RE: Mercedes 190E 2.5-16 | PH Fleet

RE: Mercedes 190E 2.5-16 | PH Fleet

Monday 30th September 2019

Mercedes 190E 2.5-16 | PH Fleet

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, Mike's 190E is in considerably more pieces than when he last wrote about it



When I last wrote about the 190E in the winter it was about to go back on the road after a long and wallet-bruising restoration - and I was looking forward to getting behind the wheel for the first time in four years. The fact there's been radio silence since then indicates that things didn't go quite according to plan.

It was all so close. I'd arranged a time for collection, paid the bill, sorted tax and insurance - even persuaded my dad to drive me the 50 miles from home to Autoclass in Milton Keynes, the well-respected specialist which has looked after both the 2.5 and several other elderly Mercs for me over the years.


Then at about 5:29 on the evening before D-Day the phone rang. It was Autoclass proprietor James Tait: the Merc had just been taken for its final road test and was sounding like a drunken firing squad under load, so the collection was delayed until they could work out what was wrong with it.

Things escalated slowly as I got on with my summer. The Cosworth-developed 2.5-16 is pretty rare groove, so even finding parts like an ignition coil to swap out took a fair amount of time. Autoclass gradually worked through the obvious failure points - including some of the obscure electrical borkage the Cossie Mercs are known for - only to discover that none of it cured the car. Meaning that the issue was almost certainly inside the engine, possibly a sticking valve. Could they take the cylinder head off?

Like a gambler trying to turn his last £5 into the mortgage payment, I didn't seem to have much choice at this point - short of stuffing and mounting the Merc in a display case. The good news was that the freshly removed head turned out to be fine. The considerably less good was clear evidence of scoring in the cylinder bores, which shouldn't have been causing the sometimes rough-running, but at least we'd found something that was definitely wrong.


So the engine has been removed and sent to a specialist for further diagnosis; it looks like it has already had an overbore so the critical question is whether it can manage another. Six months on I'm actually less close to getting my car than I was last time. I'm not blaming Autoclass for any of this: they know old Mercs as well as anyone. But obscure cars tend to have obscure problems.

I also definitely shouldn't have been so smug about the rising values of the Cosworth 190Es last time. There are going to be several more hefty bills before I'm reunitied with mine again.


FACT SHEET
Car:
1990 Mercedes 190E 2.5-16
Run by: Mike Duff
Bought: May 2012
Mileage at purchase: 157,000
Mileage now: 161,000 (!)
Last month at a glance: ££££

Previous reports:

Mike's 190E awakens...

Author
Discussion

dotgillingham

Original Poster:

37 posts

94 months

Monday 30th September 2019
quotequote all
That sucks! I hope it's a (relatively) straightforward fix for you. I want to see some driving updates!

skylarking808

778 posts

85 months

Monday 30th September 2019
quotequote all
These things are sent to test us!

Should be worth the effort. At least the garage appear to understand the cossie engine.

My 2004 Merc daily is off the road presently; apparently they d'ont make the exhausts anymore grrrr.

Jex

837 posts

127 months

Monday 30th September 2019
quotequote all
How frustrating. I hope it gets sorted out quickly and not too expensively. I've always liked those - subtle performance and elegance.

pSyCoSiS

3,581 posts

204 months

Monday 30th September 2019
quotequote all
That's a lovely car.

AutoClass look after my Mercs, more recently the 600 SEL and 500 SL, and I am pretty sure I saw this in there the last few times I visited!

They really do know their old Mercs, but some of these rarer cars do throw up issues now and then which even the experts find difficult to resolve.

My 600 will be going there in a few weeks, as it has developed a misfire and is cutting out. Just hope is isn't the dreaded (and expensive) engine wiring loom.

Look forward to reading more about the Cosworth once it is back on the road.

Guvernator

13,103 posts

164 months

Monday 30th September 2019
quotequote all
I never knew PH had one of these in the fleet. My old man had one of these many moons ago, what a lovely car it was and dare I say it but I think I actually prefer these over it's contemporary E30 M3.

Proper touring car pedigree, lovely rwd handling and a dogleg gearbox. I also think the engine in these was better than the S14 in the M3.

My old man suffered a snapped timing chaining on his which was a weak point on the earlier cars if not done religiously on time. I don't remember the full details but even back then parts where hard to find, I remember him having to order parts from Germany and wait weeks for them to arrive. I think the final repair was in the thousands which back then was A LOT of money. Rare even then, I can imagine getting parts for them now must be like finding unicorn poo!

lukeharding

2,928 posts

88 months

Monday 30th September 2019
quotequote all
Definitely one of those cars that requires patience (and my one has certainly tested mine!). It would be nice if Mercedes supported them with parts better by now as they can be difficult to work on and a lot of people don't fully understand them (myself included), but they really are wonderful cars to drive and enjoy.

Turbobanana

6,159 posts

200 months

Monday 30th September 2019
quotequote all
Guvernator said:
Proper touring car pedigree...

... My old man suffered a snapped timing chain on his
I recall seeing Andy Rouse (I think) racing an ex- DTM one at Brands Hatch years ago. Sounded great and was leading until the chain randomly - expensively - let go at the bottom of Paddock Hill Bend, grenading the engine and shooting flames from the exhaust.

richinlondon

591 posts

121 months

Monday 30th September 2019
quotequote all
I feel your pain -I've been there recently with an M3 EVO and £5k worth of engine work...I suggested driving it in to a field and setting fire to it to my other half at one point, but she deemed that irrational for some reason...good luck.

Guvernator

13,103 posts

164 months

Tuesday 1st October 2019
quotequote all
lukeharding said:
Definitely one of those cars that requires patience (and my one has certainly tested mine!). It would be nice if Mercedes supported them with parts better by now as they can be difficult to work on and a lot of people don't fully understand them (myself included), but they really are wonderful cars to drive and enjoy.
The problem is they were a bit of a skunk works endeavour so it wasn't the slick in house process that usually occurs these days. I think I remember reading that the engines were sent to Cosworth for fettling which involved a fair bit of internal work before being sent back to Mercedes to be installed in the car.

The spec of the parts also changed over the life of the car as it went from 2.3 to 2.5 and even some iterations in between. I seem to emember the Mercedes dealer having to call up Cosworth to get the timing details or something as it wasn't in the Merc system and that was back then, I'm not surprised that some of the details might have been lost to time or that Mercedes can't support some of the part supply.

tjlazer

875 posts

173 months

Tuesday 1st October 2019
quotequote all
I feel your pain, I am in the same stupid but inescapable investment cycle on an old e38 I overpaid for and love the looks of but can't seem to get down the road without something else being needed. At least parts are cheap and plentiful, your tale has at least have cured me of any desire to own one of these (my dad rocked around one from new back in the day). Good luck and all the best for the rebuild.

Guvernator

13,103 posts

164 months

Tuesday 1st October 2019
quotequote all
Are parts supply for the E30 M3 just as bad? I think they made more of them so it might be a bit better

Older cars like this are very cool but maintaining them and parts supply problems are not things that you often hear about in media articles when they are waxing lyrical about how wonderful they are.

grogee

1 posts

245 months

Friday 11th October 2019
quotequote all
I may have misunderstood this, but it seems that the garage has discovered a running fault after doing some work to the car.

The right thing to do (before they charge the owner) is to track down the source of the fault, which may have been introduced during their work with the car.

Instead, they seem to have gone on a parts replacing mission, choosing to spend the owner's money replacing electronic items which aren't broken. When that failed, they pulled the head (incurring a whole load of cost for coolant, oil and belts) to discover bore-scoring that is likely unrelated to the poor running. So now the owner is in the hole for head removal/refit and probably a re-bore as well.

The poor running described is almost certainly nothing to do with bore scoring! Why is this so-called reputable garage continuing down a rabbit-hole of problems that aren't there?

muchacho

255 posts

133 months

Friday 24th January 2020
quotequote all
Attempting to snatch a car from euthanasia.


Proper bent after £3k worth of paint.


The only ingredients capable of fixing the chassis (£800 worth of jig brackets)


Titivation (brass bushings for the shifters)


The motor


Motor and 'box dropped in the car next Friday hopefully.



Edited by muchacho on Friday 24th January 22:49


Edited by muchacho on Friday 24th January 22:51