Mercedes w220

Just as a service to everyone else, I want to mention that buying one of these after you see people posting about having them here and them being relatively reliable is not necessarily a good idea. I figured well, I have been driving a w210 for years so it can't be too much worse right? Especially with 130k less miles on it.

Now I have one sitting in front of my house that I literally drove home and that's it and it's already dead sitting in front of my house. Now I have to figure out how to get the registration transferred (didn't even get it smogged yet) and get rid of it. Not one of the smarter ideas I have had lol. Oh well, at least it wasn't a huge amount of money, although enough to still be kinda annoying. 

 you got a pre-2003 huh? 

Where are you?

Lol yes, probably should have known better about that too. I'm in California in the bay area. At least it isn't a v12, I knew that definitely wouldn't have turned out well. 

Yeah, they weren't reliable until 03. And the later the better. Bay area, can't help you. 

So what happened with it? It's rare for a W220 to fail completely, the M113 V8 and 5G-Tronic transmission are usually quite stout. I personally owned a 2003 S500 which was absolutely flawless. A friend of mine daily drove a 2000 S500 with minimal issues.

See that's what I figured too, the mechanical parts should be pretty durable. It has a code for "serial communication error" with a bunch of warning messages on the gauge cluster and its in limp mode. 

Tk8398 said:

See that's what I figured too, the mechanical parts should be pretty durable. It has a code for "serial communication error" with a bunch of warning messages on the gauge cluster and its in limp mode. 

A friend of mine bought a W220 with a serial communication error and the air suspension wouldn't work:

You really need a star diagnostics setup.  I have an 03 cl600 and 03 s600 and star has been a life saver.

That's true, although I don't think I'm going to be keeping this car or ever owning another one that would use it though. 

You might have gotten unlucky and got a car with a bad DME. My friend bought a 2000 S500 that had a dead DME so he bought a DME + EWS + key combo on eBay and installed it, car fired right up after that. Same thing happened with my buddy's 2001 540i, the DME randomly fried itself because of a bad ground, so I gave him a spare 2001 540i DME that I had laying around, and we got a guy to code it to the car. Electronic issues can be frustrating indeed, but with some know-how they're not necessarily fatal. Granted, I live and breathe German cars 24/7 so this stuff is all normal and easy to me.

I'm sure it's fixable by someone, the fact that it needs major work before I even drove it more than home from buying it has kinda ruined it for me though. I didn't expect it to be much worse than the w210 I have been driving (although that one broke and I'm selling it now too), but I need to take a break from German cars for a whole lol. 

In reply to red_stapler :

Order UP!  Fried circuits!

What year and model is it?

01 s55. 

Before you go buying DMEs and stuff, I'd clean the IR sensor on the key and inside the recepticle on the dashboard with a qtip and rubbing alcohol.

Honestly I don't plan on trying to repair it. It was from a used car dealer and they put in writing that they would pay for repairs if it wouldn't pass smog, so they may have to fix it, otherwise I'm just going to sell it for what I can broken. 

Pics and how much lol

I will get back to you on that depending on what happens as far as the seller fixing it or not. 

Tk8398 said:

I will get back to you on that depending on what happens as far as the seller fixing it or not. 

Please dont! LMAO 

Lol I will post it here once I find out what's happening. The quicker I don't have to deal with it anymore the better. 

I'll give you $350

So I had it towed back to the dealer I got it from, and it drove onto the tow truck at my house, but when I got there it had to be jumped to drive off the tow truck, but restarted fine once a minute later, then was completely dead. I could have literally bought a Maserati biturbo and it would have been more reliable. 

What kind of dealer was it? 

dannyzabolotny said:

 5G-Tronic transmission...  ...quite stout.

Everything I have read says they are mechanically stout but electrically/hydraulically weak. Our w210 developed a massive leak after not being started for a week.

Did they buy it back from you or are they fixing it??