W211: I just bought a W211 with a bad SBC pump - OH JOY.

Okay, well, I did it. I bought a 2003 E500 SPORT. A "real" sport, meaning it has the heated steering wheel, LED tails, stiff sport suspension, xenon headlights, birdseye maple wood, aluminum cluster trim, etc etc. Essentially a very highly optioned W211 before you start getting into AMG territory. Which is fine by me, because this car was picked up for very little money.

The car isn't without faults and will take a bit of work to get back into good shape. Runs fantastic though. I'm considering making it the new Artisan support/daily vehicle. It's been time to retire the old DailyDiesel as the winters are catching up to it and I've decided a bit of speed never hurt anyone. We'll see if I like this enough to keep it around for a while and clean it up.

A list of needs!
- SBC Pump Assembly

- Driver Fog Light and Bumper Mesh Pieces

- A proper buff and detail job, paint is faded and it needs a good overall cleaning
- Wheels (I'll most likely put the 18" AMG's on this)
- Remove all the VHT Nightshades garbage from all the lights (restore headlights)

- Couple minute rust spots to fix, a door ding gone too far
- Driver door needs replacing. For some reason the bottom edge seam separated! Rough life

- BIG exhaust leak somewhere in the middle of the car

- Miscellaneous junk

Here's a pic of her loaded up on the trailer. I think it's got 20% tints, just like the current ride, so that's a huge plus.

Tucked into the garage for a better inspection and to make a list of any needs. I seem to have lucked out - new airmatic springs on all four corners and a fresh tune up was given to the car not too long ago.

Seeing as I had some time to burn, I started with the headlights. Takes 15 minutes to knock out both sides with MY method. No more yellowing thankfully. Can't stand it when these plastic lights go yellow. The xenons work great.

I had the car hooked up to Xentry to get an idea of what was going on in the car's computers and the rear SAM was throwing license plate light short codes. Both were blown out, but even with new bulbs wouldn't light up. So the trunk came apart and sure enough there was a rubbed through wire just above the SAM. Cleaned it up and viola - working lights. Threw some LED's in there instead of the normal incandescent stuff.

That's basically where I'm at with this thing. I've gotta find some sort of SBC to throw at this thing. Probably going to try and find a 2010 or newer build date assembly on ebay and see what happens. I'll probably work on getting the exhaust leak buttoned up as every time I start the car it's got that big V8 gurgle - can't have that sort of negativity in my life.

To be continued!