Creaking noise
People often believe that because a vehicle is a bargain it will continue to be so. They’ll buy a big old luxury motor for a song and mistakenly think that they have got a lot of car for the price paid. But there’s a reason that many expensive cars sell cheaply and that is because, even though they are old, the maintenance costs can be astronomical.
One of our regulars brought in his 2002 Mercedes S-class that was suffering from a strange creaking noise from the rear, accompanied by an illuminated stability light and a sudden loss of power, all of which added up to suggest an expensive problem. The noise when driving was so bad that we expected to find a collapsed wheel bearing when we jacked up the vehicle, but this was not the case. In fact, the smoothness of the rear wheels when spun was exceptional.
So what was the cause? It turned out to be a corroded driveshaft that had expanded and pushed the reluctor ring out of position. This was slightly scraping the inner section of the hub and upsetting the vehicle’s ABS and stability functions. The solution to restoring a smooth ride was fitting a secondhand driveshaft.