Wiring Harness for 300D

That is wrong... totally wrong... it affect cars in early 1990. He is lying.

Your "mechanic" seems to be looking to pick your pocket for this is the first mention that '97 MY has such a problem. Earlier years had problems with bad insulation on their wiring harnesses that caused shorts.

Does your car have a problem? If so, what?

Yes, the car will not start now. It turns out that the person who I bought it from did not replace the covers over the electronics. Water has gotten inside the components and the service guy has had the car for 2 weeks and says the wiring harness is cracked and the engine control module may be damaged and need replacing. The glowplug light has never come on. Bottomline is the car is a mess right now.

Thanks for your help!

Engine control module? What state are you in?

I apologize to your mechanic, after the back story is exposed.

Was this car in a flood? Have YOU ever driven it? If so, how was the engine started then? If not, I hope the car was free, or almost so for this is going to cost some $$. Suggest you buy a wrecked twin and scavenge it for the needed parts for there will be a bunch.

Thanks for the reply. My mechanic showed me where the insulation had become brittle and the wires were showing. A cheap fix would be to just tape them up. I was getting a short that we couldn't trace. The computer wasn't communicating either but we fixed it over the weekend.

Thanks again for your help!

The car would not start and the mechanic couldn't connect to the computer so he wanted to start replacing parts to eliminate the possible problems. He showed me the terminals of the harness and that they were corroded with the insulation cracking. He said this was typical of this model.

What computer? This is a 124 I take it?

He said 1997 so it is a W210. Ever heard of W210 with wire problem?

It happened to me again. The car has been stuttering and hesitating recently and when I slowed down at an intersection, the car stalled and wouldn't start. Good thing it wasn't "in" the intersection. I had the car towed to my mechanic and he showed me the wiring to the EGR sensor was broken. He told me that this was causing the stalling and to fix it would take replacing the wiring harness costing me around $1200 with replacing the motor mounts.

Follow-up to my follow-up:

I tried to solder the wire back into the connector for the EGR sensor. It wouldn't take so I just went ahead and disconnected the sensor altogether and the car seems to be running better. Are there any dangers or risk to disconnecting the EGR?

What do motor mounts have to do with the engine's wiring harness?

A damaged wiring harness must be replaced:

it won't fix itself,

its unreliability makes the car dangerous to drive,

the constant aggravation will drive you nuts,

the car can't be sold this way - even if you bought it so.

The pain can be lessened by installing the new harness yourself - tedious, dirty and time consuming but no physically hard wrench pulling.

MB, stop thinking the mechanic is dishonest for IMHO you are being dishonest, with yourself - about the lousy car that YOU bought! Remember, nobody forced you to buy THIS car. You thought it was a bargain - that's the worst kind of luxury car to buy, there are no bargains. One pays up front for quality or later for having bought crap, but in either case one pays!

That sounds kind of drastic, just to deal with a broken wire going to a specific component. Reminds me of the usual dealership approach to soaking customers: "While we're replacing that light bulb, we might as well replace the alternator, the voltage regulator and the wiring harness, just to make sure. You wouldn't want your wife and kids to be stranded someplace, would you?"

Why not just splice in a new length of wire? Seems to me the splice could be adequately weatherproofed with a coating of grease inside some shrink tubing. Badda-bing, badda-boom; on the road agin' in no time.

Geoff

Nice! Thanks.

Yeah, but you pay a lot less then chumpy people lining up to buy new ones.

Ah yes, a man after my own heart. I would probably pull the whole harness off the car and then go over it carefully with a bright light and a magnifier. Wire and solder are cheap and not exactly rocket science.

Marty