Here's What You Need to Know Before Buying a E55 AMG Mercedes - Buyer's Guide

on this episode to eat sleep drive we're doing a deep dive on the e55 AMG we're gonna be talking about how it drives and if it's the right car for you and I have a list here of all the common problems you should be looking out for if you plan to buy one hey guys real quick a shout out to our video sponsor my contact lens prescription calm everyone wants to save time and hassle which is why we've seen a rise in subscription services for everyday items such as razors and coffee well guess what these guys are now bringing contact lenses directly to your door they're big fans of the channel and they help make videos like this possible check them out at my contact lens prescription calm hello everyone and welcome to another episode of eat sleep drive and this week we are fulfilling the number-one request in the comments section of all the videos that I've done on my e55 so far and that is a buyer's guide we're gonna be talking about what you should be looking out for when buying this cars which I have a long list here as you can imagine and also we're gonna be taking it for a drive and just kind of giving you an overall feel for what this car is and is not so let's get started with the common problems now one of the first major problems are gonna find with these cars is the complicated braking system this right here is the SVC pump and it stands for sensotronic brake controller now if I was an executive at Mercedes and an engineer came to me and said you know how we've been using the same braking system for ever and it works super well it's super reliable I want to replace it with something called sensotronic I could have told you right there that that was a terrible terrible idea it basically is an electronic control of the brake pressure applied based on an electronic value of how hard you're pushing the brake so basically when this goes you're gonna lose all power brakes and also you're gonna increase your stopping distance now why Mercedes decided to use this instead of just a traditional brake system I have no idea but that's a typical German thing to do regardless you should definitely check to see if yours have been rebuilt or replaced there's a company called module master which is fortunately Artie or a place mine so hopefully I shouldn't have to worry about that but it's definitely something that you should check on the service records of the car that you're looking at now I'm bringing you guys down low here because the next major failure point of these cars has to do with the AIRMATIC suspension yes these cars have air ride from factory and this is not a unique problem to just the e55 of this kind of era like all expensive Mercedes of the period pretty much uses suspension and they all pretty much break eventually the shocks themselves will leak and you will just have a drooping car that will settle overnight or over a long period of time it is very very expensive to fix if you want to replace it with factory stuff and maintain the air ride now one thing that you can do and that's what the previous owner of this car did he's he replaced it with a fixed coil over suspension so you never have to worry about in the future another very common failure point that you should check by now to make sure that it's already been addressed at this point in its life are the engine mounts that this engine sits on of course they're not just a standard fixed engine mount they're hydraulically filled and of course they brake there are no shortage of aftermarket options available to turn you our factory mounts into just like a fixed rubber mount that will add some vibration so keep that in mind but if it's not a big deal to you you can use those fixed mounts that will last virtually forever another super common problem with these cars is right under here and that is the supercharger pulley the bearing on the supercharger tends to go this thing spins at a super super high speed and once the bearing goes it'll make like a either ticking noise or grinding noise it's not terribly expensive to fix or terribly hard to fix but it's something to keep in mind and something that you can easily check out when you are looking at a car now with any supercharger setup like this one the main enemy is going to be heat this car has a factory air to water intercooler which cools the charger the problem with that is that it's driven by an electric pump and an electric pump tends to go out and what will happen with that is you'll be able to do about one pull at full power and then it's going to start really pulling timing because your intake air temperatures are skyrocketing because the inlet charge is not being cooled down there is one other thing I'd like to bring up with these cars and it's something that a couple people left comments on my last videos and that is the oil pump seal now I don't think that this is a very common problem with these cars I haven't seen many cases of it failing but there is a youtuber who has a time--as tech twin-turbo 'if if t5 that he blew the seal and then blew the motor because it starved the motor of oil now let me reiterate that twin-turbo time-attack car now I'm not saying that he is the only person ever to do that but all that heat going into that engine from the twin-turbocharged setup and Time Attack racing I'm sure is what petrified that oil seal so I don't think that it is as big of a problem as the internet would like to lead you to believe just because they happen to one person I don't think it's necessarily gonna happen to everyone now just to make it clear mad props to the dude with a twin turbo time attack be 55 I have no problems with that no qualms I just want to clear the air for everyone who is just Street driving these cars it's not something you should be really worried about keep in mind this is not an exhaustive list of everything that will go wrong with these cars it is a list of the major issues that will go wrong most commonly but there are going to be other little things there's gonna be leaky gaskets the valve covers leak potentially the oil pan which can be a little more expensive there is a plug of the transmission that tends to leak cheap fix but you're gonna have these little problems that you would typically have with a German car now as far as model year to buy they didn't make a ton of changes from oh three two oh six when they did the run of these cars Oh 506 did get a slightly quicker steering rack amongst some other minor tweaks but as far as the steering rack goes this isn't exactly the best handling car you don't buy it to go carve up canyons more of a GT highway cruiser so I could take or leave the steering rack one thing I will say is that the o3 models did have a problem with a radiator cross contaminating transmission fluid and coolant which I would definitely stay away from a no.3 if you can and get by a no.4 plus but as with any car you want to buy the newest model year that you can possibly afford because that just gives you a better chance of getting a better car now that we're done with the boring stuff let's take this thing for a spin and talk about what it's good at and what it's not good at now you want to know what the e55 AMG is all about this right here [Music] Oh Billy hold on God dang this thing is fast whoo hit him with all that torque that's what this car is about all the torque all the time any gear any rpm just spin the tires this car is stupid fast and who is it made for it's made for someone who likes to go fast in a straight line does a lot of highway commuting because it's comfortable it's composed it's everything German on the highway in fact I often feel really bad about driving in it you know around the 70 mile an hour speed limits that we have around here because it really deserves to just be on the Autobahn just hammering away now what it's not good that is kind of what I'm doing right now is going through a little bit of twisty roads it's not hateful by any means and the coilovers that are on this car make it a little bit better but this is in no way a like really awesome dynamic handling car the steering's not that great the brakes are terrible the brakes stop well but because of this sensotronic thing there's no feel and you cannot modulate them at all so big ass breaks stops the car really well but you can't feel it on the air suspension it's even worse it's even more wallah we about it's not once again it's not terrible but you know when you talk like m5s and stuff that this competes with it just it's just not there but that's not what this car is made for it's just for made for putting your foot down and frigging haulin ass speaking of Paul and ass let's do it again [Music] what a ridiculous car just a big engine big power and not much else don't get me wrong the rest of the car is good but just the engine just kind of takes over everything this transmission also really sucks I will say that what's nice about it is that it's very stout and is going to be very reliable for you which is probably the most important thing but into the days it's not a deal breaker for me still I'm not a really rough road and there's not a lot of road noise you know when you're on the highway there's almost no wind noise it's a very well-built car you know the materials have held up really well it feels solid it feels well put together that just kind of Mercedes and German build quality definitely shines through with this car which is definitely a big plus it kind of further reiterates what this car is made for just comfortable commuting bombing down the highway going really fast and of course doing burnouts [Music] whoa well guys that's it I hope you enjoyed the episode I really appreciate all the comments and the views you guys have been giving me over the e55 content I really love this car and it's definitely I think shown through in the videos and you guys seem to enjoy it so keep watching it I appreciate it very much if you want to check me out in between episodes you could check me out on Instagram and eat sleep drive TV I make a video like this every Friday so if you enjoy the content give it a subscribe stick around and yeah I appreciate you guys for watching we'll see you in the next episode of eat sleep drive see you guys [Music]

Channel: EatSleepDrive

Views: 153,996

Keywords: AMG, mercedes, E55, E63, supercharged, car buying advice, used sports car, use cars

Id: mb1mf5cuw78

Length: 11min 31sec (691 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 08 2019