I Bought a Mercedes S600. Did the Auction Destroy the Engine??

Okay, it is time to name and shame this auction. The Mercedes W221 S-Class. In my opinion, the best car ever made. The looks, the refinement, the industry-leading technology. This car came from the salvage auction and it has a story to tell, which we'll figure out in this video. This is a very rare Mercedes S600 with a V12 engine, and as if that didn't provide enough power, Mercedes added two turbochargers for good measure. I got this car at the salvage auction where it was listed as runs and drives, but with some unspecified mechanical failure. And I know the engine did run because the auction house took a picture of the instrument cluster with the engine running. But here's where it gets scandalous. I found here in the trunk this piece of paper which says, in bold font, do not start, no oil. And so the auction company started it anyway, which is extremely bad for the engine and could lead to catastrophic failure. And so I'm now wondering, does the engine still run? This sign, by the way, was probably put here by the mechanic who worked with the insurance company to diagnose the mechanical failure on this car, and it was very thoughtful for him or her to do that. What really gets me is that the auction employee almost certainly would have seen this because the mechanic would have put it in the passenger seat where it's visible, but ignored it and started it anyway. I think any reasonable person would think the right thing to do would be to put a note in the auction listing saying they didn't attempt to start it because it doesn't have any oil. But instead, they decided to risk destroying this extremely expensive and very rare car. Now, as for the current state of the engine, I have not done any diagnosis on it to see if it's any good. I haven't even tried cranking it over by hand to see if the engine will turn over. Now, if we look underneath the car, I did notice that there's a hole right there, and that hole does go all the way up through the oil pan. So that explains why there's no oil in it. So in the best case scenario, I may be able to get away with slapping a new oil pan on it, filling it up with oil, and starting it up. But in the worst case scenario, it could have thrown a rod through the cylinder block, in which case the engine wouldn't even be rebuildable. There's a good chance it's somewhere in the middle where maybe the engine needs new bearings or a rebuild to some extent, which I will probably do if it needs it. As it was getting dark, I navigated the car through my boulder garden and into my shop. I want to get this underbody shield removed so we can get a closer look at what's going on. Okay, hoo-wee. So here's a closer look at the lower oil pan, and whatever punctured it looks like it didn't go in too far, so that's good news. And also, it looks like there's nothing stopping me from removing this oil pan, so it should be easy to do. As for the rest of the car, there's absolutely no rust on it, so that's really good. Well, someone drove this car over something because the catalytic converter here is all messed up. Look at that. I'm going to see if I can fold that back over and weld it up to repair that. The transmission pan here is dented as well. It also doesn't look too bad, but I definitely am going to remove that, probably replace it, throw a new filter in there, and make sure everything's good. And then the exhaust is also dented as well. And then here at the back, there are some dents here and there, but whatever this thing was, it missed the rear differential, which is really good news because this would be very difficult and expensive to replace. It doesn't really matter if I break the pan further, so I should be able to just pry this off, maybe. There it is. Here's a look inside of the oil pan, and so far things are looking pretty good. And I do want to note that so far there's no sign of any thrown rods. The ones that I can see look good. And then I also looked on the sides of the engine, and I don't see any oil leaking down. And in my limited experience, when there's a hole in the side of the engine block, oil leaks out and makes a big mess. So I think we might have avoided the worst case scenario. Now, I was hoping to remove one of the main bearing caps, which is that right up there. But unfortunately, this right here is the upper oil pan, which is in the way. And the upper oil pan is a five-hour job to remove, so I'm not going to do that. What I am going to do, which is just as good, if not better, is remove this right here, which is very conveniently located for me to remove this connecting rod bearing cap. I think it's usually the connecting rod bearings that go first. Anyway, so I think that'll be a good check. I do not want to drop these bolts in the dirt. So I have not wiped the bearing down yet, and this is what it looks like. And I noticed that it still has quite a bit of oil on it, which is a very good sign. If you look over there, you can see that it looks like there might be kind of a large chip of something. I'm not sure if that's embedded in the metal or what exactly the deal is with that, but I am going to try to wipe it, and we'll see what it looks like. So after wiping down the bearing, you can definitely see there is some wear in there. But on the other hand, you can also still see the factory machining marks. So this bearing is not in too bad of shape. And if I use my fingernail in there, it feels completely smooth. So I think this bearing, while it's not brand new, I think it's OK and good to go. And then as for the crankshaft, the bearing journal there looks quite good. So I think we are pretty close to the best possible scenario here. Before I reassemble this, I'm going to use some assembly lube on this bearing. Just going to squirt a healthy amount of it on there. OK, I did not make a note of which way this bearing cap goes on, but I think it goes on like this. I checked the manual, and these bolts are reusable. If you're using new bolts, they have a seven stage tightening sequence. But if you're reusing old bolts, they only have a three stage tightening sequence. OK, it's not often that I get out my torque wrench, but for this, I'm definitely going to. So the first stage is five Newton meters, which is not much. Right about there. OK, the next stage is 15 Newton meters. And now the last stage is 90 degrees. Right about there. All right, that's pretty tight. OK, I've got a nice new oil pan here, so let's get it installed. OK, I'll give that about an hour to cure, and then I'll fully tighten down all the bolts to nine Newton meters. Well, I got the damaged catalytic converter out of the car, and this is what I'm dealing with here. Now, just for giggles, I looked up how much a new one of these costs, and it's over $2,000. So I think I'm going to try to repair it by welding it. And if the check engine light comes on, that's a problem for future me. I started out by trying to clean up the stainless, and then I applied heat to persuade it back into shape. There's still a pretty big gap here. So what I did is I took a piece of scrap stainless I had laying around, and I think I'm just going to use this to patch it. Well, there's the finished product. It's definitely not pretty, but really all it needs to do is stop it from leaking, and it will definitely accomplish that. Well, I got that catalytic converter reinstalled, and at this point, I think it's throw some oil in it and start it up. OK, oil filter first. That definitely looks like an oil filter that hasn't had oil in a while. It's a man filter with the Mercedes logo on it, which is a good sign. This thing may have been serviced by the dealer. You know, I don't know if this is going to be beneficial or not, but I don't think it'll be harmful if I pour some oil down here on the outside. It might go down into the pump and help prime it. That's enough of that. Anyway, this gives me a little bit of oil here so I can lubricate these O-rings so they don't go in dry. And the oil that I'm using, of course, the good stuff, Liqui Moly. This is a 5W-40. I thought I had ordered 0W-40, but apparently not. The 0W-40 would probably give it oil pressure a little bit faster, so that would be more ideal. But this stuff is good oil and this is the right oil for the car. I love these bottles and how easy they are to pour. 9 liters of oil and it should be full now, though it doesn't have a dipstick. It's got a dipstick tube, but just a cap. I think it uses an electronic sensor to sense the oil level. No, it's got keyless go, but I am going to use the key just so I have more control over it. Okay, here we go. This makes me really nervous. It sounds decent. All right, I think I hear something leaking. Okay, there's some leaking here, which is probably fuel. If I got a fuel leak, that's like the least of my problems. I can fix that, probably. Well, that is a huge relief to me. Now, it did stumble a little bit at first, but this engine hasn't run in about a year to a year and a half. The gas is really old. So once it got going and ran for a second, it sounded really good. No knocking noises or anything like that. So I think I got really, really lucky here. Well, the fuel leak is under this panel coming from right here. So I just got a bunch of these little plastic nuts right here and then it should come right off. All I see is that this hose here looks like it's seen better days and it's covered in fuel. So I suspect that's the source of the leak and I don't really see anywhere else that the fuel might be coming from. But to be sure, I'm going to set up the camera and you guys can tell me if it's leaking while I start the car real quick. Oh, yep. Oh, that's a lot of... Oh, geez. Yeah, all right. Looks like that's the leak. Well, I have a piece of universal fuel hose on hand that looks like it's about the right size. I don't know how much fuel is going to spew out of this, but I'm going to clamp it to try to minimize fuel spillage. And now to try to undo this clamp here. Go on, go. All right, good. Okay, there we go. Okay, good. My fuel hose fits. It's a nice tight squeeze. Okay, got it. And here we go. Oh, that's not too bad. Good. Tighten up these new crimp clamps. I guess I'll go turn the ignition on now and we will see if this leaks. All right, ignition is on. It's not leaking. Sweet. Steering feels nice and tight. Got a little bit of play there, which suggests a bad wheel bearing. It's not too bad. It's not like the wheel is about to fall off, but definitely fix that before I drive this across the country. Which, by the way, I mentioned it in another video, but I have an upcoming cross-country road trip, and my goal is to take this car, but I have a lot of maintenance to do first. The front brakes are tricky to see, but it looks like they have maybe 30% life left. The rear wheels, that's pretty tight. Feels pretty good. And then the rear brakes are pretty similar to the front brakes. There is some life left. Now, I mentioned the monster maintenance I have to do on this car, and let's start with the cooling system. Right here, we have the reservoir for the main cooling system, but back here, there's another radiator cap. There's a separate cooling system for the intercoolers. Now, if you look over here, you see something that says active body control, and this is the fluid for the suspension, and there's also a filter to change for that, too. And then we've got the power steering, which I think that's what that is. We've got the brake fluid over here to do. We've got the transmission and the differential, which you can't see from here. So I feel like I've hit the jackpot of content here because there is so much to do for this. Okay, I think it's going to be the first time I drive this, and it did go into reverse, aside from this center console not staying closed. Everything is... and that. Everything is good here. It's a little tight backing out of here. Okay, it is time for me to name and shame this auction now because I've done business with them several times now, and every time, it's been a bad experience. Disclaimer, the viewpoints stated here are purely my opinion based on my experience and the experiences I've heard from other individuals. It should not be taken seriously. Please don't sue me. Also, I'm sort of burning a bridge here because this company does sponsor YouTubers, and they're never going to sponsor me after this. But with that said, I don't want their money anyway because while I do occasionally take sponsorships, I really only want to work with companies that I actually like and would recommend. Okay, this company, and you've probably heard of it, is Copart. And specifically, this car came from the Rancho Cucamonga location in California. However, I don't think it matters where you go because as far as I can tell, every single location is bad. Go look on Google Maps or something like that and look at the reviews for any Copart location, and they all have terrible reviews. You'll see reviews of people who had their cars towed there after an accident, and then they go back to collect their personal belongings only to find that everything valuable was stolen. And then there's nothing they can do about it. The manager of the location won't return their phone calls or even talk to them. Now, as for me, I've bought all three of my S-classes. This one, my blue S550, and that black one over there, which is my parts S-class. I guess I'll start with that one. Because I bought that in Virginia. Now, I had to wait four hours for them to load me. And I should mention that they require appointments, so I had an appointment. I showed up on time, I checked in, and then waited four plus hours for them to load that onto my trailer. And then after I got it, I realized this car is way worse than it looked in the pictures. And it's basically a write-off. I'm using it as a parts car because of that. And that really speaks to one of their many problems, which is that their pictures are terrible, and they often don't represent their vehicles accurately. When I went to go pick up my blue S550, that was another instance where I had to wait four hours to be loaded, despite having an appointment and showing up on time for it. And it really goes to show that these locations are run really badly by people who don't care about their jobs. And then as for this one, they started it up with no oil, as if they're trying to destroy the engine. And then they didn't even make a note about that in the auction listing. And lastly, Copart has really high fees. They're much higher than the other company that does nationwide salvage auctions. Stay tuned for part two of this series, where I do my signature every fluid and filter service on this vehicle. It should be a nice long video, because there is a lot of content there. Thanks for watching.