When did Mercedes stop making "forever cars"

okay that's better so one of the problems that i run into all the time with this new computer that i've gotten is that it automatically tries to put me on its back camera so just for the record everybody anything made by samsung is probably defective just a little anyway um you know i'm streaming on saturday and um my wife is still asleep so i usually use our our back bedroom because i don't want to wake her up i don't want her to think that i'm trying to wake her up anyway we found out yesterday that the baby is a girl so we're going to have a little girl and her name is going to be madeleine and it's going to be a traditional spelling of madeline not a bunch of wise or unnecessary vestigial letters so you know name your kids real names anyway um our topic today is going to be about when mercedes stopped making forever cars and so what we're going to look at is the the way that mercedes built cars and constructed entire systems of operation through the 19 you know through like the 1960s 70s and 80s and then we're going to look at how mercedes changed the way that they built cars starting in the mid 1990s and so some of you are not not going to want to hear this because it's going to hurt your feelings but that's okay you know i don't care if anybody's feelings are hurt so starting in the 1980s let's say about 1985. mercedes um decided that they were going to instead of engineering every little part as a separate part certain parts were going to become integrated into an entire system and this had already been exemplified on the w201 where if you look at a window regulator on the 201 you can't disassemble the 201 plastic window regulator into individual pieces like you could on a 123 series or a 126 series car nope everything was sort of cast or molded into one piece hence the ubiquitous 201 plastic window regulator now these early plastic window regulators were not very good but this was like a glimpse of the future a part that wasn't made from other parts but apart instead that was made from one giant piece of plastic now this is a key principle going forward because mercedes started to implement these ideas on the 124. so let's look at a 123 door panel versus the 124 door panel the 123 door panel what you have is you have a piece of cardboard then you have some vinyl that's molded over and then you have these individual little plastic clips that you can remove from the 123 door panel if they break and put new ones on on the 124 and the 126 to be fair instead of putting plastic clips in the door panel that were replaceable they decided to glue the plastic retainers onto the 124 door panel and the 201 door panel or mold them into the door panel on the 126. so what happens if you break all the plastic clips which is what happens a lot of the time when people try to remove these things or they come in glued which again happens a lot of the time well they don't glue back on very easily and on the 126 nothing nothing can fix a broken plastic hook if any of you have a solution for this let me know but you're in trouble you were in a lot of trouble so this this is when you started to see some signs of cost cutting that were uh not only um they were not only um [Music] a sign of things to come but they can be extremely frustrating to deal with if you have to deal with them in the present so things started to get a little bit murky after that um we never ran into evaporator problems in 85 and earlier mercedes the 126s rarely had them 85 and earlier the 123s never had evaporator problems but during the later part of the 80s gen 2 126 cars and and 124 series cars and even some 201 series cars started to have evaporator issues and of course this continued with the w140 and based on what i understand sometimes it happens with the w210 now and the w202 as well but you know you start hearing about a couple of issues that became really apparent with mercedes that were not that easy to resolve so the first one of course was the single row timing chain in the 380sl um next we got into the evaporator failure crisis where you know evaporators and 124 and 126 series cars not as much in 126s but definitely 124 started to leak all the time then the problems began to uh extend into things like engine electrical harnesses in the early 90s in 92 and 93 you know all the way up until 1996 mercedes was trying to get their wiring harness formula correct and they just could not seem to get the chemistry right until 96 97 and then everything started to become a little bit more functional and what ended up happening during this era was that you had mercedes that had multiple serious issues so these multiple serious issues included wiring harness issues evaporator issues issues with the reverse gear in the transmission and [Music] i don't know interior plastics issues in the 129 and of course um you know the difficulty of obtaining wiring diagrams for some cars if i want a wiring diagram for a w140 i have to go on star tech info wiring diagrams for cars like the w140 and 202 c-class are not easily obtainable but things get even more interesting as you go on people think 1996 was the end of the quality control issues but it's really not so enter the flexible service system if you go underneath a mercedes ml320 a 99 ml 320 to do a transmission service there is a drain plug on the torque converter 2000 later no drain plug on the torque converter why would you not put a drain plug on your torque converter oh wait it's a sealed for life transmission or life is about 150 000 miles that means that if you want to extend your transmissions life you have to perform a number of fluid services you know every five or ten thousand miles just to neutralize your fluid and get it clean again but mercedes is operating under the premise that the transmissions in these cars were able to go 150 000 miles to 200 000 miles without a fluid change now this is the part that i find really perplexing because if you look at these transmissions they don't have a very good filter the filter is just this little kidney bean shaped paper element that i think allows a lot of stuff to stay in the transmission which is why graphite from the clutches gets on the conductor plates and and shorts them out and etc etc but you know these are some signs in the beginning of the end i think that the other problems that we saw were the need for a computer to diagnose everything in the car so this started to become really prominent with two models the v8 124 series like the 500 e and the 400 en of course the the the 140 series cars which had that 32 pin connector under the hood the 32 pin connector is the only way you're ever going to access any of the diagnostic codes in the car there's no other way so if you think that you can go out and buy like a 94 500 sl or an e500 or an e320 or a some other mercedes from the 90s if you do not have the ability to tap into the diagnostic signal from that connector you are never going to be able to diagnose that car anyway we're going to look at the hallmarks of a not forever mercedes now so the first one is number one you must have an electronic aid to diagnose the car you must have a computer an sds system a handheld tested obd2 scanner something now i know that these things are the norm today but i still continue to reject them because i think that the human brain is the best diagnostic tool hey john john woods is on by the way thank you to all of you who congratulated me i appreciate it now number two next hallmark of a non-forever mercedes you cannot take a component and break it up into individual components so i can't take a window regulator or a power steering pump or even something as simple as a control unit and open it up or look at it or access the inside of it it's sealed it is made as one piece if you can't glue it back together you have to throw it away and this became the norm later on going forward so here's a good example on the w202 you don't replace individual tie rods you replace the entire steering linkage on the w210 you don't remove and rebuild the steering rack you replace it when it goes bad and it's expensive and time consuming that's just what you do on those cars you throw away the entire assembly the whole part the whole part goes in the trash and then you put in a new one that lasts for about 10 to 15 years and in the meantime you do it again okay number four lack of serviceability remember the transmission torque converter drain plug that i mentioned there's only one reason to not put a torque converter drain plug in and it's because you don't want the torque converter to last you don't want it to be serviceable um i don't see i don't see why anybody would want to put a torque converter drain plug in other than the fact they're trying to save a few cents on manufacturing costs and maybe make some money later down the road number five electronic components or electronically actuated components replace mechanically controlled ones so instead of a mechanical throttle linkage you have an electronic throttle linkage instead of a manual top you have a power top instead of um instead of a bunch of solenoid valves controlling your vacuum routing for your climate control you have one single circuit board that makes all of the decisions instead of your windshield wipers being activated by a switch they go through a control unit that makes decisions about the wipers instead of your transmission being a a instead of your transmission gear selector being directly tied to the transmission it goes through an electronic control unit that decides what gear you're going to go in until you spill coffee on it uh another one instead of your brake pedal controlling what happens when you push the brakes the brakes go are the brakes are governed by a control unit that decides how much brake pressure you need now sure the driver is giving the control unit feedback but at the end of the day if the control unit fails your brakes aren't going to work properly you know as as documented with this um i can't remember what it was called it was called um selective breaking system sbs fiasco that mercedes went through in the early 2000s so let's look at some hallmarks of a forever car first of all on a forever car every component is individually serviceable and replaceable that means that on my 85 300 sd if my center vents stop working i can replace the center vent actuator and open it up and repair it and put a new vacuum diaphragm and it means that i can change the solenoid valve that opens and closes when i select that center vent actuator or it means that i can open up the case that the temperature regulator lives in which is a simple solid state circuit board troubleshoot it or send it out for rebuilding and reinstall it in the car without too much hassle i don't have to get a vin number encoder out i don't have to make sure that i have exactly 12.75 volts or more to make the whole system work yes there are some systems on modern mercedes where if they don't have exactly 13 volts nothing's going to happen i think this is true with the transmissions especially i heard about this on nissan's from my friend jesse i did some research mercedes has systems like this too if you have a weak alternator then your voltage falls then certain parts of the transmission stop working you know but uh another hallmark of a forever car is that you can trace a problem from its origin to its resolution without the use of an electronic scanner so if i have a problem with my zenith carburetor on a 250c let's say the car won't idle i was talking to my friend muhammad about this yesterday you don't get tcb garage makes a good point you get the headlight wet and the modules go bad uh-oh i was talking to my friend muhammad about the carburetor he goes car stalls and drive great what do we know we know that the car is supposed to have a function that assists it to keep running and drive this function is performed by the vacuum regulator the vacuum regulator is regulated by intake vacuum and then you should adjust the vacuum regulator he looked at his and it has no no screw in it that pushes down on the linkage so guess what that means it means this vacuum regulator isn't doing its job so you put a four millimeter by .75 millimeter thread screw in and it pushes the linkage down when you're in drive and car runs good after that not a big deal is it but if you look at a similar car like let's say you have a c230 that won't idle and drive i don't even know where to begin look for look for a broken vacuum line that's the response you're gonna get on a web forum uh the uh the problem that um i see a lot of the time with newer mercedes is that there's no clear-cut explanation as to what fails or why certain things fail the sprinter van is a good example they have an egr valve that has to send a voltage feedback signal to the ecu to keep the thing running and the first time that i learned about this i found out that if the egr valve goes bad when the car is hot it won't start what the heck it's a diesel it's a five-cylinder diesel there's no reason that anything should interrupt that vehicle from starting let alone a stupid egr valve that makes that has no bearing on whether the engine even runs or not i mean if you if you have an egr valve that is broken you know i mean sure you might have some running problems but it shouldn't keep the car from starting and if you think about it people use sprinter vans for work these are work vans if you have to go from one job to another or you're doing deliveries and you get in your sprinter van and it doesn't start for the next 20 or 30 minutes due to a bad egr you're just losing money so you've got a waller and get another egr and guess what happens 30 or 40 000 miles later it goes bad ridiculous we shouldn't have to put up with this stuff this is why i tell people if you want a good car go by a 40 year old 30 year old etc mercedes and restore it go do it if you want a forever car that's how you get a forever car yes there's a lot of hard work involved and uh what i what i see a lot of the time is that um we have we have these situations where uh we have these situations where people call us um we have these situations where people call us and they go i want a forever car i want a car that's going to last me forever i want a car that i'm not going to have to deal with a vid encoder or a stupid scanner and i don't need diagnostic software for it's like well mercedes built cars like that up till approximately 1991 or 92 where you can get by diagnosing stuff with a volt meter you know if you can't if you cannot use a a multimeter volt oh millivolt milliamp to diagnose a car okay i'm just telling you if you can't use easily use i'm not talking about sit there and wait for a voltage pulse and another pulse and another pulse and then try to count them while you're checking for a trouble code i'm talking about if you cannot sit there and do a resistance check on a part do a voltage test and a part look for a voltage value if you can't do that on a car it is not a forever car because what you're relying on is a computer to do the diagnosis for you and there's there's that problem this is a this is a problem so this is why i keep telling people on this channel don't ls swap your 85 190e don't think that don't don't put a 351 windsor in you know your 82 240d because it's quote unquote slow pretty soon in the future people are going to be crying screaming and crying and begging for analog cars they are going to be wishing so badly that they had analog cars that you know you'll see the price of crappy even like rusty color changed ugly 123 selling for five six seven thousand dollars you know i'm starting to see scenarios like this where where cars that should not sell for two three four thousand dollars are selling for five six seven eight nine ten thousand dollars i have had so many problems with customer cars you know that that i didn't even think they should be buying but i'm still happier to deal with a rusty 123 with a bunch of issues because everything is analog you know that's that's that's really that that's really the truth so why is it that i keep iterating this line the the the last really good mercedes model platforms were all introduced before 1990 why do i keep saying that over and over again well because mercedes is not trying to obfuscate everything with electronic controls so um let's let's see here so what do i think the last good mercedes is i get this whole question a lot the last good mercedes was probably the 95 e300 the last really good mercedes that i don't ever do i'm not talking about a gas car it's a diesel e300 diesel that's it in 96 when they switched that body style to the 210 they ruined the e300 because they made it necessary for the engine control unit to work to operate in order to keep the car running if you have a problem with the ecu or the crank position sensor or whatever engine doesn't run anymore just shuts off goes into limp mode limp mode is satan it's the worst possible thing that can happen it's like why does it why would a car even go into lit mode either runs or doesn't you know i don't know stupid i guess limp mode is so the car can limp to the dealership so they can charge you five or six thousand dollars to diagnose and repair a sensor and keep changing that sensor every 50 000 miles or so the um the other you know as far as gas mercedes goes the last really decent gas mercedes that i'd say is an extremely serviceable car is the 93 w201 now i've complained about the 201 numerous times i mean i've complained about them all the time but at the end of the day in order to diagnose the engine and the transmission and rear axle and even to an extent the climate control you don't need anything but a multimeter and a working brain and that means that you you were able to uh you were able to keep one of these cars going without too much pain and suffering the the 1993 and later gasoline 124 that went to hfm sfi injection does not get lumped into this group of really great mercedes in fact if you have a 9495 e320 it is basically uh uh it is basically a bmw yes it's as gimmicky as a bmw because wiring harness what do you what do you do what's the what's the trilogy not trilogy the quintology of failures on a late 124 chassis engine wiring harnesses evaporator reverse clutches head gasket throttle actuator so these are five items that all cost thousands of dollars to fix throttle actuator is the cheapest but it will give you the most headaches with diagnosis evaporator is the most expensive followed a close second by everything else with thousands of dollars three thousand dollars in labor sometimes four thousand dollars in labor costs if you have other items that need to be dealt with on the ac system but five major areas there was never a mercedes that had five major weak points until they came out with the 93 300 e 320 how do i know because i owned one and it was a great car but at 52 000 miles i had to change a head gasket and a lower wiring harness the upper harness and throttle actuator had already been replaced at 52 000 miles and the evaporator basically a bmw basically you know nothing special nothing sets it apart i look at the 9495 e320 i say this car is no better than a bmw it's full of gimmicks it's full of electronic issues it's full of problems that will make the car essentially worthless if it breaks it's full of struggles you know labor struggles where you have to struggle to get the car fixed when it's when it's broken when you get one of those cars you basically start spending money and when you're done fifteen thousand dollars later you have a good car but there's they're basically a bmw there's nothing analog about the car so uh on the other hand you know what constitutes a really good analog car an analog fuel injection system whether it's a mechanical or a primitive electronic system like djet uh a what else um an analog transmission no control unit needed and transmissions are complicated there's no way around saying an automatic transmission isn't complicated but it's a lot less complicated when you don't have a stupid control unit confusing you all the time electronic control units and transmissions either create problems or they mask internal problems in the transmission the um people ask about the the 129 chassis a lot well the 129 unfortunately some people seem to think it's a forever car if you can get forever out of an r129 i congratulate you but mercedes did not design the 129 to be a forever car especially after 1993 when they dumped the ke jetronic injection system if you don't mind driving around without climate control and with the broken power top the 129 is a forever car if you expect everything in the car to work then you're in a lot of trouble you really are you know i'm not trying to be mean or piss anybody off but the truth is those of us that have analog mercedes when we start looking at these cars that require an electronic diagnostic aid like sds star diagnostic system or we start seeing a car that has a um you know an unresolvable electrical issue with the security system security systems are the worst the w202 was the first car to have a security system that was so fully integrated in the car that would absolutely paralyze the car if it failed uh you know what are you gonna do about that nothing but we we with older more analog cars start seeing this sort of problem and we're like this is a gimmick this is ridiculous there's no reason that we should have to put up with that i will take my older slower more analog car so i don't have to deal with the diagnostic headache just because you know your newer car takes three less seconds to get to 60 miles an hour or even 10 less seconds i don't care i don't mind i don't mind driving a car that takes 13 seconds to get to 60 miles an hour because i'm not going to have to sit there with an sds machine trying to get it to accept a new seat control module or a new engine cooling fan module or a new throttle actuator you know if you have an e500 or 500e if you change your throttle actuator you have to go in with sds and do what i call back flushing kill and erase all of the old codes that the bad throttle actuator caused if you don't do that car will never run right ever they won't clear them themselves either you know anyway if it was introduced after 1990 1990 or later that if it was introduced before 1990 good so yeah anyway i'm going to take a few questions now so martin huniwitz says your prediction part supply will dry up eventually when you know i'm really not sure if it ever will because mercedes is making a killing off of classic parts but they're not doing a great job with the 201 124 123 and 126 i think what it's going to take martin and my other listeners to get part supply backup is a really young dynamic group of guys who appreciate the young timers who are working for daimler bid so i'd say that if you're like a viewer of mine and you like classic mercedes and you're young and you're in europe or you're you want to work in corporate america i would say ride the wave and go work for mercedes so that you can get on the inside so you can make sure that we have parts uh julian hickman thought thinking i was scared of the complexity of the r129 he asked about an 89 500 sl well an 89 500 sl is an r107 in the united states to us because they made them for the in you know they kept making the 107 into 89. and i guess in 89 they came out with the r129 as well julian you should at this you're talking about a 129 you should be somewhat scared of it but thankfully the 89 90 91 92 still has ke jetronics so it will still run but i wouldn't say it's a necessarily great car all right tcb garage my 380 sel slips into third and fourth my mechanic wants to rebuild i'm not so sure you know i don't know how many miles are on the 380 sel but it sounds to me like your your clutches and your 3 4 clutch pack are worn so you may have to rebuild the other problem is that you may need to replace the clutch pack housing seal which is riveted in but but um you can adjust the vacuum modulator in a little bit and see if raising the modulating pressure gets rid of the 3 4 slip i okay hedo what do you think of the 300 sd w140 great engine wonderful engine awful chassis that's what i think um sorry if you're offended by this 140 fans i am a mean person with the heart of stone i don't care what you think uh yeah you know i think it's funny who needs john woods my friend who's on this live stream jt woods 41978 he says who needs 60 miles an hour faster who needs to get to 60 miles an hour faster than in 15 seconds john does pro touring in a did a firebird if i remember right a pro touring build firebird so this is like a race car driver this guy's a race car driver all right you know rodolfo what about the clkw 208 sorry not a forever car wow so kev dupuis found a fix for the 124 and 126 door panel hooks that's great that you guys figured out um john if you could post that video in this feed that would be good somebody asked what do you think of the 140 s600 again it's not a forever car all right guyanos what's your opinion of the double it's the m123 250 engine but yeah the the 250 used an engine called the m123 you know this engine was had a mixed reputation some people thought it was a terrible engine some people thought it was a good engine my understanding is that it still got five main bearings which makes it a a an iteration of the old m180 engine that's what the m123 is it is a modernized version of the m180 engine so if you take care of these engines they are rebuildable and yeah they're real screamers at high rpms when you're driving down the highway at 60 miles an hour you're turning almost 3 500 rpm but they're simple enough i mean you can keep on going without having to resort to a bunch of ridiculous things like replacing a a cylinder head you know every 50 or 60 000 miles or something you know john i thought about this this is why i want mercedes club to actually work because we're supposed to be the petition all right tcp garage i have a spare auto off of a good 420 seo yes it'll work in your 380. thank you martin for wanting to bring me your car i'll be ready for you whenever you are um all right this is a good question what are your thoughts on the 91 300e so all things aside the driveline and the 91 300d isn't a bad one i mean you might have to do a head gasket and valve guide rebuild but there are some items in this car like especially things like interior door panels and interior parts and the evaporators which go bad in the 91's but not not nearly as bad as the later 124s you know you're still going to have some issues with this car but overall it's still a pretty analog car in other words you can still keep it running with you know some with the volt meter thank you so much for all my patreon supporters anyway guys i'm gonna go enjoy my saturday thank you all for watching i like to do these live streams early because it means that i can get some stuff done throughout the day but um i look forward to seeing you all again on the next live stream and lm just so you know yes we discussed the 85 300 sd it is a forever car absolutely all the early 126 cars are still forever cars all right guys thank you so much for watching please hit that like button uh and um uh you know be sure to subscribe if you haven't shazi asked me where does one go to get some hands-on training on mercedes classics you have to find somebody who's been doing it for years and become their apprentice that's how you get the training that's how anyway thank you guys i'll see you next time i appreciate all of you keep your classic mercedes on the road sayonara

Channel: Mercedes Classics with Pierre Hedary

Views: 11,581

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Id: RNIh17bO8XY

Length: 37min 45sec (2265 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 03 2020