As some readers may remember, my 1993 Mercedes 500SL, which I bought some 8 years ago for £5.5k, has been languishing at various garages since it developed a misfire 2 weeks after buying it.
The misfire wasn't there all the time, but started after a short run, once the engine warmed up.
Given it was being looked at on 'Mates' Rates' it kept falling to the end of the queue, yet no-one managed to diagnose the problem in over 6 years. Many things were tried, but to no avail. One garage owner even asked me to take it off his hands in return for a pint.
I finally discovered on a Mercedes forum that Mercs made between certain years in the 90s had wiring looms made of biodegradable material and owners with these cars had symptoms like mine. Mercedes didn't believe that any of their cars would still be on the road 30 years later, but they were so well built that many are and the problem has started to manifest itself.
I bought a 2nd hand replacement loom from a car outside of the suspect years and presented it to the garage where it's currently resting some 4 months ago. Over the weekend they phoned me to say their new diagnostics guy had looked into it and the loom I'd bought for £200 was not correct for my chassis number; however, they pointed me to a company in Germany that makes SL500 looms to order.
I duly purchased one for £535, delivered. However, it's a 4-5 lead time to delivery, but it's in the pipeline. I could have the SL500 back on the road by Christmas. The company selling them even contacted me to check my engine and chassis number to confirm the one I'd bought was the correct one - and it is.
In the meantime, I haven't put any miles on it and it has tripled in value, so I'm not complaining.
Stop Press - received an email to say it's already on its way! If there's an Indian Summer, I may just get a couple of weeks of ecstacy before winter sets in.
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