buying advice part 3
Last week there was a very nice LWB 300GD on Ebay with 160,000 miles showing. Beside the £13k+ asking price I was put off by the mileage,but,today another 92' K reg comes on with 207k miles!, what's the expert view on this sort of mileage?, how far will a MB engine go?. My 92 K reg 300 has just gone past 100K and my 20 yr old has 120k with every old mot and original build card and I worry about them getting past it, how far has yours gone?? :?
http://www.benzworld.org/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=1124469&posts=17
Go to this link which is on a US based board. Folks have posted the distance travelled in their different 124 series. The engines diesel and petrol appear to go into the 300 000 miles often.
My 300 GD has 170k genuine miles. Never had the head off and really don't expect to before 300K. If your oil is changed every 3k and filters every other then there is no reason why you can't expect to exceed this. My G starts first time every time, even on the coldest mornings. If the engine is allowed to run with inferior, contaminated or dirty oil then you will accelerate wear rapidly.
Mercedes diesels are legendary for their durability. A few years back I used to travel to the Canary Islands for business reasons a few times every year. One of the routes that I used a taxi to travel was from the airport of Gran Canaria (in the north the island) to the Hotels in the south (Playa del Inglés/Maspalomas). I was astonished to see 300 Ds of the series W123 and W124 with 600,000 after six years of operation and I was told by one of the drivers that the taxis were family owned and run with three family members doing three 8-hour shifts a day every 24-hour period. He told me that this was very common and that most engines needed rebuilding only after reaching a minimum of 800,000 kms.
But this was with scrupulous service and motorway only use, which might not exactly be the case with some Gs on offer!
By the way, 99.99% of the taxis in the Canaries are Mercedes-Benz.
I got into a W123 Taxi on Crete a couple of years back that had 800,000kms on it when I got talking to the guy he assured me it was the same engine just well looked after and he said it would get to 1000,000kms before he would sell it.
I once bought a 307D tipper with something like 670,000 miles on it,, worked it hard for a couple of years and sold it for about £50 less then i bought it,, oil / filter changes and disc pads were the only things it ever had done to it. Except the very coldest of mornings, it always started, albeit with a huge plume of black smoke.. On the other hand, due to neglect 1 of my 208D's needed a new engine at around 160,000 miles.. It's all in the oil/filter change.
Having found this discussion interesting in the past,I started taking notice of the mileages on the taxis, that we travelled in ,while in Lanzarote last week.
As the days passed the record went up,200plus,300plus,500plus,800plus thousand kilometers were found.Instead of the newer cdis I found myself aiming for the older w124s and w123s.Second last day and the record was at 1040 thousand km.Last day we got a w123 1984 240D ,(om616?) to bring us to the airport with over 1700 thousand km on the clock,(the one million "1" was missing but the clim was still believable,judging by the earlier records).The driver dissapointed us when he told us the engine had been replaced at 1.2 million km.This car was due to be retired in a months time,and sold on for 1800 euros to a private buyer.He reckoned 1.2 million was the average lifespan of the diesel merc taxi engines,but he knew of one with 1.7 million on the original engine.
He reckoned that there was a move away from mercs,at the moment(he mentioned some problem with the cdi engines which I did'nt quite grasp) , and towards skoda octavias ,of all things,which at a third of the price and with two year warranties and maybe half the durability,made a better proposition for the work.Sad is'nt it.
I found it very warm over there with my anorak on,sad also.
bob
I was in a taxi in Aberdeen (300d) the driver said that this one was number3 of the same, and the previous two had both done more than 500,000 miles.
he went on to say that all he did was change the oilfilters every 5000 miles and he bought the cheapest oil he could find.
Bill :)
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At the other end of the scale my 300D lwb has 126k on and it was 20 years old on the 3rd April, less than 3k from last MOT and still original first aid kit/jack/tool roll and build sheet, she's in Autotrader next week for £2250. :cry: