around contours. Regular fabric does not. Also, headliner material is multi-layered. Why is this important? When you apply headliner material, you spray glue on the board and on the material. You let it set up to become tacky, and then you carefully apply the material, which sticks virtually instantly. In this case, I sprayed the glue on both sides, and waited for it to become tacky, and went to apply. Problems! The glue soaked through the fabric, leaving greasy looking splotches all over the 'good' side of the fabric. Uh oh! Good thing I bought plenty of extra! I cut new pieces of material, and proceeded to apply it with glue only on the hard plastic panels, after it was dry enough to only be tacky. Remember what I said about headliner material being stretchy? Well, regular fabric isn't. This presented problems on installation, and took me about 30 minutes per panel to massage the fabric around the curves in the panel. With enough effort, it finally fit right, and looks pretty decent, certainly better than the ripped fabric it replaced.
I picked up the reupholstered seat from Penton's Auto Trim in Pensacola. $775 later, the seat has all new leather on the wear areas, and while it was apart, I had Penton's install the replacement seat air bladders that are built into the seat. I had ordered all of the bladders from MB, and brought them with me. In all, this seat cost nearly $1k to completely refurbish. It's a lot, but I plan to be sitting in it for many many hours, so it may as well work properly and be comfortable!
The supercharger bypass valve needs to be replaced, and to do that, the whole intake system, supercharger and intercooler have to come out of the car.. Once out, it will take a while to separate the parts to replace the valve and all of it's gaskets. However, there was a family of rats living under the hood, and their mess was everywhere! I needed to get as much out as I could, because when I lift the supercharger assembly out of the car, I do not want filth and acorn bits falling down the intake ports of the heads. To that end, the engine bay needed a major cleaning. Last night I pulled the car up, and pressure washed the engine bay. I spent over an hour blasting every area I could reach with the car on the ground. This included getting grease and grime off the engine, but also cleaning all the surfaces of the body in the engine bay, under hood, and up front behind the bumper. It looks significantly better under the hood!
Speaking of being on the ground, the car is on the ground, and I am happy to report that the Airmatic system seems to be working, and the car sits nice and level, even after parking for a few days. Progress!
Tonight's agenda includes finishing the recovering of the pillars, and then getting the headliner back into the car. Once that is complete, the rest of the interior will reassemble rather quickly. Thursday evening will see the start of removing the supercharger assembly. Having gotten good at this on the Crossfire, I think I will have it on the ground in less than two hours. I will take a couple of hours to thoroughly clean the components, and swap the valve. I will also change the supercharger oil while it is easily accessible. It will then take a couple of hours to put it all back into the car. Possible I will get it all done Thursday, but that may be a stretch. Current game plan is to take the car on its maiden voyage down the road this weekend. If it passes that, then tires and a windshield are in its future for next week!
OK, time for a little update. First, some background for what's to come. My son was graduating this past week. We had family coming in from all over. Some coming in by car, RV and air. We had to handle housing, logistics, clean the house, and transportation for several of them. Our current complement of (usable) vehicles is an Expedition (holds 7), srt4 (4), my daughter's PT (4) and a couple of crossfire's (2 each). On Tuesday, the srt4 broke hard, running on 2 cylinders. Uh oh. Yesterday my V8 Crossfire decided to eat all the belts. The Merc? Forget it. My Dad calls about 2 pm. He's 225 miles east of me, and has had a blowout on the RV. Cannot find a tire. He needs me to find a tire and bring it to him. It gets better! We had people arriving via air at Pensacola, 45 miles WEST at the same time. We needed the expedition for the people coming in by air. At the same time, I needed to drive to Tallahassee (160 miles east) and pick up two RV tires (think semi truck sized), and bring them the 65 miles further on to the truck stop my parents were stranded at. My only other available vehicle was my son's 6spd crossfire. Needless to say, RV tires are not fitting inside a Crossfire, let alone two of them.
Sooooooo.....
While there are a myriad of 'better' options out there (like rent/borrow a pickup), we just cannot back down from a challenge. Son and I look to the merc. Afterall, we *had* driven it a whole 5.8 miles, so far. Still, iIt had, ahem, some issues. Cowl is all off, wipers out (waiting for windshield appointment that was supposed to happen the next morning), rearview mirror, ton of the interior ripped apart for radio, right tail light broken. Get after it! Started work on it about 8pm, and we ran wires for the radio (ripped out the Comand/MOST completely). Son finished running wires for 4 channels, and two spare pairs, two Fakra cables for GPS & radio, and a backup camera RCA cable. (I know, why are you worrying about the radio? Well, this was already all apart, and it was better to finish the job than to put it half-baked back together, only to take it all apart again. Just finish!) I attacked various other messed up things. Got the car buttoned up at 4am. Slept 3.5 hours, got up, got in the car, drove to the next town, ran through a car wash (first real bath in over 3 years) and gassed up.
Got on the interstate, and car did fine the whole way out. Check engine light came on at the end, but I brought SDS with me. SDS said high IATs and failing O2 sensor. Looking like the new Bosch 010 intercooler pump was not running, and an O2 sensor should be replaced. No show stoppers. Car just survived trial by fire, and succeeded in a 225 mile run! Dropped the tires, made sure they got mounted, and that my parents were good to go, and then turned around drove home. Car ran awesome for about 200 miles. Then a nice orange 5.0 Mustang came zipping by, and I couldn't not take advantage of that. Zipped up to super-legal speeds, and tucked in behind him. Within a few miles, I noticed that the engine sounded a little off. Slowed way down, and listened. Car had developed a miss, and when I got to my exit and slowed down, the CEL turned on. Drove the few more miles home with it running a bit rough. Made it, though! At the 225 mile mark, and delivered rescue tires!
255/80-22.5R tire!
Got home, hooked up SDS, High IATs (pump not running), P0300 misfire damages, and Cylinder 5 misfire. The next morning, I swapped the #5 coil with a spare, and the misfire went away. Still need a new O2 sensor and need to figure out the intercooler pump issue.
Took Donna for her first ride in it, and she immediately found all the flaws. Picked at them. Ugh. Hard to explain to her that it is a diamond in the rough, and a work in a progress! The rear spoiler was still not on the car, the HVAC display was very dim so as to be unreadable, and the remote keyless entry did not work. Consulted with @Deplore and he helped knock down a couple of the issues. The HVAC display being dim turned out to be a disconnected windshield rain/light sensor. The remote not working was traced to a fuse blown in the rear SAM module. Replacing the fuse resulted in another blown fuse. Cause? Alarm siren has leaked batteries and is shorted out. Sound familiar? It should! It's the same unit that is in our Crossfires. I simply disconnected it, and put in a new fuse. This time it didn't blow! Tried the remote, and bingo! Door locks work! Put the rear spoiler on the car, and buttoned up a few other minor items. Now it looks a little better, too!
Going to address more cosmetics soon. The driver's door panel is broken, and the handle has the peeling chrome that is reminiscent of the Crossfire door handles. Windshield replacement has been rescheduled to this coming Thursday. I need to think about paint correction and protection next. Doing that will really clean up the looks of the car.
BTW, this car has mid-length headers, no front cats, a 168mm lower pulley and a couple of other minor mods. The whole thing sounds flat awesome - far better than my V8 Crossfire. Looking forward to the Needswings headers I now have in hand for the Crossfire!
I'll second that, then again I did up until I hit 60 a year plus ago, so Neil has a fair way to go yet before he catches up with my current snail pace on my projects !!
This E55 AMG and his Crossfires are a testament to the quality of work that Neil does, I remember about 10 years ago I bought a non running V8 W220 S Class, that had had everyone and their dogs working on it and ended up a non runner with a million faults, same state of disassembly so I'm actually lovin' this project and seeing it gradually come back to it's former glory just like the S Class did. I still have the S Class, and a small fleet of other MB's including the V8 R170 SLK
Can't wait to see this Car finished, but Neil, for heavens sake get rid of those "Ghetto" rims and put a decent set of AMG rims on it
I bought this set of staggered's for the S Class cheap enough, and tri colour refurbed them myself, Satin Black inner, Gunmetal outer and polished / clear coated Rim Edges. The W220 didn't have the side skirts on it as I still had the rear 1/4's to paint at that time, and the SLK was still a V6 with it's stock wheels etc, but here's a few pics lol ....
E55: Deceased Derelict to Daily Driver
