Quick!

There's a lot of win in this thread so far. Wishing you the best in this endeavor.

As long as there are no major known issues with these things (ie drivetrain failure somewhere) that crop up and you don't hand it to a Mercedes dealer and tell them, "You know there is this random noise, can you fix it?" you're probably going to do okay. Not saying I would put 20k a year on a high mileage one, but for a secondary fun car or occasional driver this probably isn't that bad.

We need some engine cleaning porn now.

belteshazzar wrote: so I can detail and drool over this

Silly Germans. That's a hose not a fan.

Six Month update:

I've put 4000 miles on it, including a 1300 mile roadtrip.

At 65 mph it gets 20 mpg, fuel efficiency goes down by roughly 1 mpg for every 2 extra mph faster I drive. By 80 mph this dude is kind of expensive. Since installing larger diameter tires, the speedometer reads the actual speed of the vehicle, which is weird in a german car.

Yesterday I checked the oil. It hasn't burned a single drop of Rotella T6.

It still has a faint stutter on partial acceleration. Like a misfire, but not exactly. Long and short term fuel trims stay very close to zero, typically around .8% If you mash the accelerator it still picks up and moves without any effort. Wouldn't mind figuring it out, but kinda just getting used to it. It never has any service engine codes.

Nebraska got robbed this year for snowfall, so I never got to have any fun of that sort.

It will pull a car on a trailer pretty well.

My wife likes it, except for the inoperative heated seats. I threw away the spare tire in the cargo area and picked up a lot of extra room. The radio is fantastic, not even counting that it's 15 years old now. I throw a cassette adapter in it and stream pandora from my cell phone's headphone jack. I swear I hear things in songs I've never heard before.

About to roll over 200k miles.