Thinking of getting a w140 any thing to look out for

[christofmccracke]

probably going to go for an s500 any known problems or anything to look out for?

[Gouki]

I recently dropped of my fathers S500 at a local Mercedes Benz dealer for some work. It is a 1992k with 100k miles:

To get the car 100% mechanically sound is going to cost £2.7k. It has highlighted the following checkpoints that I'm sure that others will add to.

-suspension corrosion
-front wing corrosion (oem quality replacements are £130 each)
-vacuum door shut failure.
-engine oil leaks (minor)

Great car in my opinion, feels like it is made out of stone it's so well put together. Some overlap in pricing with the W220 makes things a little confusing though.

[christofmccracke]

mmmmm expensive! but it was 60-100k new so what you expect.
Im on the look out for a mint on but dont want to spend over the odds for one

[r129sl]

It seems to me that the stock of w140s is divided into two categories. Good cars, which have few owners, complete and full service histories, are visibly in good contion, have firm and unworn seats, have next to no corrosion (front wings are the obvious places) aqnd on which most everything still works. And bad cars, which are the opposite. The point is, it's quite easy to tell a good car from a bad one. The good ones are among the best cars ever made: a friend of mine has a 1996 S420 and it is amazing, like a two year old car but so much better built than anything made in the last ten years. Just don't buy one that is cosmetically tired, has lots of faults and shows rust.

[christofmccracke]

Yea looking for a mint one to keep for a long time, but there seems to be some absolute dogs and quite a lot that have coverd 200k which is a good sign

[XB70]

As long as the car is not actually falling apart, I would rank mechanicals more important than cosmetics (external).

The W140's all rust under the wheel arches. It is as certain as night follows day so would not be too concerned about that. They also delaminate at the bottm of the windows - again, they all do.

The bodywork is comparatively easy and cheap to address - it is the other 'toys' and bits and pieces that cost a fortune hence my ranking of what is important.

I would focus on the mechanicals and how the car has been looked after. The interiors are very hard wearing and should be in good condition with a large wad of invoices to show what has been done by way of maintenance.

The large engine W140's are brilliant cars and will reward the upkeep that £80,000+ car requires with ultra-high mileage. Try and run it, like many do, on a shoestring and they turn into a howling pup of a dog quite quickly.

[r129sl]

I think XB70 is right. The very best S500 cars are about £6,000 to £8,000 at specialist dealers; even the best S600 cars are never more than about £12,000 (Charles Ironside recently sold a sub-30,000 mile late-model S600 and his asking price was only £15k). A bad one, costing £2,000 to £3,000 to buy, is going to cost the difference many times over before you're sick of it.

One tip: check that all of the buttons on the climate control unit work. The plastic tabs behind them can break, making the buttons inoperative. This is particularly the case for the temperature selector buttons (being the most frequently pressed). A new unit is costly indeed.