mazdeuce - Seth said:
Seeing pictures of the old girl makes me happy. 
I agree that the nav/head unit is terrible. Just horrible. Abysmal. I need a thesaurus to come up with more words. It's bad. I don't think anyone who has tried to use it would fault you if you set it aside for something that actually worked.
Glad that you're continuing this thread. I think a continual log of owners and what has happened will be useful for you and and any future owners.
Yep. I normally wouldn't do that, but this car has a story that's worth recounting, so I want to do my part for it. :)
I sincerely hope I have more tales of trepidation and wonder and joy more than tales of woe, but so far the ratio of OH E36 M3 to kms driven has been pretty high, I'd say higher than even the V10 RS6 (but then, I’m barely at 1K driven). I always thought that one would average out ... but oh do I have a story on it. Let's just say it never did. I bet this one will, though!!!
Welp, some kind of coolant leak is still present. Back to the shop looking at it ... I can't express enough gratitude to my friend for using his off time at a major German car dealer to look at it for me. Hoping it's not the radiator ... I looked up the instructions to change that in Star and it looks like the only thing that doesn't need to come out is the spare tire. :P
In reply to PseudoNim :
Yea, the cooling stack looks a lot like baklava. Many many many layers.
mazdeuce - Seth said:
In reply to PseudoNim :
Yea, the cooling stack looks a lot like baklava. Many many many layers.
Yup, basically.
So my friend forgot his coolant pressure kit so all we could do was visuals, and it's not looking like the hose we fixed before ... but that's about the extent of our investigation today. Putting it off till Monday. Let's see if I come back crying or not. :D
[edit] wait wtf? Got home and doing my evening visual check of the engine bay, and the line of what was clearly coolant on the undertray is completly GONE now. Dry as a bone, and everything has disappeared. Coolant level potentially holding steady as well. Wtf just happened? Did we wiggle a hose bychance? To be continued, undoubtedly...
Ok. A $30 Chinese endoscope and 5 mins of digging and it looks like the fat hose on the right middle of the radiator (when looking from the front) is leaking. (picture is from below)
1) anyone know if it's an engine drop? (I’m still living in my V10 RS6 world...)
2) can anyone suggest any related hoses I should replace if i’m doing this one?
Shouldn't be an engine drop. You have to remove the whole cooling stack to pull the motor, so it all comes out first. Once you remove the fans there is a lot more room though I can't remember if the fans are first or not. The Star manual goes through it step by step. You'll certainly need to pull the plastics on the bottom and probably the bumper cover and all of that. Up to you to decide how much you want to replace while in there, all the hoses are probably the same age.
Thanks for the reply! I think the hose part # is A2515018282 if I'm not mistaken ... I'm going to spend some time digging through Star. Maybe I can get away with just replacing it alone and see how the rest go.
Of course, none of the local AMG dealers have it and it's B/O in Germany even. Wtf. More unicorn parts ...
In reply to PseudoNim :
Of all the hoses that's probably one of the least bad ones. The ones that worry me are the ones on the passenger side that have the octopus plastic fittings on them that split to the overflow and all of that. Do you try and find those plastic pieces and all the hoses (because I'd never try to take the hoses off the plastic unless things were already broken or I knew I could get a new plastic piece) or do you just roll with it? I'm not sure there's a right answer.
In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
So it would appear that the specific hose in question is an R63-only part. Ha! I think I have an issue now. :D
R63 diagram: https://www.ilcats.ru/mercedes/?function=getParts&class=1&catalog=63U&aggtype=FG&model=251177&group=50&subgroup=165&imageNo=3&language=en (#420 on the diagram)
ML63 diagram: https://www.ilcats.ru/mercedes/?function=getParts&class=1&catalog=63J&aggtype=FG&model=164177&group=50&subgroup=165&language=en
Any thoughts... or am I going to have to source an ML63 part, cut my hose, then manufacture a joint of some sort and join it with clamps? 
Re: your plastic piece point... I think at this point I'd just start stocking up on stuff that's likely to break. This is a good, gentle lesson for me - at least I'm not pissing coolant over my garage floor and the car is completely drivable - I lose about 50mL of coolant every 1-2 days, so it's entirely "okay" for now. Probably worth having a set of backup hoses...
Well, found a hose in Dubai, but seller won't ship anywhere that I can get my hands on it. So I decided to order a ML63 hose and a R350 one, and MacGyver a set together. Stay tuned...
Good luck man. I hope the MacGuyvering goes smooth.
DaewooOfDeath said:
Good luck man. I hope the MacGuyvering goes smooth.
Let y'all know how it goes.
In the meantime, I'm 99% certain the hose leaks only when it's below 20F. I can't explain it at all, it's got to be an AMG thing I wasn't born to understand. But on days when it's below 20, it drips constantly. On days where it isn't, it doesn't. Bonus points: on days where it's <20 in the morning but >20 in the afternoon, it'll drip in the morning commute and dry up on the afternoon commute. Complete mystery. New hoses getting here in early April, amusingly just AFTER the road trip I’m about to take ... the good thing is my insurance has free towing, the bad news is I'm taking the backroads so I don't know if there'll be signal to ask for a tow if the hose decides it's had enough of this discriminatory attitude towards temperatures and decides to leak steadily. :D
Small update. While I wait for the hoses to arrive, I decided that in the spirit of keeping this car for a while (that's the intent anyway, assuming nothing catastrophically explodes) I should fix the headlights. I've been quite surprised, since the beginning, by how dark they are. I've never been dissatisfied with xenons - except on this car. As I wrote above, replacing bulbs did nothing, and digging deeper, it looks like it's a relatively common problem on these cars - MBWorld is full of threads on it. So I decided to follow one member's advice, and improve the projectors in the headlights. I fortunately found a seller that mispriced a set of Morimoto D2S 5.0s, some of the (supposedly) best-designed projectors for the Hella E55 headlights (which these are), so I ordered them, together with a set of brackets to mount them to the AFS system so I don't lose directional xenons. I thought of going with their Bi-LED solution, which also can be finangled to fit these enclosures, but decided that a) if they break, it means disassembling the light again (the Morimoto projectors are just physical objects - nothing to break in them, they just do a better job of focussing the light) and b) I’m still staying with the "OEM+" plan, as I want the car as close to factory as possible, and going LED isn't ... that. Also there's lots of drilling and cutting involved with the Bi-LEDs, so I’m also kinda lazy, heh.
While I was on a spending spree, I decided to grab a set of new lenses too - the ones on the car are pretty worn, and though I could do one of those snake oil kits, I did it before on my 911 and I wasn't very happy with the results, so a new lens is probably an easier way to the same result (particularly since I'm opening the light anyway - if I weren't, I'd probably have gone snake oil). The bits and bobs will take forever to get here from various places so once that's done, I'll see how it plays out. And I can fix that awful wiring, too...
I was thinking about the headlight post while working in the garage and was wondering why I never noticed that the headlights were bad. Then I remembered that it still had the windshield tint when I had it and I very very seldom drove it at night because of that. Now I wonder what the headlights actually look like.
mazdeuce - Seth said:
I was thinking about the headlight post while working in the garage and was wondering why I never noticed that the headlights were bad. Then I remembered that it still had the windshield tint when I had it and I very very seldom drove it at night because of that. Now I wonder what the headlights actually look like.
Yeah ... they're pretty bad, lol. My R56 Mini that's about the same age has headlights way brighter than that. Hell, a 996 I drove that was way older than the R63 had brighter xenons! So I'm really looking forward to how things will be, though the bits and bobs are taking their sweet time to get here. Waiting for the lenses now... (also: windshield tint? jesus! The rear windows are currently double-tinted, and I already see basically nothing in anything but bright sunlight, but windshield? Southern states never cease to amaze me ... or maybe it's a Florida thing, lol)
In the meantime, the hoses arrived, so I have to get my chopping knife out. I got a Star diagnostic kit as well, and was happy to find that no significant errors were stored in the modules, which @NoahWeb already told me was the case, but it was good to read past history as well, not just current errors. Going to try lowering the suspension a little bit... not looking for a Stancenation competition entry here, but I could do without the SUV ride height.
Well then. The bits and bobs have begun to arrive!
That's right - a set of Morimoto D2S 5.0 projectors, a set of brackets to mount them in, some butyl glue and a heat gun to put it all in place, and a new set of bulbs. And a set of severely over-packaged lenses. I decided that rather than polishing and restoring the current set, I might as well just replace them if I'm going through this hassle already. The Morimoto projectors allow me to retain AFS and basically stay totally stock - while improving light output. So all is great.
While I was getting the bits and bobs together, I discovered an extra reason to take off the bumper. Damn E36 M3 roads.
Also... less fun, but I walked into this the other day. And no, this isn't Stancenation, VIP style or a bagged Benz. It's a ... debagged Benz! This happened a few times (2-3) - car would keep fine over several days and then one day just not keep pressure. Then be OK.
I decided to do something about it so as not to kill the pump. Scanned the car and was showing pressures of:
Central: 8.9 bar
LF: 11.3 bar
RF: 7.8 bar
LR: 4.8 bar
RR: 8.2 bar
This seemed pretty low, but on top of that, I feel like the pump has been running a lot lately, so I guess this is to be expected. Not sure what the "normal" pressures are but I'm guessing they at least have to be "similar" (so RF worries me a little bit ... but it keeps height, so who knows).
Hesitated between getting OEM and Arnotts, but luckily found an OEM Bilstein for a good price, so ordered that. Good fun.
All right. It was high time I cleaned up the garage, and while I wait for the air springs to get here, I decided to get at the headlights. (a replacement fog light is on the way, too).
Disassembling the front wasn't a difficult job at all, and having the WIS instructions made it that much easier ... also a few bolts seem to have been missing so there were fewer to unscrew :)
After that it was an easy job getting the headlights out.
Look how yellow the lenses are!
The odd thing is the glue in the lens. Looks like someone's been in there already, this can't possibly be OEM sealing, can it?! @Mazdeuce @NoahWeb explain yourselves :)
Ordered some replacement H7 bulbs, forgot that I wanted to go white on those too (the OEM ones are too yellow). Going to get onto disassembling these over the next few days. Once again, what I'm aiming to fix here: replace the lenses, upgrade the projectors, and put heat shrink wrapping on the wires so that this terrible quality insulation isn't keeping me up at night.
I wasn't in there, I had enough things to worry about without something seemingly cosmetic like headlights.
Good luck with the air bags. That was on my "going to need to fix eventually" list. Factory air suspension life.
That lens glue looks just like every modern plastic headlamp assembly I have ever encountered. You would think glue was free from the extra oozed out of them. These look pretty sparse!
Thanks for continuing to post. It's nice to be able to follow what's happening to this car.
In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
Ok, I suppose that's a fair point :)
In the meantime, as I opened the rear door to fetch some stuff from the trunk (car is too close to the garage door to open it), the air pump came on to try to raise the car and a really loud BANG came from the RL shock (the deflated one). I guess I’m really not getting any more use out of that thing!
TurnerX19 said:
That lens glue looks just like every modern plastic headlamp assembly I have ever encountered. You would think glue was free from the extra oozed out of them. These look pretty sparse!
Really, damn. I just thought that was incredibly ugly and I didn't think that's something Mercedes would do. Then again ... here's a bunch of accumulated crumbled insulation in the headlight, so I guess what do I know, eh.
1955W196S said:
Thanks for continuing to post. It's nice to be able to follow what's happening to this car.
Absolutely! It almost feels like it's "the forum's car" at this point so it's the least I can do :)
In the meantime, got one of the headlights open. I tried to use a heat gun but it wasn't working too well around the seam - maybe I didn't have enough patience. So I used an oven... a self-made oven! 20 minutes on a random "2 out of 5" setting of my weird Amazon heat gun, and Bob's your (or my, in this case) uncle!
They fit in a normal oven too 
That is how I have always done mine in the past. Back to follwoing along.
java230 said:
They fit in a normal oven too That is how I have always done mine in the past. Back to follwoing along.
I just assumed it'll make a crazy smell and wife will kick me out together with the Unicorn.
