About:
Dale found this $1400 R320 Mercedes Diesel in the Spring of 2021. The previous owner reported the serpentine belt had shredded and was no longer interested and repairing the vehicle. This was a highly optioned vehicle that included a factory color-matched roof box and lifetime Sirius XM Radio, amount the usual and standard Mercedes features of the day.
After getting it home, unsurprisingly, there was a LOT more that needed to be fixed including some large oil leaks and a cracked exhaust manifold. Many hours were also put into cleaning and mending more minor items such as steam cleaning the carpets, polishing the foggy headlights, and repairing broken plastic bits.
Dale got everything sorted and traded it for a 2002 Mercedes C32 AMG in late 2021.
Introduction:
In this video, we bring home the R Class for an initial inspection, and find a little bit more than we bargained for!
First Round of Leak Repairs:
Dale goes to work replacing lots of oil leaks around the top of the engine as well as a wobbling power steering pump.
Wiper Linkage and Interior Repair:
We are not sure how it’s possible to own a car in Oregon with non-functional wipers, that was a fun and sudden repair the R Class needed, as we found out on a lovely rainy day.
Second Round of Leak Repairs:
We finally got around to changing the engine oil and once the belly pan was removed, we saw that everything was covered in a lot of oil! Time for more leak repairs.
Exhaust Manifold Replacement
This one was a biggie! After trying to track down some naggling codes, we started to suspect an exhaust leak. After confirming the issue, we found there were not videos online to perform this repair so this was a fairly difficult job and eventually we got everything taken care of!
Headlight Restoration
This Mercedes was very dirty when it arrived at The Bad Ideas Garage – Dale put lots of TLC into fixing several small details of both the interior and the exterior, including deep cleaning the radio controls and polishing the headlights.
Transmission Service
Most of our vehicles use the 722.6 transmission so we are very familiar with servicing it. This R Class has the newer 722.9 transmission which required a different procedure that was new to us. We replaced the fluid and filter before sending this vehicle on to a new home.