Wheeler Dealers USA - Episode 7 - 2005 Mercedes C55 AMG

Hullo and welcome to Wheeler Dealers! The show where I try to find, fix, and then sell on, motoring icons. In this episode I'm taking on a Mercedes with attitude. The C55 AMG. I wasn't really planning on starting another project at this time, but I have a problem with internet car searches.. I can't stop doing them. It was during one of these searches that I stumbled on this car on an internet auction site. The price was right, with a couple days left, and whats more was the car was local to me. I added it to my watch list and decided to take a look at it after work that day.

After checking the car out in person I decided to bid on it, I waited till the last day and tried to snipe it. But oh dear, I was outbid by someone with a proxy bid higher than I wanted to go. But I wasn't about to give up, I rang up the salesperson I had talked to when I saw the car, and told him if the other buyer backed out I was still willing to purchase the car. After a couple days time, he called me back and told me the car was mine! I went by and handed him the $3400 that was my final bid.

Here's what the car looked like at the dealership.

So right off I knew I would be needing some new headlights, grill, hood and front bumper with all the grills and fog lights. It took me a while but I was finally able to track down a silver hood, and front bumper with all the grills accessories intact, but Mercedes parts don't come cheap, these set me back about $1900, but thankfully they had another salvage yard 2 hours closer to my house that they shipped them to for free.

With the parts in hand it's time to break out the spanners and start turning some bolts!

The old bumper cover came of with just a couple screws and clips removed.

Here you can see that this bumpercover has been repaired before. It was to far gone to repair again.

After that was out of the way, I was able to get to the bolts for the trashed headlights and remove them and also remove the radiator support bracket in the middle.

I had to remove the headlight brackets as they were in sorry shape. Thankfully the parts I bought had these with them. So six bolts and these were removed.

I was going to try and straighten out the radiator bracket but, it looks to be too far gone. I'll get one of those ordered.

With the headlights removed I could see that the washer fluid reservoir was not in it's bracket, some quick work with the spanners and it was back in place.

One of the new(used) headlights installed, I had to tweak the upper mount a little but the fit looks good.

The other used headlight I bought was said to have a "professionally repaired" tab on it. But while installing it, their repair failed. Looks like they just tried to superglue it. Since this tab also holds the bumper cover up it needs to be very strong.

I figured the best way to keep it in place would be to put some band around it and some JB Weld might be called for also. Looking through my stuff I had some leftover roof flashing that would make a good strap. A piece was cut off and affixed with a screw through the lower more solid portion of the tab.

Looks good. Need to trim this down though.

Job done!

With that tab fixed and ready to hold the weight of the bumper cover I installed it in the car.

So that's it for right now. I will need to order a radiator also as one of the plastic end tanks is cracked and leaking, and the AC system will need to be pressure checked to see if it's still holding a charge, the condenser took a hit but I can't tell if it was punctured.

Berkeleying A man, I love your flips. They are an entire order of magnitude cooler than mine.

Good job, can't wait to see how this comes out.

t25torx wrote:

This is my favorite thing.

I love these threads because I get to live vicariously through you guys and see some neat fixes for things.

Great work so far!

Javelin wrote: Berkeleying A man, I love your flips. They are an entire order of magnitude cooler than mine.

That's high praise that I'll gladly take any day. I think the best thing about my flips so far is that I've really only spent about $1800 out of pocket. I want to see how far up the ladder I can get by just reinvesting my money into these flips.

The money line goes like this for me.

1. Sold some computer and gaming stuff I wasn't using on ebay for about $1800 (I also continue to sell random stuff to help fuel my car habit, I'll flip stuff I find at Goodwill on ebay for some extra car fund cash)
2. Bought a totaled RSX Type S, to help out a co-worker after his engine blew. Sold him the engine and trans at a steep discount (but still covered the cost of the car) to get him back on the road. I managed to make about $3000 in parts sales from that car. (Top tip, RSX parts go super fast on the Honda boards, apparently the fan bois wreck them all the time.) so I had close to $5000 now for my car flips.
3. Bought the Celica for $2000 and with it and the parts car(another $2200) I made about $3000 off them. So now we're up to a total of $7000 to work with. Which brings us to today.
4. $3400 for the Mercedes plus $2200 in parts so far has us under budget, but it's gonna be tight to keep this one under $6000 like I want.

In reply to t25torx:

Going to flip your way up to an Italian exotic like some sort of budget Wheeler Dealers Trading up episode?

....I'm totally down for watching that. Except at the end you end up buying a Subaru Justy that a previous owner tried to shoehorn a Mercedes M275 into and ran out of funds in the most Grassroots twist ever.

The0retical wrote: In reply to t25torx: Going to flip your way up to an Italian exotic like some sort of budget Wheeler Dealers Trading up episode? ....I'm totally down for watching that. Except at the end you end up buying a Subaru Justy that a previous owner tried to shoehorn a Mercedes M275 into and ran out of funds in the most Grassroots twist ever.

Exactly! Except it won't be a Subaru Justy, it'll be an SVX that some unnamed board member might have already 5 speed swapped, but has a bad engine and a parts car to go with it.

Digging the parody. The writing is spot on.

Would it be cheaper to get the radiator end tank replaced at radiator shop? Also checking to see if the a/c system will hold a vacuum would probably be a better test.

Does auction mean salvage title?

lnlogauge wrote: Does auction mean salvage title?

Nope, no salvage title, and the accident was never reported so it has a clean Carfax also. When I get done with it I might just bring it by Carmax and see what they offer, for shiz and giggles.

Awesome. Just awesome

I love these threads. So entertaining to see the transformation

t25torx wrote:

lnlogauge wrote: Does auction mean salvage title?

Nope, no salvage title, and the accident was never reported so it has a clean Carfax also. When I get done with it I might just bring it by Carmax and see what they offer, for shiz and giggles.

Please do this.

So strange that I'm actually watching an episode of Wheeler Dealers when I stumbled upon this thread. Nice to have a car show without all the drama of American car shows

DatsunS130 wrote: Would it be cheaper to get the radiator end tank replaced at radiator shop? Also checking to see if the a/c system will hold a vacuum would probably be a better test.

Well if the system still has pressure then I know it doesn't have a leak, I don't want to vacuum out the system and have to refill it.

Also the radiator is only $60 online, it's shared between all the C class and CLK class cars. So probably about the same amount to have the tank replaced.

What's the latest on this one? I just caught benz fever and have bought two decent ones and a parts car in the last month. These were all 80s cars though, but now I'm looking at one of the ultimate money eaters, 2005-2006 CL65 AMG. Yes, I have read the Edmond's long term test, but I usually have to learn the hard way.

I know someone with a SL55 He's HARD on his cars. (it's done multiple track days.)

never had an issue with it. EVER.

What about the manky interior?

Alright mates I'm back from the holidays and have updates for you all. I haven't uploaded the pics yet so just a text update for now. I'll just start by saying I've had quite a time with this car and getting parts for it. There seems to be a lot of misinformation about parts being crosswise compatible on this car and that's lead to a lot of time delays in this build.

It started with the radiator. Removal of the old one was pretty simple, after I got it removed I could see the cracks in the end tank pretty good. After a search of ebay I came up with an aftermarket replacement for only $60 shipped, I get it installed about a week later. Only to discover it was a very poorly made piece, the hoses are the clip-in style and the lower hose connection leaked like a sieve. Awesome. So out it came, and an alleged good OEM unit was found, again a week later I had my radiator in the car, and it also leaked, but this one was leaking from the core section, great. I also took a better look at both units and found them to be about 1/2" too thin compared to the stock unit, so clearly the one size fits all mantra of the compatibility chart on ebay was wrong. I would have to find one expressly designed for the C55. Both were returned with minimal fuss though and I settled on a Nissins unit for $160, more than I originally figured, but this was getting ridiculous and I was getting too good at removing the radiator in this car. The new unit finally arrived a week later. Mercifully this unit fit great, was made of better materials, was the correct core thickness and most importantly it did not leak. So with coolant added and the system bleed off this job was done. And it only took a month and multiple installs to get the correct unit installed. Lesson learned, don't cheap out on some Mercedes parts, you don't have to go OEM but make sure if you get aftermarket go with a known good brand.

While I had the radiator out I noticed something odd about the front of the engine. There was a bearing without a pulley on it just sitting out there. Okay.. lets see what this belongs to. And it belongs to the AC compressor. So it looks like the AC compressor pulley sheared off and rather than fix it, the previous owner just got a shorter accessory belt and skipped the AC. This just wouldn't do, especially in south Florida. I found that you can replace the pulley if the bearing surface isn't too screwed up on the nose of the compressor and as luck would have it mine looked rebuildable. A new pulley was ordered for $140, about 1/3 the cost of a rebuilt compressor. Installation was pretty easy with the radiator out, just a couple circlips and a reverse threaded bolt. I also installed a new AC condenser as the old one had a puncture from the crash. It was time to vacuum down the system again after installing the pulley and the new condenser. But what's this? The vacuum wouldn't pull more than 20hg, so I pressurized the system with 90psi compressed air and it was just blowing right by the shaft seal on the compressor. Another lesson learned here. I should have tried to pull a vacuum before ordering the pulley, but I thought there was no point since I knew the condenser was bad. I should have replaced the condenser first, then tried to pull a vacuum before ordering the pulley, a $140 lesson. I was able to find a factory rebuilt unit for $230 and set about installing it. Which was harder than it should have been. Thanks to the longer V8 engine the forward compressor bolts were now perfectly lined up with the subframe, thanks AMG engineers. I couldn't find any info online on how to remove it correctly, so I decided to just make a bolt removal hole in the aluminium subframe to get the lower bolt out. I know it may seem pretty dodgy, but I wasn't about to drop the entire subframe to remove an AC compressor. This is probably why it was just bypassed, I have a feeling it would have been about a $4000 job at the dealer. It worked out in my favor 2 ways when I made the hole for the bolt. It made removal a cinch once I had the hole drilled, and as it turns out, the AC compressor is also a one off piece like the radiator for the AMG model. The unit I had bought was the correct Denso model number, but not he correct Mercedes part number even though it was advertised as for the C55, but as with the radiator, it was not. The lower front bolt guide stuck out about 3/4 of an inch further than on the old unit. This would have been a real issue if I had not modified the subframe, as the compressor bolt guide would have hit the subframe. However, with my access hole drilled, the longer guide just slid into the hole and did not contact the subframe, allowing it all to go back together without a fuss. Now to vacuum it out again, and this time I got my 30hg vacuum and it held, huzzah! I need to fill it up with oil and R134 and that will be it for the AC hopefully.

I also purchased a used front bumper cover and a hood from a W209 CLK AMG as the C55 and the CLK share the same front sheetmetal and C55 parts are very thin on the ground. I was even able to find them in silver. I was hoping to not spend a fortune in this area but with the fog lights and grills being trashed buying all the parts individually would have cost over $2500 and additional labor and time for painting. I picked up the used hood and bumper cover for $1900 delivered from the yard about 2 hours away. I was able to get these installed with minimal fuss and the fit is actually very good. It's not all rainbows and roses though, when I went to pick these up it was raining and I was in a hurry so I didn't get a chance to really look them over before buying, I should have taken more time and cloth to dry them off and inspect the paint better. The hood had a decent dent in it that didn't show int he pictures he sent and there were scratches on it from transport, and the front bumper cover had a bunch of rock chips and a couple cracks from removal also. I should have been able to get a couple hundred more dollars knocked off, another lesson learned. I'm still debating if a respray is needed.

After I got all the front bolted on and the radiator supports straightened out I installed the new lower fenderwell covers and that's pretty much it for now.

I'll be getting the car insured and registered today so I can start driving it and see if there are any driving issues. I did take it for a quick spin around the block and I didn't notice any glaring issues, so here's hoping a good cleaning and scrubbing inside and out along with a good buffing of the paint will be all that's left to finish on it.

Cool thread. A coworker had one of these cars about 8 years ago. It was amazing how much it had already depreciated by that point. But he was able to sell it a few years later for about the same as what he paid.

Great writeup! Nice work, but you've convinced me to stay the hell away from those things...

Basil Exposition wrote: Great writeup! Nice work, but you've convinced me to stay the hell away from those things...

I've convinced myself to stay the hell away from them also lol. But actually I think a 230 Kompressor would be the one to have. 4 cylinder with a lot more room under the hood to work with and available with the 6 speed manual. If I were to have one to keep, it would be one of those. But at least the rubber stuff isn't disintegrating like all the rubber trim did on the BMW I refurbed a while back.

Oh and it's all legal now, got it registered and insured over lunch.

My wife had a 2002 C230 Kompressor. The interior was pretty cheaply made, so you might get flashbacks of the BMW. Things fell off regularly like A/C vent handles. It also puked all the transmission fluid. Twice. Fortunately, it had an extended warranty. Other than that, it was a fun, fast car to drive.

Well at this point the R56 MINI holds the record for shi...tiest car I have ever owned. So this MB will need to try a little harder if it want's top spot.