Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

Hey all,

I have recently sold my Skyline (R33 S2 GTS-t) as I am looking a buying a luxury coupe. Now I have my sights set on a Mercedes CLK230 Kompressor 1999-2000. I have had a look at a few (dealer & private), but i'm not 100% sure what to expect with these cars.

I am aware that Mercedes-Benz cars are always built to a very very high standard (these CLK's are all manufactured in Germany) as you would expect when paying $100,000+ brand new.

I have driven one and could "feel" that the car has been in a front end accident. The TCS (traction control system) was not working and the fuel gauge etc was not working either. Now I am also aware that Mercedes can cost an arm and a leg to repair.

My mum owns a 2004 C240 V6 Elegance - the traction control system and sensor screwed up and Diesel Motors took 3 trys to fix it/replace the sensor (fortunately the car was dealer warranty so it didn't cost us anything). So i am kind of aware with maintenance costs and so on. I am also kind of aware what to expect with a Mercedes (CLK) as I have driven one and my parents have owned a few Mercs.

Basically what i want to know from you guys -

  • Do you know anyone that owns a CLK? (230 Kompressor or not i don't mind)
  • Do you know anywhere i can read/find reviews on the CLK? (1998-late 2000 models)
  • Have you ever owned a CLK/had experience working on them?

I am going to have a look at a 99' CLK230 Kompressor on Saturday at a dealer in Osborne Park (WA). It has 130Km's, full Merecedes-Benz log-books/service history, Midnight Pearl Blue, full electrics (seats, mirrors, sunroof, etc), heated front seat, cd stacker - all of the Mercedes options. Price is $22,999 - i'll see how low they will go.

Thanks in advance for any advice/help!

Cheers,

Jason.

P.S. Please no "they are sh!t cars" etc!

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/288360-mercedes-clk230-kompressor/
Share on other sites

  • Replies 121
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Nah, she used to own a 89' Ford Fairlane (3 kids so a big car was necessary). Was a dog on fuel even when it was 60-70cents a litre but absolutely great on long runs. Then she wanted to sell as my older brothers had their licence's and got her first Merc, then her second one (the C240) and now wants to buy an 04'-05' E-class lol.

But yeh, i've looked around on the net and have only found a few very short reviews on the CLK 230 Kompressor's - i want to find some more reviews and read about other people's experiences with these cars as i dont want to buy one and then be up for a new supercharger lol (they are $12,500 just for supercharged from Mercedes).

You want to buy a 10yo German car.. I hope you have deep pockets!

I have seen these cars go for 250,000km's+ with all the correct servicing being done and treating it with respect - i just need to look around and find one in immaculate condition.

And yes, as i stated before, if something goes wrong with the car i know i'll probably have to sell my left testicle to fix it haha

Why not just save a little bit longer and get a s2000 if you really want a hairdressers car ;p

noo wayy dont get a s2000 over a merc clk ... haha i know they can cost a bit to fix up but at least it wont always fk up on u .. they r really good cars + really safe .... id go the merc 100%.. just waiot and find the ryt 1

The next one up is the CLK320, 3.2L V6 - not a huge power difference to the supercharged 2.3L 4cyl, and fuel economy is slightly better in the supercharged 2.3L.

However the price difference between the 230 and 320 is almost $10grand. The suprcharger shouldnt go thu unless its been thrashed its whole life.

Not a fan of the S2K's, dont like the convertable :banana:

My uncle had an 02 clk (cant remember which model) but that gave him endless problems, it was all covered under warranty but as soon as the warranty was up he sold it as the repair bills would have been huge but on the flipside I knew someone else who had an 01 clk and they did not have any problems. Merc build quality really dropped in the late 90's and early 00's before picking up again after that and it was well documented, whether or not the clk was one of the models affected I am not too sure, some internet research should tell you but it seems hit and miss.

I just did a quick search on google, 'clk230 review' and pages from aus, first few results were these so do a similar search and you should find plenty:

http://www.mynrma.com.au/cps/rde/xchg/mynr..._car_review.htm

http://www.drive.com.au/Editorial/ArticleD...=9077&vf=18

Other things you can do,

1. Go on a merc aus forum and look in the appropriate section and search 'problems or 'common issues' etc and you will get a good idea on what to look for when buying.

2. Speak to Euro service centres (other than the dealers) and ask them on their thoughts on the clk230 model and known problems or would they buy that model, what they service costs and parts if needed etc. A place like Swiss Auto in Mosman Park are a big european service place.

What I do for every car new or used car I look at or someone in my family or even customers cars is for me to go with them and measure the paint thickness around the car, if you get vastly different readings it has been resprayed and you look further into it. I am doing that at the moment for my old man as he is looking at an audi a8 but it stopped my brother from buying a 1 year old c class last year, who would have expected that to have had major accident damage but there you go.

Good luck with it

Now you can't say that this CLK does not look awesome!

When i buy one, i plan on doing deep dish rims (not sure on size, offset, etc), chrome projector headlights with angel eyes & HID's, LED tail lights and lower it by an inch or two :banana:

post-42973-1253157887_thumb.jpg

How do you measure the paint thickness? I wouldn't have a clue how to do that?

Also if i get serious with any CLK's i look at, i'll take it to my mechanic (Mr. Auto) and chuck it up on the hoist to check it out thoroughly.

Mate from all the people i know that have had them in Perth they are nothing but problems, there is no one at all in WA that knows how to service them correctly, as soon as you have one of the smallest things go wrong the car is rooted cause once those cheap apprentice mechanics get to it, it will never go back the same, they leave stuff out as you have already found with the traction control on that "repaired" one.

i wont name the service company but my mates had issues with his AC for 3 years under warrenty and after the warrenty was up a normal electrician fixed in i half a day on his front lawn... that says something.

Mate from all the people i know that have had them in Perth they are nothing but problems, there is no one at all in WA that knows how to service them correctly, as soon as you have one of the smallest things go wrong the car is rooted cause once those cheap apprentice mechanics get to it, it will never go back the same, they leave stuff out as you have already found with the traction control on that "repaired" one.

i wont name the service company but my mates had issues with his AC for 3 years under warrenty and after the warrenty was up a normal electrician fixed in i half a day on his front lawn... that says something.

The traction control problem was with my mums C240, and Diesel Motors did fix the problem properly without any difficulties. Servicing wise (oil, filter, plugs), i would do it myself as i know its not difficult at all on those cars.

When it comes to mechanics, i would ALWAYS use my mechanic to do any work on my car as i have known him for a long time and i know he wouldnt screw me around. Unless it was a serious problem, i wouldnt bother sending it to Westpoint Star or Diesel Motors.

Thanks everyone for all your input/advice/etc, much appreciated. Keep it coming!

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now



  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • See if you can thermal epoxy a heatsink or two onto it?
    • The other problem was one of those "oh shit we are going to die moments". Basically the high spec Q50s have a full electric steering rack, and the povo ones had a regular hydraulic rack with an electric pump.  So couple of laps into session 5 as I came into turn 2 (big run off now, happily), the dash turned into a christmas tree and the steering became super heavy and I went well off. I assumed it was a tyre failure so limped to the pits, but everything was OK. But....the master warning light was still on so I checked the DTCs and saw – C13E6 “Heat Protection”. Yes, that bloody steering rack computer sitting where the oil cooler should be has its own sensors and error logic, and decided I was using the steering wheel too much. I really appreciated the helpful information in the manual (my bold) POSSIBLE CAUSE • Continuing the overloading steering (Sports driving in the circuit etc,) “DATA MONITOR” >> “C/M TEMPERATURE”. The rise of steering force motor internal temperature caused the protection function to operate. This is not a system malfunction. INSPECTION END So, basically the electric motor in the steering rack got to 150c, and it decided to shut down without warning for my safety. Didn't feel safe. Short term I'll see if I can duct some air to that motor (the engine bay is sealed pretty tight). Long term, depending on how often this happens, I'll look into swapping the povo spec electric/hydraulic rack in. While the rack should be fine the power supply to the pump will be a pain and might be best to deal with it when I add a PDM.
    • And finally, 2 problems I really need to sort.  Firstly as Matt said the auto trans is not happy as it gets hot - I couldn't log the temps but the gauge showed 90o. On the first day I took it out back in Feb, because the coolant was getting hot I never got to any auto trans issues; but on this day by late session 3 and then really clearly in 4 and 5 as it got hotter it just would not shift up. You can hear the issue really clearly at 12:55 and 16:20 on the vid. So the good news is, literally this week Ecutek finally released tuning for the jatco 7 speed. I'll have a chat to Racebox and see what they can do electrically to keep it cooler and to get the gears, if anything. That will likely take some R&D and can only really happen on track as it never gets even warm with road use. I've also picked up some eye wateringly expensive Redline D6 ATF to try, it had the highest viscosity I could find at 100o so we will see if that helps (just waiting for some oil pan gaskets so I can change it properly). If neither of those work I need to remove the coolant/trans interwarmer and the radiator cooler and go to an external cooler....somewhere.....(goodbye washer reservoir?), and if that fails give up on this mad idea and wait for Nissan to release the manual 400R
    • So, what else.... Power. I don't know what it is making because I haven't done a post tune dyno run yet; I will when I get a chance. It was 240rwkw dead stock. Conclusion from the day....it does not need a single kw more until I sort some other stuff. It comes on so hard that I could hear the twin N1 turbos on the R32 crying, and I just can't use what it has around a tight track with the current setup. Brakes. They are perfect. Hit them hard all day and they never felt like having an issue; you can see in the video we were making ground on much lighter cars on better tyres under brakes. They are standard (red sport) calipers, standard size discs in DBA5000 2 piece, Winmax pads and Motul RBF600 fluid, all from Matty at Racebrakes Sydney. Keeping in mind the car is more powerful than my R32 and weighs 1780, he clearly knows his shit. Suspension. This is one of the first areas I need to change. It has electronically controlled dampers from factory, but everything is just way too soft for track work even on the hardest setting (it is nice when hustling on country roads though). In particular it rolls into oversteer mid corner and pitches too much under hard braking so it becomes unstable eg in the turn 1 kink I need to brake early, turn through the kink then brake again so I don't pirouette like an AE86. I need to get some decent shocks with matched springs and sway bars ASAP, even if it is just a v1 setup until I work out a proper race/rally setup later. Tyres. I am running Yoko A052 in 235/45/18 all round, because that was what I could get in approximately the right height on wheels I had in the shed (Rays/Nismo 18x8 off the old Leaf actually!). As track tyres they are pretty poor; I note GTSBoy recently posted a porker comparo video including them where they were about the same as AD09.....that is nothing like a top line track tyre. I'll start getting that sorted but realistically I should get proper sized wheels first (likely 9.5 +38 front and 11 +55 at the rear, so a custom order, and I can't rotate them like the R32), then work out what the best tyre option is. BTW on that, Targa Tas had gone to road tyres instead of semi slicks now so that is a whole other world of choices to sort. Diff. This is the other thing that urgently needs to be addressed. It left massive 1s out of the fish hook all day, even when I was trying not too (you can also hear it reving on the video, and see the RPM rising too fast compared to speed in the data). It has an open diff that Infiniti optimistically called a B-LSD for "Brake Limited Slip Diff". It does good straight line standing start 11s but it is woeful on the track. Nismo seem to make a 2 way for it.
    • Also, I logged some data from the ECU for each session (mostly oil pressures and various temps, but also speed, revs etc, can't believe I forgot accelerator position). The Ecutek data loads nicely to datazap, I got good data from sessions 2, 3 and 4: https://datazap.me/u/duncanhandleyhgeconsultingcomau/250813-wakefield-session-2?log=0&data=7 https://datazap.me/u/duncanhandleyhgeconsultingcomau/250813-wakefield-session-3?log=0&data=6 https://datazap.me/u/duncanhandleyhgeconsultingcomau/250813-wakefield-session-4?log=0&data=6 Each session is cut into 3 files but loaded together, you can change between them in the top left. As the test sessions are mostly about the car, not me, I basically start by checking the oil pressure (good, or at least consistent all day). These have an electrically controlled oil pump which targets 25psi(!) at low load and 50 at high. I'm running a much thicker oil than recommended by nissan (they said 0w20, I'm running 10w40) so its a little higher. The main thing is that it doesn't drop too far, eg in the long left hand fish hook, or under brakes so I know I'm not getting oil surge. Good start. Then Oil and Coolant temp, plus intercooler and intake temps, like this: Keeping in mind ambient was about 5o at session 2, I'd say the oil temp is good. The coolant temp as OK but a big worry for hot days (it was getting to 110 back in Feb when it was 35o) so I need to keep addressing that. The water to air intercooler is working totally backwards where we get 5o air in the intake, squish/warm it in the turbos (unknown temp) then run it through the intercoolers which are say 65o max in this case, then the result is 20o air into the engine......the day was too atypical to draw a conclusion on that I think, in the united states of freedom they do a lot of upsizing the intercooler and heat exchanger cores to get those temps down but they were OK this time. The other interesting (but not concerning) part for me was the turbo speed vs boost graph: I circled an example from the main straight. With the tune boost peaks at around 18psi but it deliberately drops to about 14psi at redline because the turbos are tiny - they choke at high revs and just create more heat than power if you run them hard all the way. But you can also see the turbo speed at the same time; it raises from about 180,000rpm to 210,000rpm which the boost falls....imagine the turbine speed if they held 18psi to redline. The wastegates are electrically controlled so there is a heap of logic about boost target, actual boost, delta etc etc but it all seems to work well
×
×
  • Create New...