Luxury Car LOTTERY - I bought An £80K Luxury Coupé For £500! BUT..

Apologies all for the music.. it's only on for a minute.. but was supposed to fade to much quieter.. Editing mistake. Seems to sound worse on a phone than when listening on my laptop.

That's a bargain for £500, even needing a new ABC pump. It's worth way more than that in parts alone

£1500… that’s nothing. Just had our 2016 discovery 4 inlet manifold done for that. My X5 had a transmission rebuild- £2100. If you buy an old 80k car you still pay 80k car repair bills..

Jack, you may or may not remember me but I’m the guy that offered you to review my CL55 These are amazing cars, as you say. I’ve had 3 CL500’s, and my CL55 Kompressor, and I’m keen to see the outcome of this Once done, you will fall in love with it I’m actively looking for a C216 model CL600 as I’ve never owned a V12 Mercedes, so need to tick that off my list Good on you for buying such a rare and special car

Hi Jack, greetings from Perth Oz, I've recently had an ABC pump replaced on my SL55, which was still throwing error codes after i got it back. The codes indicated low system pressure once the car had warmed up and either on sharp turns or going over a large bump. I refurbished the valve blocks with a £50 kit (it was needed as fixed a problem with the car sinking after parked up for a few days) but the issue remained. To solve it, I used a gopro, inspired by your ferrari 308 engine bay footage, but inside the car to monitor the pump pressure using a code reader, whilst recording the intercepted voltage at the ABC pump suction restrictor valve - i ran a thin wire from under the bonnet to a voltmeter on the passengers seat. By intercepting the voltage using my own connectors the car didn't throw any codes. That meant, almost unbelievably, that the restrictor valve connector at the pump was the culprit. Turned out it was loosening with thermal expansion i.e. when the engine bay warmed up - and its grip was likely initially loosened when the mechanic removed it to replace the pump! As it costs zero to squeeze the connectors so they grip better, reckon that'd be a good first thing to check if your car is still throwing codes after the pump is replaced. It would have been good to get a base line pressure reading on yours before the pump gets replaced. The dash message you got indicates the pump can still produce sufficient pressure to be able to drive i.e. you get a drive carefully code at about ~165bar normal pressure is ~ 190bar and a do not drive code at i believe 140bar or less - plenty of refs out there to help. Cheers.

You cannot believe how many people told me to stay away from this coupe. My mechanic was the worst! I went ahead and bought a 2003 CL600 !! The worst of the worst apparently. Twelve-cylinder, twin-turbo financial disaster, WITH ABC. EIGHT years later, I still love the car. ABC has NEVER had an issue. I did have to replace a radiator years ago, but truly the best car I have ever owned. And it will run like a house on fire! Tesla-like torque. It will throw your toupee into the back seat while launching. Enjoy one of the best cars ever made!

it's a facelift and looks in decent shape, you could sell the headlights alone for £500 and make your money back. If the rest of the ABC system is OK, £500 for a recon pump (with a warranty) + £200 for new fluid, ABC filter and a day of your time fitting and flushing the system and it's back on the road. Lots of people who aren't mechanically minded buy lemons and have bad experiences and big bills then come into the YT comments sections spouting rubbish about ABC systems etc. I've had 12 years of trouble free ownership with regular fluid and filter changes over 50k miles on a facelift model.

ABC fixes are so numerous, problematic and expensive, it isn't worth the hassle IMO. The system will leak and each damper will fail eventually costing at least a grand per corner. There are reasons MB itself chose to discontinue this system. Save the money on the rebuilt pump and spend it on a kit to disable the ABC system entirely and go with four new adjustable coil overs to give it the type of ride you want. Its better to ditch this system now before it bites you really hard. Plus, you will be able to sell the (now) working dampers and any other usable parts from that system to recover the cost of the coil over kit. Even the non working pump can be sold as a core.

An old customer of mine had a CL500, he bought it brand new he was a boss at the Pyrex factory in Sunderland anyway i think if i remember rightly he had paid like £70-80 k for the car a few years later he took the car to Mercedes benz to trade in against a new merc, he was offered something like £9k trade in for his car! He was absolutely furious at how the car had depreciated. He kept the CL until he retired i believe, i always thought it was an awesome car especially for £9k 😂

I bought a 2000 W plate one of these from a man whom bought it new, he picked it up from the mercedes factory and drove it back to London, the car itself was awesome but the suspension pump was noisy and the suspension legs were worn, took a hit on it and sold it at a loss... typical manufacturer maintenance schedule ruined the longevity of the suspension system, the fluid needs replacing every 3 years not lifetime like it states

What the heck is going on with the daft mood music?

I've experience with these. Please double check none of the struts are leaking. They're getting harder to find and repair. There's a guy in germany (I believe) who restores and also updates the struts with a lube point for the balljoint which is normally non maintenance. You'd be able to replace the pump yourself being handy with the tools :)

Please please ditch the background music, it spoils it and is totally unnecessary

Welcome to my world! I had a 2002 S-600 (yes a V-12 with 30 k miles, and it developed the same fault with the air suspension.. It cost me 5000 dollars in 2013 to fix the damn thing!

This car brings memories... I had almost same spec car from Japan and only 60k km (30k miles). This is perfect car if you are DIY person. First thing to buy is diagnostic tool MB V.2-3 Icarsoft or cheap Chinese Star tool. Then you can pinpoint electrical issues easily and they are 100% coming to be issue. For ABC chassis there are nowadays huge aftermarket of parts and DIY videos and guides on here internet. Example abc struts are not anymore over 1000€/£ each. Also fixing solenoids can repair lots of problems on ABC system. In my CL500 I used RVS treatment for powersteering and it made my ABC sagging lots of better. "RVS is finnish company witch makes oil additives all sorts and are very good." With these cars it is last option to repair them at the dealer.

2:40 I believe the term you are looking for is 'galvanic corrosion'

There are decided advantages to buying a car and getting it sorted out, the biggest one being that you know the exact condition of the most important system. If you paid more assuming the car was correct, only to have something expensive fail within a day or a week or a month, you end up in the car upside down money-wise. I buy a lot of watches and I’d rather buy a Rolex for less knowing that it needed an immediate service than to buy one that’s been tarted up, only to find it’ll need an expensive service to keep time.

If the pump breaks down, there is a significant risk that metal shavings will come loose inside and spread throughout the entire system. If you want to repair it, you might as well take out a mortgage on your house. Therefore, it's better not to start the engine at all and definitely check the fluid for metal shavings.

I bought an s500L (2000) in 2015, 89k new, paid £1750, had a right laugh in that car for a couple of years. Even drove to Italy and back. Surprisingly faultless! 😊

Beautiful design. Fun fact: styled by Peter Arcadipane, the Australian who designed the body kits for the original Mad Max Falcon coupe.