I Mechanically Restored My Rare E55 AMG Wagon In 1 Video & Saved $5,000 Doing It Myself. Legit Fix!

if you guys missed my e55 AMG wagon reveal video I'll link it down below but in the first three minutes of that video I take some random dudes for a ride that claim they make YouTube videos or something and I show you about $35,000 in repair receipts from the previous owner now many commented that old German cars are crap for needing so much money in repairs and although some German cars are total garbage most of these massive repair bills you hear about our simple repairs that you can do yourself at home and in this video I'm gonna give you the confidence and the basic instruction to do just that and I have some more bloopers for you in this video as well now our first repair was already done by the mercedes-benz dealership for free on a 15 year old station wagon and if there's any part of this video that you really pay attention to make sure it's this one because sometimes way after the fact a manufacturer will realize they totally messed up on something and they will offer an extended warranty on that part of the car this is not a traditional recall like you're thinking you may not have gotten a letter and in some situations they will reimburse you if you've already paid for the repair let me show you two of these on this car alone when I bought the wagon it had a brake warning light on the cluster and that's because this pressure reservoir failed mercedes-benz two years ago out of nowhere offered a 25 year extended warranty with unlimited mileage on the entire brake by wire SBC system so eventually Mercedes will replace this pump because it will fail and normally this was a two thousand dollar repair if you already paid for it submit to mercedes-benz and you'll get reimbursed man you guys smell that yeah it kind of smells like gasoline in the e55 right well if I bring it to mercedes-benz and complain about this there's a good chance I'm getting an entire new fuel tank brand new AMG fuel pumps and brand new fuel sending units about a three thousand dollar job done totally for free on a 15 year old one hundred and forty six thousand mile vehicle and it was already all done the fuel tank and the SVC pump on my seventeen-year-old 855 just a couple years back so if you just bought your car maybe it's changed hands a few times make sure to call the dealership ask for this report they don't have to print it for you but they should be able to give you this information over the phone very easily and these extended warranties do eventually run out so make sure to do this sooner than later [Music] in today's video I'm doing a bunch of brakes suspension driveline and service work to the e55 and of course all the parts I'll be using today came from FCP euro and they're all covered by their amazing lifetime warranty so if you guys need parts for your European car truck or SUV definitely check out the link down below if you're experiencing loose steering or you hear a knocking noise over bumps worn-out suspension bushings could be the culprit inspect all your bushings for tears and if they look like mine they need to be replaced [Music] going back together is pretty simple just match up your cups you can use the same receiving cup as before or they do have one that sets the depth pretty much perfectly so I'll use that one and I did notice that our old thrust arm bushing is actually a control arm bushing this is not the proper one for the car and this is more like it so I verified with FCP this is our thrust arm bushing this is what I'm used to they are AMG specific just make sure the nipple is pointing down so you have the orientation right and that you're installing it on this end there's a tapered edge to accept the bushings once you have this arm down this hold job should take about 15 minutes the tool I'm using allows you to replace suspension bushings on the car without the use of a press or the need to replace the entire control arm this can pay for itself after just one use and I'll leave this one and a few different styles for different types of vehicles linked down below along with a full instructional video on how to use this tool also if you guys need step-by-step instructions with pictures and torque specs I'll leave a shop repair manual site linked down below as well these factory style workshop manuals are only about $20 and you can buy them now and the manual is yours for ever and soon the site will be offering a subscription-based system which means you don't have to download a big file to your computer and you can take your manual on the go so on your laptop cell phone or tablet I've used these for many different car makes but they have a manual for just about anything [Music] [Music] alright guys we are rocking and rolling on mechanical repairs on the e55 wagon i had to heat up and beat back this little ear of the subframe the previous owner must have run something over bent it down and we weren't able to properly secure the underbelly panel the plastic panel with a screw so now I have a brand new clip and we are good to go there as you guys saw we replaced the thrust arm bushing we have a new control arm bushing a new sway bar end link as well so pretty much everything on this side outside of an upper ball joint is complete and I also replaced this thrust arm bushing on the right side so the right side is going to have a bunch of overlapping labor we're doing the pads and rotors and we're also going to replace this aromatic strut as you can see this one is new and the two in the rear are new so this is our remaining original aromatic strut and I'm not a hundred percent sure what happened but either align blew off or there was an issue with that strut with the previous owner but as you can see a damaged defender so this car must have slammed to the ground at some point so I just want to get that out of there that way each corner of the car is brand new so of course we're gonna be doing the bushings the sway bar end links as well and the upper ball joints and the brakes and this is a great time to do it because we're just gonna rip all of this apart and replace it all so without further ado let's get to work [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] kind of a bummer but this bottom pin it was flattened out by whoever did the brakes last and they kind of garbled up the paint on the caliper but no big deal I've soaked this end with PB Blaster I'm pretty confident I'll be able to hammer this out and then I'll just have to order a new pin now something you guys may have noticed is that I left the brake pads the old brake pads in the caliper and I put them over the brand new rotor and the reason I did this is once you compress one of the pads the piston on the other end is gonna shoot out so you need an old brake pad in here as a placeholder anyway so instead of taking them both out and then eventually having to put one back in so the piston doesn't come all the way out I just leave it all together we get the new rotor on and then you're essentially doing a pad slap which is really easy and this way you have an old pad to push that piston in and you're not touching the actual piston which can be damaged and this is a very expensive caliper and shout-out to my friend Mike one of the best Mercedes technicians in the entire planet he taught me this trick like 10 or 12 years ago I saw him doing a brake job on an AMG car at the dealership and I'm like dude you forgot to replace the brake pads what are you thinking we must have been out really late last night and he's like no no no no let me show you this trick and I've been doing it this way ever since and it works out great so thanks Mike appreciate the tip and everybody say hi to Mike in the comment section [Music] the trick to doing the Flex disk on in these Mercedes is to loosen up the center support bearing right here this gives you a ton of play it's only two bolts one here and one on the other side and you get a ton of play now to install the new flex disk if you don't do that it will seem impossible to ever fit that in [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] no doubt there are a bunch of comments down below and how rusted these trans cooler lines are I'm from Chicago I'm no stranger to rust so I've seen a lot of this but I just want to show you that I've never actually seen one of these leak it's usually just surface rust and you can clean it up pretty nicely as you can see down here now to mint this all out would require a ton of work and maybe I'll do that one day maybe I'll replace these lines if they're even still available but for right now a little bit all right you get the idea I could be here all day long we have still this bracket right here that we can clean up but in most cases you can get the surface rust off paint um and you're good to go [Music] so before the wagon arrived in Chicago I had ordered a bunch of these parts and they told me I needed rear brakes there was even a box with brand new Mercedes brake pads in the back but I think they were referring to the front brakes those were totally shot and these look to be practically new I measured them and they're almost indistinguishable from the new pads and rotors that I already bought but that is okay we'll save those for when they actually wear out and here is our pile of parts it doesn't look like much but at a shop or dealership this could easily add up to about $5,000 worth of work anything with air suspension and big AMG brakes they charge you an arm and a leg for but you can do this at home and I have roughly about thirteen or twelve hundred dollars into all of this so you figure if you do it at home it could be seventy five eighty percent less in some cases to do this work yourself and it is nuts and bolts there are a lot of things in these cars that you can't do but this kind of stuff if you have some determination and some time you can definitely knock it out so let me show you what a bad flex disc looks like as you can see it is cracking here so this is starting to make our drive shaft and our whole driveline loose eventually these cracks will grow and this will start to wobble back there it could technically break and cause a bunch of damage if the drive shaft were to let go so you want to just inspect these every service these easily lasts like a hundred thousand miles or more so it's not something you have to worry about all the time just something to take a look at when you're changing your oil maybe once a year or something like that but something I wanted to point out it's probably already in the comments section realistically it always is when I work on suspension components and for a good reason you want to leave the bushings loose so I have snug these up but they're not totally tight the bolts for the bushing that's because you want to tighten them with the wheels on the car and the car on the ground if you don't it puts the bushings and kind of a twisted unnatural state and they will wear out much quicker so in my case I will be lowering the car in probably two episodes from now and then we will be getting an alignment you want to get an alignment if you're replacing all the bushings like I did and in that case I'll probably loosen them back up and tighten them with with the car at the proper ride height on the alignment rack so shops will do that they might charge you a little bit more to go around and loosen everything and tighten it again but I do think it is worth it so as you can see we have our screw holding in our cover we're good to go there oh and I almost forgot I did have to cut this pin out as you guys saw and drill it out you don't want to hammer on this too much because you do risk breaking an ear of a really expensive caliper off but we got the pin out no problem I had some extra ones laying around but I think when I paint the caliper eventually I'll just put some new brake hardware on here and call it a day normally this doesn't happen this is the first one I've ever had to cut out and Mercedes brake hardware is actually really robust so this was a little bit of an oddball but it's fixed and we're good to go [Applause] all right so you want to keep the cowl clean so when you do a service on your Mercedes or any car really you should expect the Powell area for leaves dirt and debris it can clog up drains that could cause a ton of damage if water gets inside of the car and shorts out modules now as far as all the other maintenance all I did in this video was an oil change it's already been done the brake fluid was done when the dealership fixed the spc reservoir the spark plugs were already done the transmission fluid was already flushed out I have all the receipts for the car so we don't really have to worry about any of that just reset the cluster and outside of needing some fuel we are in pretty good shape f7 at miles per gallon not good not good no messages so we obviously plugged in the SBC pump we didn't have any warnings or anything as long as while that's unplugged you're not opening and closing doors and waking up the system you won't get any warnings but even if you do just turn the car off and start it a few times it will clear up as long as that thing is plugged back in after your brake job so let's go take the wagon out for a ride and see how nice the steering and the brakes feel nothing like taking your car out for its first ride after doing a bunch of work testing her out I haven't driven this car in a little bit feels so good the steering is phenomenal it's super tight IPD ID these cars when they were brand new back in when they came out in 2003 and this just feels perfect this feels absolutely perfect i eyeballed the alignment actually pretty well the steering wheel is just slightly off but we definitely still need to get in alignment especially after she gets lowered brakes feel amazing and everything is good to go I can in the video without giving it a little bit of throttle Oh broken loose still spinning through the wagon is wicked guys I don't know what it is about this thing I mean I know it's modded but it is fast it is really fast if you guys caught the last video where I fix everything on the r63 this did 0 to 60 in 3.8 seconds after just trying it twice so anyway loving this car everything seems to be in a great working order and we're ready to move on to some cosmetic modifications very excited for all of this it's going to start in the next video or maybe 2 videos where I'm disassembling a lot of this car to send it out for paint so with that being said if you like this style video if you like a guy that's just fixing old cars in his garage make sure to hit the thumbs up button make sure you're subscribe share the video if you could and most importantly have an awesome day I am going to drive the crap out of this car today it's gorgeous out and I will see all of you in the next video or to go around and loosen everything and tighten it again but I and tight and tighten it again now our first repair was already done now our first repair and they'll even reimburse you if you had paid for this repair yeah our first repair was actually done now our first repair was actually done by Merson now our first repair was actually done and I'm not talking about recalls they will for free on a 15 our first repair [Music]

Channel: LegitStreetCars

Views: 275,182

Keywords: E55 AMG WAGON, MERCEDES AMG WAGON, mercedes wagon, legitstreetcars e55, HOW TO FIX A MERCEDES, broken mercedes, DIY CAR REPAIRS, HOW TO CAR REPAIR, mercedes benz, SUSPENSION NOISE, MERCEDES BRAKES, ho, e55, car restoration, tool restoration, car fix, fixing cars, cars, amg, mercedes e55 amg wagon, 2005 e55 amg wagon

Id: 7TeoRo7vXpY

Length: 22min 10sec (1330 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 11 2020