knock on german wood, i got a cheap mercedes and it hasnt been a huge hassle *yet* the only issue is that the shifter kind of died and got stuck in park all the time so had to get that replaced [it was a bad $20 solenoid that required the whole $150 assembly to get replaced] am i just lucky or is there something massive brewing
w202 c180/200/220 manuals are still cheap in europe and they're bulletproof except for rust issues but we can weld right? I've had three and they're the bestest of winter beaters lemme tell ya! 😜
@@AceH.-jk5knWhile true, he has previously expressed a desire not to work on euro motors (see the first Merc vid), and is also paid by Wade for this work.
You were correct that is essentially a smog pump. It's called a secondary air pump and it runs when the engine is cold to dump extra oxygen into the exhaust allowing the catalytic converters to come up to temperature more quickly.
@@TommyCullen-VacuumConnisour emission garbage are the stupidest, least cool & expensive crap stuck on cars! they also make cars more expensive and less reliable. complete bull$hit.
My FJ cruiser had that feature, it was attached to the headers. It was acting up, needless to say i upgraded to the slightly older gen headers and setup without it. And now its perfect.
I have a BMW with one of those, too. Such a dumb idea. To save ~5 minutes of exhaust pollution, install 50 pounds of proprietary metal and plastic along with software and hardware to accommodate it. Not to mention the tooling, manufacturing, shipping, and installation of said components. Luckily I have a TON of engine compartment space so it's not really in the way for me.😌👍
Interesting that Mercedes decided to make a system that pumps the coolant and oil precariously close to one another in the same housing with nothing but an expendable component that cant even hold up to the chemicals its in contact with to keep them from mixing. Its like a head gasket going out but you would take apart the engine to find the head gasket in tact. What a monstrous potential headache.
I used to have a frankencycle. I got it from a friend because I needed something while I was saving up money for a new bike because my own got stolen. There were several things I had to do to fix it up over the two years I was riding it. What follows is a bunch of stuff I did to it. The front wheel was one of those thin racing wheels, rear wheel with a derailer was slightly wider but still not standard width, sort of intermediate, it probably came with the frame which was also an intermadiate touring biycle frame. The handlebars were of a variety that was in reduced size and could not have come off that same bike.There was a luggage carrier on the front and it did have a front fender too, but there was no rear fender (it disintegrated a few weeks after I got it) so I attached a plank to the underside of the rear luggage carrier to work as one (netherlands gets wet, so you need some type of mudguard, really). It came with an old-timey car horn that my friend had mounted (the honky one), two bells of which only one worked, several non-working headlights (there were three mounted in different places, including on the luggage carrier). There was no real rear light, just one of those dangly battery powered ones that don't survive a single minute of rain. The pedals were wonky too. The steering axel was slightly wobbly (probably a matter of replacing bearings). That derailer? Stuck in a middle gear (it had 7 but was stuck between 3/4). The chain would come off every 15/20 K's. The nicest thing on there was the seat. That bike was stolen too. Someone actually took the time to open a pretty beefy chain lock I got on there, and stole the damn thing. I get that nice bikes get stolen, but this thing looked like two bikes that were fished from a canal and then smashed together in a collision. Unfathomable. I still miss that heap of junk though, had the most personality of any of the bicycles I've owned, and as a dutch guy, I have owned probably over 20 to 30 bicycles over the years (I remember every one of them).
You just learned a lesson The Car Wizard likes to talk about: just because an expensive car has depreciated to the point that it is now cheap doesn't mean the parts have. Parts for expensive cars are still expensive even if the cars themselves no longer are.
@@ccoder4953 Or both the parts and the car can be expensive, like his '64 (I think) Coupe De Ville. The one car of his that screams "Goodfellas" and "Casino".😁
I once got told “A car’s maintenance never depreciates.” So if you buy a 100k Bentley for 25k, it is still a 100k car to maintain. An error a lot of people make when buying cars!
@@gigsandguitars6921 If you do the work yourself parts prices tend to come down a little bit as time goes on as you get more aftermarket support, but if you're going for oem and having to pay someone to do it the prices are only going up.
You know what's funny, after watching your video on installing the cup holder on the CLS, my mom spilled a whole cup of boba tea into the same hole that you spilled your maccas in our CLS. For those who thought it was funny, it wasn't
I love that this thing refuses to driven regularly. Wade should rename this thing “the car of Theseus”. By the time it can be driven on a regular basis every expendable part will have been changed
So turns out, green coolant and burnt motor oil don't emulsify into gross-ass chocolate milk, they just turn into cartoonishly toxic-looking evil goop.
I was hoping he'd take a pic of it and print it on a shirt, but I guess we're out of luck lol. I mean that was one artsy evil looking Mercedes stain of petty hate right there, it deserved being on a shirt
Dude! The statement you just made sounds so asinine, when you grew up or rather whitbessed what I like to call the "Tank Generation Mercedes Cars." The things you had to actually try to break. But no, these days you get this fu**ery. Oh, before I forget. See that pump he just serviced? Yeah. Imagine that was made out of cheap plastic! No, really!
Pfft, Rei profile pic. Some countries still use 70s and 80s Mercedes taxis, there was a day a Mercedes was more like a German Ford, just actually engineered and built properly.
Correction, An advertisement against buying a second hand mercedes if you have no intention on restoring it. Rescuing an old merc is like restoring a barn find firebird or chevelle. Its not cheap, it takes time and a lot of frustration, but at the end of it all you have something spectacular. For me id do it to a CL600. A V12 from the before times when 300hp was good enough and you really had no business going faster than 155mph. Plus its from that special era where Mercedes just transitioned to focusing on production numbers instead of production quality, so its really the first Coupe of theirs that feels like you're driving a car, not a lounge. If you're going to buy a second hand mercedes, do it because its something you love. Not to just daily drive and never expect to take care of, but to restore to what it was.
The oil dripping on the belt and basically dissolving it is exactly the problem with Ford's Ecoboost engines - only rather than drip, the belt is just pluinged into the hot engine oil instead.
It’s almost 20 years old at this point, parts are running out. I have a 40 year old Mercedes, getting new parts is almost impossible unless the part I’m needing is still being used in some other make/model.
James here is sounding the most... depressed. You weren't joking when you said that he despised this car, Wade. With the Goober and the Frog, he was ecstatic, he was eager to explain stuff to ya/to us, but.. here, he sounds like he's just... at work
Considering he works at a European specialist shop, this is literally what he does at the job. I feel bad for the man, this Merc literally is draining life outta James just to keep running. It's like a Norton Commando vampire motorcycle, except it's German instead of British, has two more sets of wheels, and doesn't drive around on its own killing bikers.
@@JeanMarceauxexcept he's getting paid to hang out with his friend with mechanic job on the side (not including a possible paycheck from James channel)
I don't know a single mechanic that doesn't despise working on a (luxury) Merc. Sure, some get paid by the hour, but they still have to deal with German luxury complexity.
I know a fella pretty well that fixes euro-cars full time here and its practically a job for life. Everything from Audi to Volkswagen is just always busted
@@TheUnreadableUser so you're saying you would be happy to do your job, on your days off, for basically the same amount of time, if one of your friends was there?
That seal for the Oil cooler is ~5€ here in Germany if you buy it from Elring (one of the big OEM Gasket Manufacturers). The belt with tensioner and pulleys was 85€ shipped in 2022 from Gates (tensioners and pulleys are identical to Mercedes ones with Merc Logo ground off). For some stuff it makes sense to go OEM, but for this stuff it absolutely doesn't.
Same with my E39 530d's water pump. INA part cost a lot less than BMW, and the genuine BMW part I removed was made... by INA. Still a good thing I replaced it, plastic impellers don't last forever, and I couldn't trust a 135k mile plastic water pump.
Much more pragmatic to have something cheap, easily replaceable, and reliable than something that looks classy but costs an arm and a leg for the most basic service
@@CydreezeBeing broke and not being able to afford a Mercedes is a bigger distance in financial situations than the real life distance between Australia and the US
I absolutely cannot believe that a window seal is $2,000, AUD or not. I sent an Omega Seamaster in for service, where a highly trained technician takes the entire watch apart piece by piece, cleans everything, replaces any parts that are worn, puts it back together, replaces the seals, pressure tests it, and they even replaced the dial and hands. I want to say that was around $1,000. I think it's about time we get a Swiss automaker because their cars would just keep running for extended periods of tim toe and would never have any issues
Just to clarify: for Mercedes “enjoyers” it’s 100% a love hate relationship and not just happy clapping. When everything works and the parts all cooperate and every little part and electronic doodad in the engine sings, most of these cars feel unstoppable and refined. This lasts for two days until some obscure sensor calls it a night and things start slowly failing. If I had to commute it would be hell, but I can’t bring myself to get rid of the old Merc I drive when I do drive. Most days it’s quite nice, even if a lot of it feels outdated now. Sadly the newer ones seem to be just more of the bad with none of the good. I’d imagine the golden age for Mercs was the 80s and 90s when they were pretty much indestructible. Before the unstoppable Toyotas, we had unstoppable Mercs.
3:21 it's an exhaust air injection pump. When the engine is cold it runs and pumps fresh air into the exhaust, which introduces oxygen and burns any unburnt fuel. It's just for emissions.
@@MrFastFox666 Yeah they're the same thing, that name just comes from the "smog" years of early emissions equipment common on 1970s cars, which is when air pumps began seeing widespread use. It's why some people are relatively surprised to see one on a more modern car. Like James said; "Pretty sure they stopped doing them in the seventies."
Classic German design. To replace a tiny seal, you'd need about 16 hours of work to tear the engine apart. Then while putting it back together, you realize because of how it is nearly physically impossible, you break another part. Now you have to spend even more money and time waiting for the replacement to arrive.
I follow a Mexican youtuber who talks about cars and is a mechanic and he always says "Carro de rico viejo, te va a dejar pobre" ("An old rich guy car will make you poor"), whenever he talks about 2000s or older cars of brands like BMW or Mercedes or Land Rover seeing the freaking window seals cost 8K, I couldn't help but remember that dude! For that 8K you could buy an older yet more reliable car, or another nugget 🤣🤣 , or a bunch of nuggets!
@@My_Old_YT_Account They just make you feel like it with the absolute neglect they receive by their secondhand owners before you ever get it. Especially a Lexus, they just get abuse and abused and abused, so by the time you get that LS430 you've always wanted, everything is wrong with it. Cant have shit in detroit.
There are a few reasons they put the oil coolers on the engine like that, but mostly it's because it's cheap and there are fewer hoses and such that need to handle hot oil at pressure like you'd see with a separate oil radiator. The reason the oil is cooled by the engine coolant (liquid-to-liquid) is twofold: first, you don't need a separate thermostat for the oil cooler; second, the engine coolant quickly heats up the oil and then keeps it at a stable temperature. ATF coolers are often done in a similar way, but they typically run a pipe through the bottom of the radiator for the same effect.
Heat exchangers are usually in the front because they are liquid to air and in the front is where the air is. The oil cooler is a liquid to liquid cooler so it doesn't have to be in the front. Because of this putting it as close to the area where the liquids are makes the most sense.
those oil coolers near the oil filter that have both oil and coolant in them are incredibly common on modern cars to help heat the coolant faster to bring the engine up to ideal temp sooner, fancy options include a thermostat to divert the oil away to a external oil cooler by the radiator to allow for better overall cooling
2:53 No, it doesn't make sense. Having learnt to work on cars and look at German stuff. Whoever said they were a reasonable and logical people NEVER had to touch any of their cars.
From what I understand, some fuel injection systems make an unavoidable ticking noise and are a reason why so many manufacturers use sound blocking engine covers now. My Lexus GS350 from 2013 made that noise on a great condition engine with less than 60k miles.
Every time you're saying "Why would you do it this way Mercedes? WHYYYY!!?!?!?" there is a German dude saying "This makes perfect sense, why would you do it another way? This is the way it is done!" their minds just work differently
That water-oil heat exchanger is mainly an emissions thing. It warms up the oil faster and therefore gets the engine up to temp faster and therefore into its closed loop running settings. And that big plastic thing is actually a air pump to get the cats up to temp faster as well, also emissions
1:39 at least you can still get OEM window seals Wade, for my Buick that is LITERALLY the same age as the CLS, I’m COMPLETELY SOL and have to go junkyard hunting!
Not even in China? Buicks are MASSIVE in China, they love em, don't know why. But the parts might be more readily available there (but in sets of three if you ever consider getting from them, you never know with Chinese quality).
Mercedes still has parts for the iconic 240D from the '80s. The thing is though, you probably have to wait on a plane from Germany for it and pay $$$$$.
If the Buick is a "W-Body" ie a Park Avenue, etc. with the 3800 Series II V6, I can't see why parts are hard to find, as they made tons of those things back in the day, unless GM got rid of the parts.
Can’t wait for James to have a look at the electronics so the dashboard can stop freaking out and also for the wheel bearing to be fixed! WADE DESERVES TO DRIVE THIS FREAKING CAR!
Maybe it’s different in Australia, but I doubt it… Mercedes are supposed to have blue engine coolant. A lot of Euro cars use the blue coolant. It has different chemicals in it than the generic green universal stuff. That might be a reason why all the gaskets on the coolant side of the oil cooler looked like they were melting.
this car is so over enginereed like omg mercedes wtf were you thinking?? i'm actually sad for you and i completely understand how broke fixing cars will leave you, i changed the exaust, oil and just a normal service and boi it was expensive af. poor nugget tho, i really like it.
i had to replace my frame and transmission both for the 3rd time on my tacoma and i feel it. at least when i start up that toyota v6 and it makes that sweet sound in the morning it makes it all worth it. it sounds like rattling a handful of pennies in a bean can
3:30 That's a secondary air injection pump I believe. It does some nonsense to heat up the cats quicker... The tubes get clogged by about 100k miles anyways so it's kinda pointless Edit: spelling errors
This car should have blue coolant due to the all aluminum engine. The weird black pump thing is a secondary air injection pump. The top end noise is the EVAP solenoid cycling.
1:20 is some bullshit. My Plymouth van was built in 1991; it has over 320,000 miles on it and has lived most of its life outdoors, through the hot summers and harsh winters of the Inland Northwest region of the United States. Its rubber door seals are still perfectly flexible and keep rain out just fine.
Saw a thing on Facebook of all places, commercial dishwashers used in restaurants make fantastic parts washers. They usually have built in liquid chemical dispensers, water heaters and can fit pretty big parts. They can usually be found cheap when restaurants go out of business too.
The original color of coolant is blue so it looks like a combination of possible washer fluid contamination, causing the seals to fail and leak, and then it was topped off with regular green coolant.
As an engineer, I have zero respect for German cars. Maybe they were good, now they are just overpriced crap that is pointlessly expensive to maintain.
Then you are a poor engineer at your job. These things are beasts and masterpieces. Just because someone buys an expensive car cheaply doesn’t mean it is bad. Show me a ford or Kia lasting 20 years and purring with a v8
1:33 I hope the schematics for those exist. ONG you could pay a rubber fabrication shop to do custom prints for well under half. Any half descent shop could hit those tolerances within 1-2 tries.
Customer: "I need replacements for the tire air valve caps" Mercedes: "Of course! that will be 5000$!" Customer: "For a set of four?" Mercedes: "No, silly person! Per unit!"
good tip for resuscitating some of those old rubbers, scrub them with baby oil and let it sit overnight. I used that method to resuscitate the rubber seals and vinyl top on my '90 vw cabby and it worked great. Wipe it off after and ur golden.
8k for just window seals is more than I have spent TOTAL on my nugget miata that I got for 1300, my nugget tractor that sat in a bush for 20 years, and my actually reliable tractor that's older than my parents, COMBINED! Hell, I needed to get my hands on a new cone clutch pto spring for the nugget tractor and I was balking at spending 20 bucks! Those merc prices would put me in cardiac arrest!
Chrysler Parts guy here, we also have oil coolers as an adapter on the engine attached to the oil filter. From what I understand The cooler is combo'd with the filter housing like that in a single adapter to be able to measure oil pressure at a single point just after the filter, and to have the temperature measured at the same point. I'm not a technician or Engineer though, just my thoughts working with them
Nothing is more expensive than a cheap Mercedes. The people that say that are 100% correct
The W123 might be the sole exception-
I would say that goes for most german cars. My bmw is also this way.
knock on german wood, i got a cheap mercedes and it hasnt been a huge hassle *yet*
the only issue is that the shifter kind of died and got stuck in park all the time so had to get that replaced [it was a bad $20 solenoid that required the whole $150 assembly to get replaced]
am i just lucky or is there something massive brewing
@@bettyboo4271 What bimmer is it? I've been looking into an E30 325iX for our snowy conditions
w202 c180/200/220 manuals are still cheap in europe and they're bulletproof except for rust issues but we can weld right? I've had three and they're the bestest of winter beaters lemme tell ya! 😜
Could be worse! Could be running on Nutella and Kerosene
We need to do a Tony fuel run on kerosene
Not so sure if the Merc could take it. The goober however loves it!
dont forget the pepsi, which is still in the goober!
Mmmm... Kerosene...
@@cloudy4872I don’t think it will run though. Kerosene is very similar to diesel
Poor James, give that man a raise
i think he just enjoys working with his buddy on stupid projects
@@AceH.-jk5knWhile true, he has previously expressed a desire not to work on euro motors (see the first Merc vid), and is also paid by Wade for this work.
@@gamemeister27if you don't force your friend to do things he hates, are you really his friend?
@@Furko08I’m pretty sure it’s not a “I forced him” situation, more a mutual beneficial thing especially since he gets promotion for his own channel
@@Furko08 wade pays james to work for him
You were correct that is essentially a smog pump. It's called a secondary air pump and it runs when the engine is cold to dump extra oxygen into the exhaust allowing the catalytic converters to come up to temperature more quickly.
thought so, cars are cool
@@TommyCullen-VacuumConnisour emission garbage are the stupidest, least cool & expensive crap stuck on cars! they also make cars more expensive and less reliable. complete bull$hit.
My FJ cruiser had that feature, it was attached to the headers. It was acting up, needless to say i upgraded to the slightly older gen headers and setup without it. And now its perfect.
I have a BMW with one of those, too. Such a dumb idea.
To save ~5 minutes of exhaust pollution, install 50 pounds of proprietary metal and plastic along with software and hardware to accommodate it. Not to mention the tooling, manufacturing, shipping, and installation of said components.
Luckily I have a TON of engine compartment space so it's not really in the way for me.😌👍
Interesting that Mercedes decided to make a system that pumps the coolant and oil precariously close to one another in the same housing with nothing but an expendable component that cant even hold up to the chemicals its in contact with to keep them from mixing.
Its like a head gasket going out but you would take apart the engine to find the head gasket in tact. What a monstrous potential headache.
Ok, but what’s NOT wrong with it?
i heard the v8 is nice
uhhh, the paintjob, maybe. give it another episode then they'll somehow find a layer of lead paint.
Prolly not much
It’s black with tan interior
That slidey cup holder cover thing in the back looks like it’s not broken… maybe.
I can just imagine this man with a bicycle. Imagine the mods.
I used to have a frankencycle. I got it from a friend because I needed something while I was saving up money for a new bike because my own got stolen. There were several things I had to do to fix it up over the two years I was riding it. What follows is a bunch of stuff I did to it.
The front wheel was one of those thin racing wheels, rear wheel with a derailer was slightly wider but still not standard width, sort of intermediate, it probably came with the frame which was also an intermadiate touring biycle frame.
The handlebars were of a variety that was in reduced size and could not have come off that same bike.There was a luggage carrier on the front and it did have a front fender too, but there was no rear fender (it disintegrated a few weeks after I got it) so I attached a plank to the underside of the rear luggage carrier to work as one (netherlands gets wet, so you need some type of mudguard, really).
It came with an old-timey car horn that my friend had mounted (the honky one), two bells of which only one worked, several non-working headlights (there were three mounted in different places, including on the luggage carrier). There was no real rear light, just one of those dangly battery powered ones that don't survive a single minute of rain. The pedals were wonky too.
The steering axel was slightly wobbly (probably a matter of replacing bearings). That derailer? Stuck in a middle gear (it had 7 but was stuck between 3/4). The chain would come off every 15/20 K's. The nicest thing on there was the seat.
That bike was stolen too. Someone actually took the time to open a pretty beefy chain lock I got on there, and stole the damn thing. I get that nice bikes get stolen, but this thing looked like two bikes that were fished from a canal and then smashed together in a collision. Unfathomable. I still miss that heap of junk though, had the most personality of any of the bicycles I've owned, and as a dutch guy, I have owned probably over 20 to 30 bicycles over the years (I remember every one of them).
A playing card that makes them go BRRRRRRRR
@@theothertonydutch yap yap yapety yap
You know that guy who made a street legal 1500 hp beetle by attaching a fucking jet engine to the back?
@@theothertonydutch This is the most dutch thing i have ever read
You just learned a lesson The Car Wizard likes to talk about: just because an expensive car has depreciated to the point that it is now cheap doesn't mean the parts have. Parts for expensive cars are still expensive even if the cars themselves no longer are.
@@ccoder4953 Or both the parts and the car can be expensive, like his '64 (I think) Coupe De Ville. The one car of his that screams "Goodfellas" and "Casino".😁
I once got told “A car’s maintenance never depreciates.”
So if you buy a 100k Bentley for 25k, it is still a 100k car to maintain. An error a lot of people make when buying cars!
@@gigsandguitars6921 If you do the work yourself parts prices tend to come down a little bit as time goes on as you get more aftermarket support, but if you're going for oem and having to pay someone to do it the prices are only going up.
To be honest when it comes to parts it probably gets worse the older the car is. My 2013 Mercedes isn't cheap but it's not eye-wateringly expensive.
The funniest thing is the parts are usually not even close to worth the price tag
You know what's funny, after watching your video on installing the cup holder on the CLS, my mom spilled a whole cup of boba tea into the same hole that you spilled your maccas in our CLS.
For those who thought it was funny, it wasn't
It’s kinda funny
Oh noooooo!
It was so funny until it wasn't
-Garbage Wade
it's funny 'cause it happened to you and not us
Well at least you know it's ozone time!
I love that this thing refuses to driven regularly. Wade should rename this thing “the car of Theseus”. By the time it can be driven on a regular basis every expendable part will have been changed
On the bright side, he'll have a practically new car with all those new parts.
Triggers broom
I could not, in a million years, come up with a better way to put everything said so far.
the car of Theseus lol it's both hilarious and depressing how accurate that might end up being
James' huge dentist tools for cars make me very happy.
T70!😂
@@pibyte working on some mercedes engines and transmissions requires a T100 security torx bit
Reminds me of how one of my highschool shop teachers had a tooth pick for the 3D printer.
The picks? As a BMW owner, those dentist tools are some of the best things lmao. They're also really handy for those electrical connector clips.
So turns out, green coolant and burnt motor oil don't emulsify into gross-ass chocolate milk, they just turn into cartoonishly toxic-looking evil goop.
I was hoping he'd take a pic of it and print it on a shirt, but I guess we're out of luck lol. I mean that was one artsy evil looking Mercedes stain of petty hate right there, it deserved being on a shirt
A Mercedes needing constant repair? Next thing you'll tell me is that the sky is blue
Well luckily it’s violet and black😂
Dude! The statement you just made sounds so asinine, when you grew up or rather whitbessed what I like to call the "Tank Generation Mercedes Cars."
The things you had to actually try to break.
But no, these days you get this fu**ery.
Oh, before I forget. See that pump he just serviced? Yeah. Imagine that was made out of cheap plastic! No, really!
Pfft, Rei profile pic.
Some countries still use 70s and 80s Mercedes taxis, there was a day a Mercedes was more like a German Ford, just actually engineered and built properly.
@@Sohryu-Asuka-Langley Indeed those old mercs are pretty awesome. I recently watched NGE and it is pretty good.
My 180E was a freaking tank, it got abused in a way that only a flat of students living off a bursary can and it never stopped.
The series on this car is basically an advertisement against buying a second hand mercedes
*against buying a Mercedes, period.
@@theojjuiceisloose I did make the comment before I saw the price tag on those seals
Against buying a Mercedes from a shady salesman for a “good deal”
@@Flame07518any mercedes. Rich people don't often care about their cars.
Correction, An advertisement against buying a second hand mercedes if you have no intention on restoring it. Rescuing an old merc is like restoring a barn find firebird or chevelle. Its not cheap, it takes time and a lot of frustration, but at the end of it all you have something spectacular.
For me id do it to a CL600. A V12 from the before times when 300hp was good enough and you really had no business going faster than 155mph. Plus its from that special era where Mercedes just transitioned to focusing on production numbers instead of production quality, so its really the first Coupe of theirs that feels like you're driving a car, not a lounge.
If you're going to buy a second hand mercedes, do it because its something you love. Not to just daily drive and never expect to take care of, but to restore to what it was.
Needs a “full service”
The fact that James hates this bucket of german sadness but still puts all the effort in fixing it is noble to say the least
He gets paid to do it
I like to think at least some part of it is James being like "cease your pointless struggle, nugget, you WILL submit"
Swear the Goober is sucking the life force out of this car to keep running.
You haven’t seen the latest Goober video, have you?
Kharma?
perfectly balanced, as all things should be
Goober decided it wanted to be a Miata and took it a little too far with the cosplay.
I'm glad you're giving this car the care it needs, but at the same time Mercedes has you bent over a barrel.
The oil dripping on the belt and basically dissolving it is exactly the problem with Ford's Ecoboost engines - only rather than drip, the belt is just pluinged into the hot engine oil instead.
Driving 4 answers has a great video on wet belts that I just watched today.
@@JeanMarceauxhah, watched that myself yesterday
Used to be a mechanic, would NEVER buy a car with a wet belt in my life.
I have a wetbelt ecoboost been fine so far
@@HA05GERthey’re called ecoboom for a reason, I’d get rid of it as soon as possible
Jaw dropped at the cost of the rubbers. Like I knew Mercedes was unreasonable with spare parts but like..... $2000 RUBBERS. SHEEEESH.
They used to be $200 each. Mercedes has jacked up the prices on a bunch of parts recently. It's ridiculous
@@EdwardM104 screw Mercedes
@@EdwardM104 I bet there's another car with very similar parts that has those for $20
At least it's better than CHRYSLER'S/JEEP'S/DODGE'S/RAM'S/PLYMOUTH'S/DESOTO'S $12,000 (USD) EACH FOR THEIR RUBBERS!!!
It’s almost 20 years old at this point, parts are running out.
I have a 40 year old Mercedes, getting new parts is almost impossible unless the part I’m needing is still being used in some other make/model.
i like how the goober post-chocolate and running on pepsi coolant has less issues than an ordinary mercedes.
I mean it's been through a flood but still...
James here is sounding the most... depressed. You weren't joking when you said that he despised this car, Wade.
With the Goober and the Frog, he was ecstatic, he was eager to explain stuff to ya/to us, but.. here, he sounds like he's just... at work
Considering he works at a European specialist shop, this is literally what he does at the job.
I feel bad for the man, this Merc literally is draining life outta James just to keep running. It's like a Norton Commando vampire motorcycle, except it's German instead of British, has two more sets of wheels, and doesn't drive around on its own killing bikers.
@@JeanMarceauxexcept he's getting paid to hang out with his friend with mechanic job on the side (not including a possible paycheck from James channel)
I don't know a single mechanic that doesn't despise working on a (luxury) Merc.
Sure, some get paid by the hour, but they still have to deal with German luxury complexity.
I know a fella pretty well that fixes euro-cars full time here and its practically a job for life.
Everything from Audi to Volkswagen is just always busted
@@TheUnreadableUser so you're saying you would be happy to do your job, on your days off, for basically the same amount of time, if one of your friends was there?
That seal for the Oil cooler is ~5€ here in Germany if you buy it from Elring (one of the big OEM Gasket Manufacturers). The belt with tensioner and pulleys was 85€ shipped in 2022 from Gates (tensioners and pulleys are identical to Mercedes ones with Merc Logo ground off). For some stuff it makes sense to go OEM, but for this stuff it absolutely doesn't.
That’s what I am saying. No reason to go oem for any part when you can find the supplier and order directly.
Same with my E39 530d's water pump.
INA part cost a lot less than BMW, and the genuine BMW part I removed was made...
by INA.
Still a good thing I replaced it, plastic impellers don't last forever, and I couldn't trust a 135k mile plastic water pump.
you're smelling James hatred for working at the kar
5:12 Wade's shop floor now looks like a King Gizz LP.
Nah, only the goober's shrapnel is chunky
@@etheraelespeon1986 I don't feel blessed with the iPad on my desk
That's pretty accurate.
This is the funniest thing I’ve seen on a non- music nerd area
It's the Motor Spirit 💀
2:18 Nice matcha tea mate
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
5:39 that oily green liquid on the floor looks like the thing that mutate the ninja turtles 🥷🏻🐢
“ Undo bolts until the thing he wants comes off”
Story of my life right there.
It’s crazy that one of those rubber things costs more than my entire car. You bet I’m not going Mercedes.
If youre a brokeboi just say so
Much more pragmatic to have something cheap, easily replaceable, and reliable than something that looks classy but costs an arm and a leg for the most basic service
@@CydreezeBeing broke and not being able to afford a Mercedes is a bigger distance in financial situations than the real life distance between Australia and the US
@@Cydreezejust say your gay for Mercedes already. Line the pockets of worthless brands. Feed your ego.
@@gamemeister27 calling yourself gamemeister and you don’t get the reference yikeeeees
7:05 Mercedes is actively trying to destroy my devotion to the emperor!
My car smelt like burning once, the snow spoke Finnish at me before it happened, Which might have something to do with.
HA!😂😂😂
🤣🤣 no perkele mä vannon en se minä ollu!
Russian soldier when the wheat field starts speaking in zoomer memes
I absolutely cannot believe that a window seal is $2,000, AUD or not. I sent an Omega Seamaster in for service, where a highly trained technician takes the entire watch apart piece by piece, cleans everything, replaces any parts that are worn, puts it back together, replaces the seals, pressure tests it, and they even replaced the dial and hands.
I want to say that was around $1,000. I think it's about time we get a Swiss automaker because their cars would just keep running for extended periods of tim toe and would never have any issues
Just to clarify: for Mercedes “enjoyers” it’s 100% a love hate relationship and not just happy clapping. When everything works and the parts all cooperate and every little part and electronic doodad in the engine sings, most of these cars feel unstoppable and refined.
This lasts for two days until some obscure sensor calls it a night and things start slowly failing. If I had to commute it would be hell, but I can’t bring myself to get rid of the old Merc I drive when I do drive. Most days it’s quite nice, even if a lot of it feels outdated now.
Sadly the newer ones seem to be just more of the bad with none of the good. I’d imagine the golden age for Mercs was the 80s and 90s when they were pretty much indestructible. Before the unstoppable Toyotas, we had unstoppable Mercs.
James really hates this car, almost every time he talked during this video he sounded sooo annoyed
This is a nugget in a fancy suit begging for all your loose change so it can make a down payment on a cheeseburger.
That E A C H @ 1:33 was personal 😭😭
when a used mercedes is being sold for cheap, no its not
He didn’t even buy it cheap. He got scammed by a dealer.
3:21 it's an exhaust air injection pump. When the engine is cold it runs and pumps fresh air into the exhaust, which introduces oxygen and burns any unburnt fuel. It's just for emissions.
well you learn something new everyday
So it’s quite literally a smog pump
@@malice6081 I guess? I've never heard them called that, I just assumed a smog pump was something else
@@MrFastFox666 Yeah they're the same thing, that name just comes from the "smog" years of early emissions equipment common on 1970s cars, which is when air pumps began seeing widespread use. It's why some people are relatively surprised to see one on a more modern car. Like James said; "Pretty sure they stopped doing them in the seventies."
LETS BE FINANCIALLY RESPONSIBLE!
*Mercedes stops working*
Aw dangit...
Classic German design. To replace a tiny seal, you'd need about 16 hours of work to tear the engine apart. Then while putting it back together, you realize because of how it is nearly physically impossible, you break another part. Now you have to spend even more money and time waiting for the replacement to arrive.
6:11
"Get a bucket and a mop for this wet ass flooring"
Continue the tradition of having car that barely runs with funny smell.
Just went to a wreckers myself and got some parts, thanks for helping inspire me to want to learn how to fix my own car.
im actually amazed at how good james is at this, cant even tell its been ripped to shreds and put back together! kudos
I follow a Mexican youtuber who talks about cars and is a mechanic and he always says "Carro de rico viejo, te va a dejar pobre" ("An old rich guy car will make you poor"), whenever he talks about 2000s or older cars of brands like BMW or Mercedes or Land Rover
seeing the freaking window seals cost 8K, I couldn't help but remember that dude! For that 8K you could buy an older yet more reliable car, or another nugget 🤣🤣 , or a bunch of nuggets!
Lexuses and Acuras don't however
@@My_Old_YT_Account They just make you feel like it with the absolute neglect they receive by their secondhand owners before you ever get it. Especially a Lexus, they just get abuse and abused and abused, so by the time you get that LS430 you've always wanted, everything is wrong with it. Cant have shit in detroit.
8K (Euros though) was what my Renault Clio costed me back in 2016 when it was 4 years old 🤣
I paid $9,000 Freedom Dollars for my wife's 2013 Chevy Captiva. Crazy to think I got a whole car for the cost of some Mercedes window seals....
8K AUD That's like 6 Antoine's saved from the scrapper. Or 4 Tony's. or 2,5 donkey van's (honestly don't know how much the donkey and tony costs)
Literally just finished the rewatch on the cup holder install video and this notification popped up. All I can think of is “what now??”
1:39 i feel thats about a $1900 profit
Probably closer to a $1,985 profit; I can get those seals for my CR-V for about $15 each.
There are a few reasons they put the oil coolers on the engine like that, but mostly it's because it's cheap and there are fewer hoses and such that need to handle hot oil at pressure like you'd see with a separate oil radiator. The reason the oil is cooled by the engine coolant (liquid-to-liquid) is twofold: first, you don't need a separate thermostat for the oil cooler; second, the engine coolant quickly heats up the oil and then keeps it at a stable temperature. ATF coolers are often done in a similar way, but they typically run a pipe through the bottom of the radiator for the same effect.
Heat exchangers are usually in the front because they are liquid to air and in the front is where the air is. The oil cooler is a liquid to liquid cooler so it doesn't have to be in the front. Because of this putting it as close to the area where the liquids are makes the most sense.
Well its 0:1 for McDonalds coffee
6:45 yoooo, spanish product mentioned
those oil coolers near the oil filter that have both oil and coolant in them are incredibly common on modern cars to help heat the coolant faster to bring the engine up to ideal temp sooner, fancy options include a thermostat to divert the oil away to a external oil cooler by the radiator to allow for better overall cooling
2:53 No, it doesn't make sense. Having learnt to work on cars and look at German stuff. Whoever said they were a reasonable and logical people NEVER had to touch any of their cars.
That is the biggest propaganda campaign that the German people had since 1945
a merc being a merc
From what I understand, some fuel injection systems make an unavoidable ticking noise and are a reason why so many manufacturers use sound blocking engine covers now. My Lexus GS350 from 2013 made that noise on a great condition engine with less than 60k miles.
my yota tacoma has ticked since new in 01 she got 700k miles on er 3rd frame 4th transmission same engine always ticked it’s the sound of reliability
Old Volvos are the same, injectors are extremely loud
3rd FRAME? goddamn you must love that thing, haha. i dont blame ya. I've got a similar amount of love for my w126.
The spill on the floor looks really cool
I imagine the oil cooler is there like that so they can shove the motor into something else without worrying about making new hoses
The best part is no part, so they turned the hoses into a flange with a rubber seal.
@hammerth1421 I'm sure it saved merc a decent amount, kinda like wheel bolts instead of studs
Every time you're saying "Why would you do it this way Mercedes? WHYYYY!!?!?!?" there is a German dude saying "This makes perfect sense, why would you do it another way? This is the way it is done!" their minds just work differently
There are three things you can watch forever: fire burning, water falling, and vining of second hand Mercedes owners on how expensive parts are
That water-oil heat exchanger is mainly an emissions thing. It warms up the oil faster and therefore gets the engine up to temp faster and therefore into its closed loop running settings. And that big plastic thing is actually a air pump to get the cats up to temp faster as well, also emissions
1:39 at least you can still get OEM window seals Wade, for my Buick that is LITERALLY the same age as the CLS, I’m COMPLETELY SOL and have to go junkyard hunting!
Not even in China? Buicks are MASSIVE in China, they love em, don't know why. But the parts might be more readily available there (but in sets of three if you ever consider getting from them, you never know with Chinese quality).
Mercedes still has parts for the iconic 240D from the '80s. The thing is though, you probably have to wait on a plane from Germany for it and pay $$$$$.
If the Buick is a "W-Body" ie a Park Avenue, etc. with the 3800 Series II V6, I can't see why parts are hard to find, as they made tons of those things back in the day, unless GM got rid of the parts.
@@jdslyman1720 actually it’s a G/H Body Lucerne, which is what replaced both the Park Avenue and LeSabre.
@digitalrailroader Ah OK. It might still have the 3800, but they didn't make as many of those as the W-Bodies.
In this episode, Dank explains why old, cheap Mercedes are cheap
my parents had to dump their Suzuki because the set of window and sun roof seals were as much as entire engine rebuild.
6:44 Wait... we make Mercedes parts? Laughing in inquisition.
Can’t wait for James to have a look at the electronics so the dashboard can stop freaking out and also for the wheel bearing to be fixed! WADE DESERVES TO DRIVE THIS FREAKING CAR!
Maybe it’s different in Australia, but I doubt it… Mercedes are supposed to have blue engine coolant. A lot of Euro cars use the blue coolant. It has different chemicals in it than the generic green universal stuff. That might be a reason why all the gaskets on the coolant side of the oil cooler looked like they were melting.
This is like the bullshit I have to deal with on my old Porsche 944.
Germoney
It's the TPMS module in the tire, it came off of the valve.
Mercs are notorious for this.
this car is so over enginereed like omg mercedes wtf were you thinking?? i'm actually sad for you and i completely understand how broke fixing cars will leave you, i changed the exaust, oil and just a normal service and boi it was expensive af. poor nugget tho, i really like it.
i had to replace my frame and transmission both for the 3rd time on my tacoma and i feel it. at least when i start up that toyota v6 and it makes that sweet sound in the morning it makes it all worth it. it sounds like rattling a handful of pennies in a bean can
3:30 That's a secondary air injection pump I believe. It does some nonsense to heat up the cats quicker... The tubes get clogged by about 100k miles anyways so it's kinda pointless
Edit: spelling errors
This car should have blue coolant due to the all aluminum engine.
The weird black pump thing is a secondary air injection pump.
The top end noise is the EVAP solenoid cycling.
love german cars and their special fluids
@@kittensandmarmalade most all aluminum engines need something other than the ol green coolant. Pink, blue, orange...pick your flavor
1:20 is some bullshit. My Plymouth van was built in 1991; it has over 320,000 miles on it and has lived most of its life outdoors, through the hot summers and harsh winters of the Inland Northwest region of the United States. Its rubber door seals are still perfectly flexible and keep rain out just fine.
The CLS deserves nothing but love, such a cool car, and great to see how well it’s come out (mostly)
I dunno, the more I learn of it through these videos, the more I think it only deserves a warn loving embrace of two parts of a car compactor.
Saw a thing on Facebook of all places, commercial dishwashers used in restaurants make fantastic parts washers. They usually have built in liquid chemical dispensers, water heaters and can fit pretty big parts. They can usually be found cheap when restaurants go out of business too.
Nugget
Nugget
A part of me wonders if all the suffering this Mercedes is giving you is Karmic Retribution for all the suffering you put The Goober through
Nope. This is just Mercedes being an absolute diva.
LETS GO NUGGETEERING! AW DANGIT!
The original color of coolant is blue so it looks like a combination of possible washer fluid contamination, causing the seals to fail and leak, and then it was topped off with regular green coolant.
As an engineer, I have zero respect for German cars. Maybe they were good, now they are just overpriced crap that is pointlessly expensive to maintain.
This mercedes was poorly maintained
Then you are a poor engineer at your job. These things are beasts and masterpieces. Just because someone buys an expensive car cheaply doesn’t mean it is bad. Show me a ford or Kia lasting 20 years and purring with a v8
@@wiktorixgaming8014 HAHA "purring" more like thudding, screeching and beeping constantly
@@SAK11RAshow me a 20 year old v8 with that kind of beating still being better than every American made car🤣
@@wiktorixgaming8014 there are concours cars made in the 60s with V8s still running, its just taking care of it, but what would a mercedes fanboy know
There's a reason why working on a Mercedes is known as "paying the Mercedes Tax."
Yippee
1:33 I hope the schematics for those exist. ONG you could pay a rubber fabrication shop to do custom prints for well under half. Any half descent shop could hit those tolerances within 1-2 tries.
5:12 those colors actually look nice together
Technically the oil cooler is doing its job. It's throwing the oil out and cooling it on other parts of the engine.
Customer: "I need replacements for the tire air valve caps"
Mercedes: "Of course! that will be 5000$!"
Customer: "For a set of four?"
Mercedes: "No, silly person! Per unit!"
good tip for resuscitating some of those old rubbers, scrub them with baby oil and let it sit overnight. I used that method to resuscitate the rubber seals and vinyl top on my '90 vw cabby and it worked great. Wipe it off after and ur golden.
We all knew this was comin as soon as he bought it
8k for just window seals is more than I have spent TOTAL on my nugget miata that I got for 1300, my nugget tractor that sat in a bush for 20 years, and my actually reliable tractor that's older than my parents, COMBINED!
Hell, I needed to get my hands on a new cone clutch pto spring for the nugget tractor and I was balking at spending 20 bucks! Those merc prices would put me in cardiac arrest!
And no matter how much you spend on that miata, its always going to be completely worthless. To anyone but you.
the Goober catching strays, poor thing
also you CLEARLY jynxed it the moment you moved in, putting your sunglasses there actually armed the nugget
"I bought an old Mercedes and let me just say that Old Mate Merc & I aren't getting along, and Old Mate Merc is winning so far."
You said it, not me.
Aussie man discovers why buying a used German luxury car is a Very Bad Idea, 2024 colorized
Chrysler Parts guy here, we also have oil coolers as an adapter on the engine attached to the oil filter. From what I understand The cooler is combo'd with the filter housing like that in a single adapter to be able to measure oil pressure at a single point just after the filter, and to have the temperature measured at the same point. I'm not a technician or Engineer though, just my thoughts working with them
James' Channel is actually really really fun, he's a chaos wizard.
Mercedes Benz, legendary Spanish engineering
You know, I don't think I've ever seen anyone clean up oil with a mop. My dad always used just really cheap cat litter and swept it up.
Your car throw up is very groovy looking. :D. Psychedelic, even.
I change the oil on my wife’s Mercedes… simple… changing the headlight… my meaty hands don’t fit😖, so off comes the tyre…
James did so good on those cupholders, it's actually hard to believe those aren't factory.
A lemonade car for champagne money
Me when I saw the thumbnail:
LET’S GO GAMBLING!
I wasn’t expecting Danks to mention Space Marine 2….
I WANT TO SEE HIS DINGUS MARINE!!! I WANT TO SEE THE SHREK GREEN MARINES!!!!
Shrek green marines? Don't you dare disrespect the Salamanders like that!
Vulkan lives! * stomp **stomp *