Hello Ya'll. I just found this site. Hopefully it will ease my worries about owning my S class. Heres the deal, and I hope somone can help. I purchased this car from a 1 owner. 78k. Two days after driving it around, kinda hard, smoke started coming out from the bottem.. Turned out it was trans fluid coming out of the breather on top of the trans. 3k later the car is fine. but I was wondering, the trans oil got replaced at 30k and 60k. also, I know this lady I bought it from and she always drove "kindly" Any ideas why itbroke? weak trans on a too heavy car? Next, window regulator broke, replaced myself. I was looking online for forums and I found one where they were talking about s class evaporator, supposedly they are extremely hard and expensive to fix I saw from 2k to 3k. Is this true? I was thinking of selling it, but it runs sooo awesome and it a total chick magnet... But now I;m alittle hesisiant. Anyhow, I know its 10 years old. But any ideas on the evap? Is the 3.2 inline a good engine? it tends to vibrate alittle at stops lights, when in gear. Had the trans shop look at it they says its normal. Is the inline 6 inhiertly tend to vinrate? THANKS! Tony

 

The transmission was probably overfilled if it doesn't leak anymore, make sure to check the fluid level when the car is idling and up to normal operating temps. sitting on a level surface.</P>


The evaporator is an expensive thing to go bad. Just about the whole dash will need to be removed to replace it is why the high numbers, mostly labor. If it works fine now than it's anyones guess as to whether you'll have problems with it or not.</P>


The inline 6 is a very good engine, it's weak points are head gaskets which usually cause an oil leak at the rear passenger side of the engine, timing cover seals, throttle bodies, etc. etc. If everything works fine now and the engine isn't pissing out oil than chances you should be fine for a while. As far as durability goes the 6cyl. is very robust and can withstand lots of RPMS'ssssss</P>

 

Swapping out the evaporator in your car is quite a task -- book time is in excess of 20 hours. If you want to tackle the job yourself and save a whole bunch of money, we actually offer an instructional video that walks you through the job, step by step.

 

<FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color=blue size=4>Thanks for the post. I checked out German Star, and the evap isn't that bad $. Maybe the video would be a good thing. <IMG src=smileys/smiley14.gif border="0">I feel alittle at esae now. THKS.</FONT>

 

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The video is excellent -- we've had folks actually call and thank us after they completed the job.</P>