1986 560 SEL?
 

Hi, i have to get a car pretty soon and two of my friends are selling theirs. one is a 1986 560 SEL with 120,000 miles on it the other is a 1998 jeep cherokee with 70,000 miles and a new engine. i hope there is no bais envolved in your opinions (due to the fact this is a mercedes forum). but i was just wondering which one i should get. i am mostly looking for reliability. i don't know too much about the benz, but its got heated seats and a phone (so im leaning towards that). but the jeep is newer. so im really stuck in this decision making process. are there any problems i should be ware of with any of these models? all your help will be greatly appreciated. thanks.

RE: 1986 560 SEL?
 

They are both very good vehicles the 560 sel with only 120,000 miles is very low and there shouldnt be any problems but if it was me and i was only going to have one car to serve all my needs i must have 4x4 so i would get the jeep but if it wasnt for 4x4 i'd get the benz. Either way assuming they have been treated the same they will both last.

RE: 1986 560 SEL?
 

ya the jeep's got the 4x4. as far as i know my friend's mercedes has been sitting in the garage for a while. are there any problems with that? also what are the areas most likely to fail in the benz and how much would it cost to fix those?

RE: 1986 560 SEL?
 

Hi Nicksta,

Welcome to the Forum.

Are they asking the same price for both vehicles?

First off, I'd be curious to find out why the Jeep has a new engine at only 70K miles. That sounds a bit strange to me. I'd probably want to find out what went wrong with the first one. Also, I'd run a CarFax.com CarFax to verify that it indeed ONLY had 70k miles on it. Actually, I'd run it on both of them as it will give you a good history on where they are from, how many owners it's had, and if they were dealer maintained. All of that will usually show up on the CarFax report.

Now with the Benz, it's kind of hard to say... if it was taken care of, that car has a lot of life left in it. I've seen many of those model go well into the +300k mile mark, but like I mentioned, these were well looked after.

Hope this helps and good luck with your decision.

RE: 1986 560 SEL?
 

If they set for awhile the seals in the water pump dryout then that needs to be replaced not always but common enough for it to me taken into consideration.