Hi there, I'm posting from London, England.

A couple of years ago I bought a 1993 320CE coupe and it's been great, my first Merc. I love it. I don't drive much so was looking forward to a few good years in it. However, recently I had an oil leak - oil reddish in colour and also there was a high pitched sound coming from the car, especially when I put it in reverse gear.

Took it to a Merc garage (no-one else would touch it, thought it was a gearbox problem) and I've now had some very bad news as follows:

They can't tell where the leak is from, but first thing to do is change a rubber seal which costs £5, but will cost about £850 in labour to do! And IF I do that, they may find that it wasn't that after all and I need a new pump, which will mean they'll have to open the thing up again that will cost me about £2000! (Of course, I could go for that option first).

BUT they're saying that even if we did these things and fixed the oil leak, they may then find that the gearbox has been ruined by me driving for half an hour with not enough oil (i.e. to the garage). Apparently you can't work out if the box is OK until it's full of oil again and you can't fill it with oil until the leak is fixed... On the way there it was certainly slipping a bit.

That car is only worth about £4500! it's done 160,000 miles.

I feel really stuck. I could spend £850 and, if I'm lucky, fix the leak. But if it doesn't fix it, I need to spend another £2000, and even then, I may find the gearbox has gone anyway! aarrgghh!

Does anyone have any other ideas or any advice! It seems I could end up spending more than the car is worth. And I don't have that money to spend anyway! I could spend £2800 and still have a car which is virtually worthless.

Any advice gratefully received from anyone! The only other garage I could take it to would be another, more expensive Mercedes garage! I'm in South West London. I'm sure the garage are being honest but I do need a second opinion.

Please help. Thanks very much. I'd be happy to call anyone back wherever they are. I'm on 44 (0) 20 8607 9401.

Best regards.

Dave