Hi all,

I purchased a 98 ML320 last year (~125K miles now). We've been pretty happy with the experience, until I brought it to the local Mercedes dealership to check on the recalls and do a regular maintenance. Moreover, I wanted to get info on the 2 problems that we noticed with the car so far:
1 - About half a dozen times in a year, on steep hills, the "check engine" light would turn on and we cannot pass above 2nd gear. Very similar to what is reported on that thread: https://mercedesforum.com/m_82682/tm.htm
Although I don't think it's got anything to do with radio waves...
2 - It seems that the power steering does not work at very low speed (when parking basically).

So they inspected the car and found out $10K worst of repairs!!
They really don't know about the "check engine" light, and offer to change the whole stuff for about $3K. They're not so sure about the steering issue either, but found out that the tie rod and tie rod ends are broken and needs to be changed. They also reported other problems that seems to be common on this car: transmission leaking, rear spring broken and a whole bunch of other things.
As you may know, $10K is over the price of the car! I'm quite disappointed because we went over our budget to get a Mercedes, because we didn't want to deal with mechanical problems.

Anyway, now what confuses me is that I don't know if I should spend thousands of dollars on repairs, or thousands of dollars on trading it in for another vehicle. We don't have a lot of money, but we need a car... We can live with problems like the ones stated above, but we don't want to end up with a car that's not usable any longer. What would you advise me to do??

Thanks in advance.

 

if the tie rods have play then fix them..if just the boot is torn forget it, till a later date. the broken spring....wait on that too, unless it failed inspection for that. fix the leaks though

 

well hello there - yes i hear your "screams" - i am screaming too - i have some experience in mercedes garages and all of it is somewhere between bad and catastrophic - i would certainly plan and plan and plan on spending that kind of money(indeed anything above whatever you can afford to throw away) as in my international merc garage experience they will charge you a fortune and NOT repair the car - indeed i have tried reaching mercedes germany and come to a dead end - EXASPERATING!!! - bottom line is i am on my own -but!!! if you dont allow yourself to be intimidated then this is probably the best place to come to and without any intention of being patronising - learn - thanks Andy