2007 C55 AMG estate - buying advice

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Before or after the headstuds snap?

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It's every single one of those engines, between a certain range of serial numbers - they changed the snapping studs for non-snapping ones at roughly the same time that they facelifted the car.

That said it may be completely blown out of all proportion - the Internet is very effective for this - and only a handful ever blew up.

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Mercedes simply denied that it was a problem.

The ones that fail on the left, replacement on the right:

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£2,300 to the garage and my friend is picking the car up today (tricky for me, I’m in Rome), be interesting to hear now it compares to his Golf GTi

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Apparently I need front and rear ARB’s as Mercedes, in their great wisdom, bonded the bushes onto the bar. Anyone know a good source for these, or am I best off going to the dealer for them?

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I love the car, but it's been far from cheap - catching up on a lot of maintenance that was, erm, deferred by previous owners.

I've got one last big bill to come, which will be changing the RMS as that requires dropping the box. Fresh ARB's front and rear, and then I'm up to date.

I had the light rust in the wheel arches dealt with last year, and the bodyshop did a fantastic job - I got the bonnet repainted at the same time to remove stone chips, and may well drop it back into them at some point this year to get the rear bumper done as there are a couple of scratches in it but nothing that bothers my OCD too much to make it urgent.

It's on it's winter wheels at the moment, whilst the summer wheels are refurbished.

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I had rust in all four arches, plus the bonnet, and the paintless dent guy went over the complete car, for £1,250. Very happy with the work.

I suspect I may not be allowed to tell you who did it due to advertising rules of the forum, but feel free to PM me for a completely different reason.

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Also, I have this and a 996 - good combination I think.

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Hard to do this with the 911:

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Not that I've noticed - it makes a bit of a whine when you first start it, but that calms down after 30 seconds when the revs drop.

I'm 100% positive that DDR would have mentioned it if it was borked as they've been very thorough on finding things that need replacing so far.

I've got Thule WingBars, which I really rate - an example here: https://www.roofbox.co.uk/scripts/rbvehsel4_tab.ph...



The bike carriers slide off in seconds, I leave the bars on the roof all the time, then put however many carriers on as/when I need them.

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It's a much rarer car (the C55 estate, anecdotally only 50 produced for the UK), so if that matters to you it's a factor, the other is the breaking head-bolts of the earlier 6.2 litre V8's, which ruled out that entire period of car for me.

I do like how almost no one has any idea that the C55 isn't a 220CDi, can make for some entertaining traffic light Grand Prix moments.

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Summer wheels are ready for, well, summer:

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I would think the C55 at the moment, but I'm building a new engine for the 996 that will rev past 8,000rpm with a new displacement of 3.7 litres, and I'd expect that to beat the C55.