rev up your engines, if you're planning
on behind I mercedes-benz today I'm gonna show you a few things you should
know before you buy one, see if it was made in Germany or not, and here we go
check it out Stuttgart Germany realize they make cars all over the
world now and the ones that are made in Germany they're much better than the
ones made in other places, they've always made great engines in Germany, I've
taken the plastic cover stuff off so you can see this big v8 they've been making
v8 engines for a long time and really they pretty much perfected them, this is
the CLS 550 it's got over 380 horsepower but it's a normal v8 engine there's no
supercharger turbocharger, this baby puts out the horsepower by itself doesn't need
any of those gimmicks and therefore it can last a lot longer without all that
extra strain, and even though this baby's 15 years old it's loaded with technology
that you may love when you first buy it and then end up hating when you find out
how many thousands and thousands of dollars it cost to repair, as an example
here's the top of the strut as you can see it's got air pressure going in
it also has electricity going in it these things are extremely complicated,
when they work sure they ride like a dream but on these when they break the car will
start tilting and then you got at least replace them in pairs, now that went on
on this one one had about 70,000 miles ended up costing thousands of dollars, I tried to save the customer more money by replacing one, but then the car sat
sideways, had to replace them both, but then about a year later the back ones went out, same
thing you got to replace them in pairs and this, you got an airbag system too on the
backm and half the car has to be taken apart to replace it, even cost more than
the front ones, now if you are going to buy a Mercedes, you're going to have to
find a mechanic like me to work on it because they're not easy to work on, this
particular system here was a German company, but they recently got bought
out by a Chinese company, so now instead it's called an autel lm608, and
you need something at least this strong too
work on the vehicle, this particular one is about five thousand dollars, even
stuff like changing the brake pads you're gonna need one of these to reset
stuff with, you have to realize having these things worked on and maintained is
expensive, as an example I was recently in San Francisco, and the mercedes-benz
dealer there charges two hundred and twenty-five dollars per hour to work
on your Mercedes, as you can see on the screen there are millions of different
things that you can check out, these are just the beginning of it, and that's just
the motor section there's all kinds of other sections and each one of them has a
subsection and a subsection, to operate all this complex electronics buttons
everywhere, you really need to understand electronics and that's just the tip of
the iceberg, when somebody has to fix them as they break, they really have to
know their stuff, have scan tools and know how to work them, because I met guys
who said oh yeah I work on Mercedes, then they get one of these fancy scan tools
that they bought, and they're working on a car and all of a sudden the car won't
even start and they don't know what to do they just freeze in terror, one guy he
had to bring it on a flatbed over here, start it up won't even go into gear, then when I finally figured out how to get it in gear, I used my fancy computer, the car
wouldn't even move, it had all kinds of brake warning, I said what did you do to this
car, and he responded, I just did a brake job on the car, I just changed the
front brake pads and the sensors, he said that's all I did, then it wouldn't start
and all this stuff came up and he's not a liar at least not to me, so I
figured well he worked on the brakes, so I got on this, went into the electronic
brake system, all I did was turn off the fancy supplemental electronic braking
control unit, there's a way you can turn it off, then I started the car, turned it
off and waited 15 minutes, the computer told me that would be a good thing to do, so I
listened to it, I went back into the electronic braking system, and it sat
there for about five minutes it was going 0% 1%, when it got to 99% then a
hundred percent, take the key out and disconnect your scan tool so I did, then I
started it up, low and behold it went into reverse I drove it away, all the warning
lights came on and the brake system worked fine, and I did was change brake
pads, I figured somehow when he was squeezing
the old pistons back in, that must have disturbed some kind of sensor, it gave a
warning and then in the dash it said, do not drive car fast be careful, well that was
all gone when I reset everything and then it worked fine, you need a really good
mechanic to work on these cars, you can't get them worked on at the corner gas
station anymore, you can forget that, you need somebody who understands computer
systems, has equipment to work on them just so many computer modules on these
vehicles, this is an older one but I worked on a newer one the other day, and
that thing had 87 separate computer modules 87 of them, all connected
together with a bus line, if you ever have a Mercedes and you get any type
of a serious wreck, take the pay out money, don't attempt to fix it, from my
experience these late-model Mercedes once they get crunched and that wiring
especially the computer bus wiring gets damaged, their almost impossible to fix
correctly, now they are smooth running quiet cars there's no arguing that,
but like any modern car hey they're full of plastic stuff look at this, the grill is
cracked already I'm sure she probably bumped into something but still you know
that's pretty flimsy plastic, this stuff used to be made out of metal and it was
nice and solid, and I do have to say that their Bosch any like brake systems are
state of the art, they were the people that really started safety seriously, and
a big v8 engine hey their pretty much gas hogs, this particular one is rated at
14 miles a gallon in the city I checked it with my computer, my
customer is getting about nine and a half miles a gallon in Houston, you don't buy a
mercedes-benz for gas mileage, your going to pay a lot for the car, your gonna pay a lot
for the fuel and the insurance for that matter, now I'm too much of a cheapskate
to ever buy one, I work on them and I road test them and they're fun for a little while
and I'm bored so, if you don't mind the price tag and the outrageously expensive
repairs you're gonna get, hey go ahead and get yourself a Mercedes, just make
sure that it was made in Deutschland, if you don't mind of our price,
so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember
to ring that Bell
