Long live the diesel.
From: JD <jdblackwell2@gmail.com>
To: diesel_mercedes@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, August 29, 2011 11:52 AM
Subject: [diesel_mercedes] Re: W201 190D questions
To: diesel_mercedes@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, August 29, 2011 11:52 AM
Subject: [diesel_mercedes] Re: W201 190D questions
I have both a '92 W124 300D and a recently acquired '86 W201 190D, both with over 265,000 miles on the clock. Both were very difficult to find and had/have issues that make them what I call "running restoration" projects. Audiolaw Tom said the "The most expensive car that you will ever own is a cheap older Mercedes." If you're looking at it from a position of driving a cheap disposable commuter, that's true. If you're in it for the potential duration it's far more cost effective. In the 6 years I've had my W124, purchased for $3500, another $6500 has gone into it fixing long neglected issues. What I have is nice looking car that gets 30mpg around town and 36mpg on highway runs that shows every sign of running well for another two decades. I'm luck enough to have the best indy MB mech on the planet in my sphere and I take care of what I can myself. I've been offered $8k for it but I have no intention of selling. My W201 manual 5 speed, also purchased for $3500, looks respectable, runs well after a normal service and gets 35mpg around town and 42mpg on highway runs. The over engineered (not in a good way IMHO)climate control needs sorting out, the a/c and cruise control is dead, the sunroof is inop and the junk cheapo replacement antenna needs to be replaced with the OEM Hirschmann antenna. I'll easily spend more than I could get for them in resale but that's not really the measure of cost effectiveness, is it?
*IF* you're lucky enough to track one of these down the best advice I can give you is to go into it knowing that the initial purchase price isn't the total cost of acquiring a reliable running car. Buy it for the long term and fix it *correctly* either yourself or find a good *independent* Mercedes mech. If you can't/won't do that please don't go screwing up something that might have had potential to someone willing to do it right. Finally, I believe there's a certain amount of love in the equation. I don't think that anyone on this group owns a Mercedes diesel because "it's just a car" and that if you don't have enough interest you won't get the positive experience most of us have with our cars.
Best of luck.
JD
--- In diesel_mercedes@yahoogroups.com, Andrew Buc <andrewbuc@...> wrote:
>
> No, I don't have my eye on a particular 190D yet. I'm trying to
> decide whether I want one. In a nutshell, I'm seeking the usual
> prospective car buyer information: reliability, running costs, parts
> availability, all that good stuff.
>
> Back story: My commute recently got much longer when my employer
> moved, and I like my current house and neighborhood and don't care to
> move. My finances don't run to a brand-new car. Maybe I can best
> explain my interest in the W201 190D by explaining why I eliminated
> other cars from the short list:
>
> A1 or A2 VW Golf/Jetta: I don't think these are as crashworthy as I'd
> like, and I'm concerned that most of them are pretty tired by now.
>
> A3 or A4 Golf/Jetta TDI: My mechanic tells me that TDI's are
> troublesome and expensive to fix. I also have the impression that you
> can run only a small proportion of biodiesel in them, or you risk
> trouble.
>
> Peugeot 505TD: I had a couple of gas Peugeot 504's in the '90s and
> liked them very much. If only Peugeot hadn't left the US market. :(
>
> W123 240D: A bigger car than I need (W201 seems about the right
> size), and I understand they're DOG slow. I have no illusions that
> the 190D is a pavement ripper, and I've had (and been satisfied with)
> cars that weren't hot rods, but I have the impression that the 240D
> can hardly get out of its own way.
>
> W123 300D, 300TD: Fuel mileage no better than my current Audi 4000
> quattro, so little reason to switch.
>
> For a 190D to be a reasonable proposition for me, it needs to be
> reliable, not too expensive to run, with good parts availability,
> both now and for the foreseeable future. Also, given my commute, I
> can't afford a lot of downtime--when I need parts, I need them quickly.
>
> I'm neither dirt poor nor filthy rich, and I've never had a real high-
> maintenance car like an older Jaguar (I'd heard the horror stories!),
> but I've also never had a super-reliable car like a Toyota. With the
> exception of a couple of really troublesome cars, I've been OK with
> this. I'm going to talk a bit about my experience with the Audi as a
> yardstick of what I consider acceptable. In 68K miles (222K on it
> now), the Audi has given me very little trouble, and it's never
> stranded me. Most of the problems have been minor, and they haven't
> made the car inoperable, but a couple of times I've been glad that I
> live only a couple miles from the garage that services the car. A
> while back the left front power window switch got a bit flaky--
> sometimes worked, sometimes not. I had it replaced, along with the
> right front switch, just in case. The switches were $67 each. More
> recently, I had to replace the clutch pedal. The hole in the pedal
> where the clutch linkage attaches had become elongated with wear (not
> unreasonable in 200K miles), resulting in the clutch not quite
> disengaging all the way. The replacement pedal was $150. (Quoted
> prices don't include labor.) I thought these were rather spendy
> parts, and I'm sure the same parts for, say, a Saturn SL, would be
> cheaper. But to me, this is tolerable, as long as I need such
> expensive parts only once in a great while. Some folks on the
> Audfans.com listserve have 4000 quattros with 350K on them, so I
> don't think the car is approaching the point where it constantly
> breaks down. The clutch went out at 203K, but assuming that it was
> the original clutch, I can't really complain!
>
> Right now someone local to me is advertising a 190D on Craigslist
> with 288K on it and saying that on a diesel, this mileage is nothing--
> would you agree? Just to be clear, any purchase of a 190D would be a
> ways off--I'm asking in general, not with this car in mind.
>
> I've heard that routine maintenance on Mercedes is expensive, but
> I've also heard anecdotally that the reputation for expensive
> maintenance is overblown. Doing my own service isn't an option, but
> my German-car mechanic has a very reasonable labor rate and is good
> about finding cost-effective solutions. I once ran the idea of a 190D
> past him, and he said, "They don't need much." If this statement
> applies to both routine service and breakdown repairs, it's a good
> sign. I've also heard that the W201 was the last really
> overengineered Mercedes, which is good. Naturally I'd want to find a
> car that the seller had owned for a long time and kept service
> records on, but how much of a chance would I be taking if these
> conditions weren't met? While we're on this, any thoughts on stick
> vs. automatic?
>
> Thanks for your thoughts.
>
*IF* you're lucky enough to track one of these down the best advice I can give you is to go into it knowing that the initial purchase price isn't the total cost of acquiring a reliable running car. Buy it for the long term and fix it *correctly* either yourself or find a good *independent* Mercedes mech. If you can't/won't do that please don't go screwing up something that might have had potential to someone willing to do it right. Finally, I believe there's a certain amount of love in the equation. I don't think that anyone on this group owns a Mercedes diesel because "it's just a car" and that if you don't have enough interest you won't get the positive experience most of us have with our cars.
Best of luck.
JD
--- In diesel_mercedes@yahoogroups.com, Andrew Buc <andrewbuc@...> wrote:
>
> No, I don't have my eye on a particular 190D yet. I'm trying to
> decide whether I want one. In a nutshell, I'm seeking the usual
> prospective car buyer information: reliability, running costs, parts
> availability, all that good stuff.
>
> Back story: My commute recently got much longer when my employer
> moved, and I like my current house and neighborhood and don't care to
> move. My finances don't run to a brand-new car. Maybe I can best
> explain my interest in the W201 190D by explaining why I eliminated
> other cars from the short list:
>
> A1 or A2 VW Golf/Jetta: I don't think these are as crashworthy as I'd
> like, and I'm concerned that most of them are pretty tired by now.
>
> A3 or A4 Golf/Jetta TDI: My mechanic tells me that TDI's are
> troublesome and expensive to fix. I also have the impression that you
> can run only a small proportion of biodiesel in them, or you risk
> trouble.
>
> Peugeot 505TD: I had a couple of gas Peugeot 504's in the '90s and
> liked them very much. If only Peugeot hadn't left the US market. :(
>
> W123 240D: A bigger car than I need (W201 seems about the right
> size), and I understand they're DOG slow. I have no illusions that
> the 190D is a pavement ripper, and I've had (and been satisfied with)
> cars that weren't hot rods, but I have the impression that the 240D
> can hardly get out of its own way.
>
> W123 300D, 300TD: Fuel mileage no better than my current Audi 4000
> quattro, so little reason to switch.
>
> For a 190D to be a reasonable proposition for me, it needs to be
> reliable, not too expensive to run, with good parts availability,
> both now and for the foreseeable future. Also, given my commute, I
> can't afford a lot of downtime--when I need parts, I need them quickly.
>
> I'm neither dirt poor nor filthy rich, and I've never had a real high-
> maintenance car like an older Jaguar (I'd heard the horror stories!),
> but I've also never had a super-reliable car like a Toyota. With the
> exception of a couple of really troublesome cars, I've been OK with
> this. I'm going to talk a bit about my experience with the Audi as a
> yardstick of what I consider acceptable. In 68K miles (222K on it
> now), the Audi has given me very little trouble, and it's never
> stranded me. Most of the problems have been minor, and they haven't
> made the car inoperable, but a couple of times I've been glad that I
> live only a couple miles from the garage that services the car. A
> while back the left front power window switch got a bit flaky--
> sometimes worked, sometimes not. I had it replaced, along with the
> right front switch, just in case. The switches were $67 each. More
> recently, I had to replace the clutch pedal. The hole in the pedal
> where the clutch linkage attaches had become elongated with wear (not
> unreasonable in 200K miles), resulting in the clutch not quite
> disengaging all the way. The replacement pedal was $150. (Quoted
> prices don't include labor.) I thought these were rather spendy
> parts, and I'm sure the same parts for, say, a Saturn SL, would be
> cheaper. But to me, this is tolerable, as long as I need such
> expensive parts only once in a great while. Some folks on the
> Audfans.com listserve have 4000 quattros with 350K on them, so I
> don't think the car is approaching the point where it constantly
> breaks down. The clutch went out at 203K, but assuming that it was
> the original clutch, I can't really complain!
>
> Right now someone local to me is advertising a 190D on Craigslist
> with 288K on it and saying that on a diesel, this mileage is nothing--
> would you agree? Just to be clear, any purchase of a 190D would be a
> ways off--I'm asking in general, not with this car in mind.
>
> I've heard that routine maintenance on Mercedes is expensive, but
> I've also heard anecdotally that the reputation for expensive
> maintenance is overblown. Doing my own service isn't an option, but
> my German-car mechanic has a very reasonable labor rate and is good
> about finding cost-effective solutions. I once ran the idea of a 190D
> past him, and he said, "They don't need much." If this statement
> applies to both routine service and breakdown repairs, it's a good
> sign. I've also heard that the W201 was the last really
> overengineered Mercedes, which is good. Naturally I'd want to find a
> car that the seller had owned for a long time and kept service
> records on, but how much of a chance would I be taking if these
> conditions weren't met? While we're on this, any thoughts on stick
> vs. automatic?
>
> Thanks for your thoughts.
>
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