Sics Consolidated Faded Moderns Thread - 2006 Golf Mk5 GTI & 2004 BMW Z4 2.2

[Hooli]

Blimey something sensible!

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

It's amazing that they are now 20 years old. The earlier W211 is a great car. 2003 petrol hopefully means an M112 V6 240 or 320, a superb engine. Post 06 'improved' engines were shite by comparison.

[SiC]

Currently pitstopped at in-laws in Newbury. Zero trouble and lovely to drive. Reminds me a lot of my Saab and I see why people love them. Makes me a calm driver who's happy bumbling along at 60/70mph. I'll write up more later as have a few questions to the Merc experts.

[mercrocker]

Noice... That's the colour scheme, too.

[SiC]

Back home now. While I haven't had a wafty barge for quite some time, I certainly have no regrets with this purchase. At least until the fuel bill comes through.
For those that don't fully know, it's rantingYoof (off the beige) fathers runaround E320 Estate. He's now got a swanky Genesis that I was mightily impressed by. Especially the drive by camera thing. Thanks again to RY and his father in making a super easy transaction. 

 
Couple of things. First the xenon headlights don't do the down/up thing. They seem quite low so I'm wondering if they're in a fault mode. Code scanner hopefully will tell me.

Rear parking sensors don't. At least they don't make any noise when I nearly reversed into a car. Front seem to work. Again hopefully my code scanner will give some indication here.

Rear view mirror has gone weird where it looks like half the liquid has leaked out. I might just bung a second hand unit on. Don't seem that expensive on eBay. Hopefully easy job. 

SBC pump seems to be quite loud. As in I can hear it kicking in when braking. Normal?

Also kicks in every second or third brake application. I can feel the pump through the pedal. Again, normal?

I won't deny, the SBC gives me THE FEAR. But good to know if the above is normal.

Finally the coolant temperature seems to be sitting at 80c indicated on a run (pic below when it creped up a notch when stationary at the services). In traffic it crept up to just under 100c. Is 80c too low?

I don't expect fantastic fuel consumption but I averaged 29.2mpg in total on the way back which included getting stuck in heavy Northampton traffic. 30.9mpg after I reset the counter when I was on the open road. Just wondering if it's running cool and so causing the fuel economy to be higher than it should be. 

 

[SiC]

It's amazing that they are now 20 years old. The earlier W211 is a great car. 2003 petrol hopefully means an M112 V6 240 or 320, a superb engine. Post 06 'improved' engines were shite by comparison.

Correct - it's a E320 attached to the 5spd auto. Reasonable performance but not quite as fast as I expected even in sports mode. Also quite juicy on fuel so far.

While these are incredibly complicated electrically at the time, it does make them feel still relatively modern inside compared. There are loads of little design features that are really neat. You can tell Mercedes-Benz engineers put a lot of effort into thinking about the design of these.

SBC is the elephant in the room though. I'm hoping my scan tool can give me an indication of actuations. I'll also look tomorrow at any date codes to see if it's the original unit or not.

[Hooli]

How many actuations are they good for? I've got 100k in my head but too lazy to google and check.

[mercrocker]

That sounds right to me too. It is the biggest thing that put me off these when I was thinking of changing my 190E for a newer Merc and decided I belonged in the Ford ownership bracket nowadays....I remember thinking it wasn't a lot when you can be braking several times a mile in thick traffic....

[SiC]

300k actuations I believe. Taxi drivers kicked that in the most.

This spent a fair chunk of its life driving down to a previous owners french villa. So hopefully not that high.

Given I paid sub £1.5k, I don't care too much providing it isn't about to trip. The fear is if the pump goes and the red warning comes up, you don't get much in the way of braking before you lose almost all assistance. I believe a failed system only provides 5% of the braking force or something. That complete failure is THE FEAR that I have.

[Hooli]

Aye 95% loss doesn't leave much stopping ability does it.

Must be a Merc thing. I lost all braking without warning in my W124 when the pistons popped out of both rear callipers at the same time due to seized sliders and worn discs. That was fun* approaching a bend much too fast and expecting to late brake.