I am writing this thread on behalf of my dad. He has a Mercedes E 220 Classic CDI AUTO and its slowly going pear shaped. All Im after is some sound advice on what the issues might be but will eventually take it to a mechanic if its not a straight forward job to fix.

He recenty had a rattling noise coming from under the hood... I checked it and found that the 2 rubber clips holding the air filter at the top were torn so I replaced them which stopped this noise but then also realised that there were patches of oil below the front of the air filter - between the radiator and air filter. Prior to putting the rubber brackets back on I did notice that the air filter casing was loose sunk by by about an inch. I didnt take the casing out to investigate as I didnt want to fiddle with it too much but I got the feeling something wernt quite right.

My dad then told me for the last 3 months the car has been driving very slugish and struggles to go uphill. I thought he might just need to service it but it turns out he had just done the servicing the other day and still the same problem.

I then the following day went to sort out a dent he had on his front nearside wing while doing this I discovered a cable was torn. I went to my local merc service center and asked them what that was for and they explained that it was the turbo temperature sensor. The representative said that the plug is not sold by itself and the whole thing itself would cost £300 on parts alone so I was far better off just going to a scrap yard cutting one out and just reconnecting the wires - so I did. When this was reconnected my dad said it didnt real make a noticeable difference so all he noticed was the exhaust blew out more black smoke. Worried that this was making his car worse we decided to disconnect it so that was that.

Finally the 3 other odd things occurring are

1) when he floors his gas quite alot of dark soot like smoke comes out for defo along with a seperate lighter bluey smoke - I think its blue because we're both colour blind you see but its far lighter though and you can certainly see them both.

2) when revving fairly high the exhaust appears to cough/choke if that makes sense

3) After revving faily high and the revs drop to about 12500, occasionally, the engine shakes quite hard - similar to when the engine is turned off.

Any advice on repairs I can carry out myself would be appreciated as I'm very keen on learning and thoroughly enjoy woking on motors where I can however I do understand if it has to be taken to a garage then so be it.

Thanks and kind regards

CC