Slow Fleet – Mercedes 500SE April 2015

Latest Costs: Nothing, except the purchase price…
Miles this period: 360ish

It seemed like a good idea at the time, buy an old S Class Mercedes without even seeing it. Now things could go either way, turning up the bargain of the century or some complete heap. Not sure whether to be worried or not being the only bid on eBay…

So it came to collect the car from a golf professional, things were looking up, as he lived in a nice expensive house in a smart village.  It looked presentable enough but with plenty of scratches on the bodywork, not that it was a huge problem. Some of the obvious rot areas weren’t rotten. The tyres had plenty of tread left, but were perished and a good few years old, I figured they’d better go. The radio didn’t work, as the owner hadn’t used it for ages and the battery had gone flat a while back and the code wasn’t known. Oh well, it was a period Blaupunkt Melbourne, which from recollection were rubbish anyway,

He’d not had the car a vast amount of time, I forget how long exactly, but he’d had the local garage give it the once over and an oil change, it wasn’t due again for another 3K miles, according to the fully stamped up service book at 108K. I kept flicking through to find 178K and beyond. It had even been washed and waxed, so maybe I’d done ok.

Driving home in torrential rain was fun, the car developed a horrible misfire, which I assumed could be weather related. I did stop on route to put in £20 worth of super unleaded at a supermarket, as I had no idea how long what was left in the tank would last. I made it back just after my parents had arrived to stay the weekend. I left it until the morning and investigated a little in the paperwork. I thought it might be in the distributer cap, as these are a common cause for misfires, but according to the paperwork it was recent, along with the ignition box and a couple of other things which came to £1100 odd. Maybe as it hadn’t run for so long it’s got sediment in the fuel tank.

The next day I ran it locally and decided I might as well do all the running around for the weekend and it’s first outing was to Much Wenlock in Shropshire, on route filling it with Shell V-Power. While filling I got the first nice car mate, it does attract attention. It was a nice trip round and the car was comfortable and performed well. The gearbox wasn’t shifting that smoothly at times, but then with an engine with a misfire or any uneven running wouldn’t help.

Putting the miles on it got better and better with a lot of the poor running having disappeared, which I was pleased about as it meant one less thing to deal with, although I have a feeling the list might get longer as I find out what else needs doing…