Mercedes SLK 230. - preventative maintenance

[buzzer]

A mate has just bought a 2001 SLK 230 manual which is in exceptional condition. He has asked me to service it and do any preventative maintenance as he tends to keep his cars a long time... 25 years the last one!

Any suggestions what to do / change other than general servicing?

[fozzymandeus]

Yep!

Good cars these, the engines are strong although MAF is a weak spot.
Don't know much about Merc manual gearboxes but I'd imagine it's strong enough for the power.

Where these cars are poor is the bodywork. They aren't galvanised as far as I know and I've seen some with the paint just flaking away in lumps. This can be prevented to a good degree:

Get the car up, remove the rear wheels and wheelarch liners to expose the box sections of the sills. This is all open to the elements, apart from the poorly fitting liner, and can take on a hell of a lot of crap. Deal with any rust, then cavity wax the living daylights out of it. The front wheelarches are a problem area too. Also inspect the underbody as the corrosion protection is next to none. Remove belly pans and apply a coat of cavity wax there too.

Re-inspect annually. The sills are particularly important as they are a large open space with a box section sill. It's not pretty.

Finally the roof: there's stuff called Krytox, or, if you're feeling flush you can buy Mercedes' "special sliding compound" at £30 for 15ml (which does do about 10 cars to be fair). Open the roof half way (you can block it using a carboard box to stop it closing back up) and apply the compound sparingly to each rubber surface. You can do this on all rubbers on the car too. Leave it to go off for about 30 mins before shutting the roof. Any rubber on rubber or rubber on metal rattles will be reduced and the seals will have a longer life.

[DickyC]

You can get at some of the box sections. And you need to.

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...

When the car went to have its wheel arches done, the bodyshop repeated what I'd done but flushed the box sections through with a hose and after drying used waxoil. They recommended once a year as part of the car's spring clean!

[Rovinghawk]

There's a modification to the wiring loom at the very front of the engine to prevent an oil leak working its way along the wiring & causing connection problems- you might want to look into this.

Also I have a new clutch for this car I'd be looking to sell for a reasonable price- mail me if interested.

[e-mail]

RH

[B'stard Child]

buzzer said:

A mate has just bought a 2001 SLK 230 manual which is in exceptional condition. He has asked me to service it and do any preventative maintenance as he tends to keep his cars a long time... 25 years the last one!

Any suggestions what to do / change other than general servicing?

Change the charger oil if it's near 100K

[DickyC]

On thorough re-reading of the thread I see I duplicated much of what fozzymandeus had already said. Apologies, fozzy.

[Life Saab Itch]

DickyC said:

On thorough re-reading of the thread I see I duplicated much of what fozzymandeus had already said. Apologies, fozzy.

Sounds like it needs to be said twice to make sure it's done.

[DickyC]

Life Saab Itch said:

Sounds like it needs to be said twice to make sure it's done.

Did you look at my pics, LSI? It's a very shabby bit of design.

My gut feeling is the early SLK will be a rarity in years to come. They're going rusty, they're expensive to repair and when the folding roof goes wrong a lot will get scrapped.

[Life Saab Itch]

DickyC said:

Did you look at my pics, LSI? It's a very shabby bit of design.

My gut feeling is the early SLK will be a rarity in years to come. They're going rusty, they're expensive to repair and when the folding roof goes wrong a lot will get scrapped.

I have now.

It's not pretty.


I seem to remember us having the same conversation about MGFs...

[DickyC]

Life Saab Itch said:

I have now.

It's not pretty.


I seem to remember us having the same conversation about MGFs...

The grounds are chock-a-block with MGFs and SLKs. After fifty years I'll cash in.

You'll see, I'll be laughing when I'm 108.

[fozzymandeus]

No problem DickyC. You had pics of it all, better than mine.

I think the SLK is already past its worst as a thing of un-fashionableness. They are rather cute things.

Also I've noticed more and more nice looking young women in them. Bonus!

[DickyC]

fozzymandeus said:

I think the SLK is already past its worst as a thing of un-fashionableness. They are rather cute things.

We've always liked ours, when I met my wife she said she had always wanted an SL - which I thought would be a bit much for a shopping and "for best" car - so the SLK coming along was a godsend. I also managed to persaude myself it was a sorely underrated car. It accelerates well and has enormous levels of smooth road dry grip. With this in mind I joined two lads with MX-5s for a hoon from Luton to Silverstone for a PH Sunday Service (we're whispering this by the way, Mrs C doesn't know). It turns out the SLK is not a hooning car. Despite my best efforts the MX-5s peed all over it. I could catch them on longer straights but even then the drivers were probably just preserving their licences. It's not only that, in slippery conditions the SLK is dreadful, the in-cabin luggage stowage is almost nonexistent and with the roof down the boot space is tiny. But...

It's lovely. Know its limitations and it's brilliant. Ours is a '98 and last year we drove to the South of France and back without a hitch. If that sounds strange, on the Autoroutes it was one of the oldest cars we saw.

Ours (I should really be saying "my wife's") does have a fairly easy life. We bought it in 2003 and it has just seen 70,000 miles come up. Last winter's revamp of the body was about due and cost £1300. Other than that most problems are ironed out with regular servicing. It's automatic and changed down instead of up on one or two occasions so we had the air mass thingy changed and then a year ago it wouldn't come out of first. Mercedes had it twice, charged a lot of money and couldn't do it and the local transmission specialist had it for two days and eventually found it was the switch that mimics the gear selector. £80 for the switch and an hour's labour. Typical.

Quite early on in our ownership the inlet manifold cracked but we were covered by warranty and every so often I have the wheels refurbed. That's it. All in all not bad except it's worth about fourpence. Okay, about three grand or so. It's a good time to buy. Quite a lot of car for your money.