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[Doctor Gollum]

So, what does £600 buy you these days?

Well, an 8 owner 2007 ML280 CDI with 7 weeks MoT and 204k miles on it might not be top of everyone's wish list, but horses for courses

Basically the garage that my mate uses for all his bits and bobs had bought it from a customer when it looked like their bill was going to far exceed the value of the car. They used it as a dog van for a bit and until it started to, er, have issues. At which point they offered it to my mate. After a quick test drive, he was all set to break it and asked if I could help strip it. I felt that the issues, whilst not exactly economically viable in the scheme of things, weren't insurmountable and felt it had at least another year in it... So having a soft spot for high mileage sheds and being the total idiot that I am, I bought it from him

The good bits:

2 ok tyres.
Starts, runs, drives and stops.
MoT until October.
Aftermarket shin breaker

The not so good bits:

2 knackered tyres
Aircon inop
Osr tail light out
Number plate lights out
Fuel gauge inop
Radio inop
Absolutely minging inside
Some cosmetic issues
Bodged wiring for said shin breaker
Interior light burnt out. Literally.
Auto lights not working (see above).
Surging at low speeds.
Oh, and a stretched transfer box chain... Sounds like a machine gun if you stomp on it.

And that's just the things I knew about...

[STEMO]

Sounds like a full days work.

[YZ250]

.........
Aftermarket shin breaker
.......

Ah yes, the wince as you walk into the dreaded towball. 
Good luck with the repairs, I'm confident that you'll sort it. 

[JamesV6CDX]

That will keep you busy for a weekend or two 

[JasonH]

Sounds like a great project.

For minimal cost you can at least make it a lot nicer. Then, hopefully, just one or two major jobs.....

[TheBoy]

And a decent* winter run-around, not that we seem to get bad weather anymore 


*I'm sure the tree huggers would disagree, obviously.

[Nick W]

Sounds like the V8 one I was offered a few years ago. After a good look around it, and running it up and down the airfield, we decided that free was about £2000 too much

[Doctor Gollum]

So got it home and it promptly ordered 4 tyres for it and set about cleaning it inside.

There was so much dust and dog hair in the boot, I ended up taking it back to the shell just to get it vaguely presentable.

Investigating the interior light led to evidence of rodents... Basically mouse piss had shorted the light out and took out the ECU in the overhead unit. Cleaning was then escalated to removing the headlining and all the upper trims were also removed, vacuumed, scrubbed and re vacuumed and the mouse house above the interior light removed.

Apparently the previous owner had found said mouse under the back seat and dispatched it.

Cleaning the interior took 4 whole days and used 8 cans of Ambersil foaming upholstery cleaner and a vacuum bag. Still not happy with the door cards, but they're a textured plastic that's a bastid to clean, even with a nail brush. Same for the top of the rear seat back rest...

A new set of seats and door cards is on the list of possibilities but the seats are now clean enough to use especially now it doesn't stink of wet Collies and mouse piss.

[Doctor Gollum]

New tyres fitted, and Halfrods very kindly pointed out a CV boot on the front axle that had become detached and sprayed grease all over the inside of the wheel. They very charitably offered to replace it for £418 - Fixed with 2 cable ties. After the mouse, this was unknown item #2.

Next, the interior light got replaced with one not full of mouse piss and miraculously the Auto Lights came back to life. An unintended consequence of this was the replacement overhead ECU came from a car that had an auto dimming mirror... fix one thing etc, etc

This cracked open the lid of Pandora's Box and the mirror became the first upgrade.

The rear lights turned out to be corroded contacts on the light cluster and this highlighted some obvious water ingress... Cue unknown item #3. The contacts cleaned up ok and the tail lights now work as advertised. The number plate lights required a new tailgate trim to fix as the bulb contacts are built into the plastic and had corroded away and been cobbled with a twist of wire which threw the bulb warning system into melt down. Replacement trim sorted this.

The tail lights are bolted to the body and clamp against a piece of 10mm thick foam stuck to the body. Unfortunately these foam pads had  previously been mistakenly stuck to the light, and obviously leaked like a sieve. Someone's solution to this was to use silicone sealant to seal the foam to the body

New foam pads are still available from Mercedes, so it got a pair of them fitted the right way round having cleaned all the sealant off and repainting the area they stick to to ensure a perfectly smooth surface... Removing the seal and had somewhat damaged it. Obviously it hasn't rained since, but I have crafted a pair of gutters inside the body to drain any water that does get in away from the rear SAM which had obviously been damp at some point.

Sods law, it hasn't rained since so won't know how effective that repair is and I also need to use some sealant under the tailgate opening cosmetic trim to direct the water away from running straight down into the light mountings.

[Doctor Gollum]

Next on the list was the fuel gauge not working.

Wiring checked from the top of the tank to the rear SAM. The code was for the left hand tank level sensor and there were no faults in the CANBUS between the rear SAM and Instrument Cluster. The gauge performed its start up self test as you would expect it to.

The right hand level sensor showed a modest resistance which fluctuated a bit as I rocked the car. The left hand one was consistently open circuit.

Replacement used level sensors/fuel pump/tank plumbing was acquired along with the tool to undo the locking rings with a view to just swapping the whole lot out.

Opening the tank up revealed an immediately obvious cause... The plug connecting the left sensor to the right tank electrical connection wasn't plugged in.

Fixing this was a lot quicker and cleaner than expected.

The tank gubbins is not wasted though as it cost less than half a new level sensor assembly from China, which actually costs as much as the genuine Mercedes unit. The complete pump/sensor assembly is £800 new regardless of source, second hand, £120. So it's a handy back up should I ever require it.

[Doctor Gollum]

Bought a complete service kit for it as I had no idea when it was last done, and had attributed the surging at low speed to a blocked fuel filter.

The pollen filters were a bit rough, the fuel filter corroded, and the air filters were in a totally different league 

At some point someone had slopped oil all over the right hand cam cover whilst topping it up and this drained straight onto a joint on the right hand air intake. The inside of this filter housing had a 1/4 inch of caked on oily grime inside it.

Both filters were absolutely solid with detritus, bugs and gunge. It's a miracle that it ran at all, let alone not having a check engine light on...

https://youtube.com/shorts/CKLR4skIb1Q?si=s0DkHpLHr8peHm02

New air filters, and fuel filter fitted and the intakes cleaned out and not only does it no longer surge, but it's a damn sight more lively too. Being a 3.0 V6 it was never short of torque, but it did feel a touch asthmatic... Obviously it was struggling for air without the turbo sucking it in at low rpm.

The cabin air intake got a scrub out along with replacing the pollen filters.

Oil and coolant are the last two items on that list as far as the engine goes, but the oil filter cap is welded in place so actually had to buy a tool to remove it without cracking the housing.

The coolant can wait a moment, but will get done when the washer bottle gets replaced with a heated one. This and associated plumbing en route.

Unknown item #4 is the front drop links... They clatter like a loose tile in a gale and will get done on my next days off ready for the impending MoT. That should be all the MoT bits addressed.

[Doctor Gollum]

Next thing, the radio.

It would fire up and then switch off without actually doing anything and would kill the battery overnight.

The head unit, audio gateway, CD changer and Bluetooth ECU are all connected by a fibre optic loop. Switching the HU on triggers a loop check by the audio gateway. This keeps going until each component checks in. Unfortunately in this generation of Comand, the audio gateway is integral to the HU. The loop checked out at each point outside the HU, ruling out the CD changer and Bluetooth ECU as the faulty component. Basically the HU wasn't seeing itself, so shut back down whilst the audio gateway kept trying to perform the roll call, hence the drain.

Having established the likely culprit, a known good unit was acquired from a private seller and the radio, including NAV now works at it should... But...

It came from a car without the CD changer or phone pre wiring, so whilst my phone pairs to the Bluetooth, the radio doesn't know it's there. Same with the CD changer. Fix one thing...

All is not lost as it should be possible to recode it for both. And as Pandora has her box open, I may as well retrofit a reversing camera and code that in at the same time.

Whilst we're in the electrics...

The Climate Control functions except for the aircon. Regas first and go from there.

The non functioning parking sensors are down to no signal from one rear sensor. These are a newer version of the system fitted to the Omega but with visual warnings as well as the beeps. Trouble shooting should be straightforward... Common power and ground to all the sensors in each bumper along with a single signal wire to each sensor. Checking this to the ECU will be relatively straightforward thanks to the wiring diagrams on WIS so if it's rodent related it's just a question of running one wire from the boot connector to the ECU. However, just in case it's the bumper loom or sensor, I have acquired both.

Towbar wiring has been removed as there's absolutely zero point using scotch blocks when you can get a plug in harness.

The shin breaker is being replaced with a factory fold away tow ball like the one on TPC along with the correct harness.This will be a relatively straightforward job as well and a bit of box ticking coding should see that all ticketyboo. Just waiting on bits for that job, and whilst the bumpers off, I can further investigate the parking sensors.

[Doctor Gollum]

So far then...

2 knackered tyres
Aircon inop
Osr tail light out
Number plate lights out
Fuel gauge inop
Radio inop
Absolutely minging inside
Some cosmetic issues
Bodged wiring for said shin breaker
Interior light burnt out. Literally.
Auto lights not working (see above).
Surging at low speeds.
Stretched transfer box chain - replace chain and fluid/ possibly replace transfer case fitted with new chain
Service engine
Service gearbox
Change diff fluids
Front end vibration 65-80: tyre rebalance?
Crap headlights... New bulbs or xenon retrofit...

[JamesV6CDX]

Excellent progress… good luck with the MOT

[Viral_Jim]

Still not happy with the door cards, but they're a textured plastic that's a bastid to clean, even with a nail brush. Same for the top of the rear seat back rest....

Excellent progress so far! 

Without wishing to teach you to suck eggs, re. the door card plastics, have you tried getting hold of a £1 plastic bog brush and cutting the handle off? Stick it in a cordless drill and it works wonders on hard plastics with some spray cleaner.

It also fetches ingrained grit out of carpets with relative ease