2003 Mercedes-Benz E320 Estate - Sold and last drive

[SiC]

While waiting for a build to finish compiling, I went out to put the bins away. Looking back at the car, I thought "sod it, let's get this job started"

As I'm not confident that it'll snap the fasteners with the first turn, I decided it would make sense to turn it around. Mostly for better access if I need to weld nuts and also if it becomes a driveway ornament for a bit, the driveway is still usable. 

Two E-torx 11mm bolts are all that need to come undone.

Long ratchet to give plenty of easy leverage while allowing to push the torx socket hard onto the bolt. My experience of these fixings is they're great unless you cam-out and then they round off in a blink of an eye. Did that when doing the Clio 172 water pump/cambelt job and I don't want to be doing that again. At least this time the access is phenomenal.

Left one was really easy. Right was stiff. Did a bit of back and forth motion on that right one to try loosening it a bit more. I really should invest in a MAP torch so I can heat this sort of stuff up and give them an easier life. 

Anyway they have broke free now, so next thing I need is to pick the thermostat up and wait for my new hose clamp pliers to arrive. I'm going to try snatching this without draining the whole system down. If I clamp the main hoses, I hope to minimise coolant loss. Just Amazon have said my clamp pliers won't be arriving till late this evening now. Ho hum. 

Might just give it a go without them and try to be quicker.

[SiC]

The SBC module on these is the complete master braking system. It looks a bit like an ABS module except it's function is more than that. Basically a fully fly by wire brake system that has a pump, reservoir and actuators. A Bosch idea that they no doubt spent a small fortune developing. Problem is, it has a defined life and will throw an error once enough brake actuations have been performed. A bigger problem for city taxi drivers that used the brake a lot. Replacing this module is expensive and require dealer level tools to bleed + code.

In the 2006 facelift, the whole system was ditched and went back to a normal electro-mechanic hydraulic system. It cost Bosch and Mercedes a fortune to rectify. Obviously America got far more warranty cover than in Europe.

Thus puts a lot of fear in for people who own these cars and makes the post facelift more desirable. Shame as apart from the liability factor, it's a really nice system to use with a few nice features (brake hold/brake stop/etc). 

The biggest question for me is how much life is left on the unit in this car?

Turns out you can date these units. 

On top of the pump there is a date code. It's the first three numbers on B

This corresponds to these dates:

So what is mine?

I struggled to get a good picture but essentially the first three numbers is 005.

This means the unit was built in May 2010. So it's 13 years old and definitely not original. Not sure when it was fitted as I don't have the paperwork. But safe to assume it would have been a few months from manufacturing to fitting.

Looking at the MOT history the car was at 79k to 90k during that likely period. The car is on 146k. So I'm looking at a module that's only done 60k or so mile. Fantastic! No longer something I have to really worry about as it massively reduces the liability level of it being relatively new.

[SiC]

6 minutes ago, Nyphur said:

How does turning the car around make the driveway more usable? What am I missing?  

If it's up on jackstands for a long period, it's less noticeable to the neighbours and thus my wife will less likely moan about another broken car on the drive! So essentially "more usable" as in more usable for storing broken car ornaments.

[Snake Charmer]

2 hours ago, SiC said:

This means the unit was built in May 2010. So it's 13 years old and definitely not original. Not sure when it was fitted as I don't have the paperwork. But safe to assume it would have been a few months from manufacturing to fitting.

Not jealous over here! 😆

[SiC]

Picked up the thermostat from the local car part shop earlier. Quality is okay. Not fabulous but not terrible.

Spotted this fire hazard in the car park. Bit of a heap if I'm honest. Fair play driving that in this mixed weather though.

Upon arriving home and parking up, I realised that the TT and E-class are nearly the same colour. I'm bit bored of blue cars but I seem to keep buying them!

Hose clamp pliers delivered by one of Bezos finest.

Set to work. First off clamping the pipes to minimise loss.

Top hose came off without loosing too much. Pushed it out of the way and kept it high to stop the rad draining.

The stiff thermostat bolt was pretty filthy. Also had a weird chunk out of the thread. I cleaned this up with a wire brush.

Thermostat came off okay. There is a handy flat section on the housing to allow easy prying without risking damaging any machined mating surfaces.

Wire brushed the crud off and fitted the new stat + bolts.

Hose on

Remove clamps and refill

Old stat was a bit cruddy but didn't look too bad as they usually do. 

Mega, mega easy job. Possibly the easiest 'stat change I've ever done.

[SiC]

Ran it up to temperature and tried to burp the system. I think these Mercs are good in their design to not get air locks. Certainly didn't notice any major level drops even when up to temperature with the stat open. This is where having a handheld diag tool is invaluable compared to dragging a laptop out. I've got an OBD extender cable somewhere I need to find as this will make bonnet access of the tool even easier.

It seemed to peak at around 93 to 94c when revved at which point the engine fan kicked in. Sat there at idle it seemed to sit around 87c to 90c.

Gauge is just under the 100c marker now.

 

Went for a test drive on the same route as before. Now not a completely fair test as, even though I had dinner and it cooled off a bit, the car wasn't completely cold as per last time. Also I reset the mpg before setting off this evening as I'd been idling it a long time on the drive.

Anyway, unsurprisingly it got far better fuel consumption numbers than before.

Engine temperature stayed rock solid on the gauge. Maybe went up or down a notch but barely noticeable. Generally sat as above. Engine temperature on the scantool seemed to be around 87c to 89c which is the stat opening temp.

 

As I was quite warm and comfortable where I was sat, I thought I'd go for a quick spin up and down the motorway. Some of the junctions were shut, so I ended up going much further than initially intended. However it gave a good idea of cruising fuel economy. 

It was actually hitting 31.8mpg, just I lost a bit when I booted it past a load of bunched up cars/lorries so I could get to the junction exit easily.

Considering I got 30.9mpg on the long journey home and certainly never hit 31mpg, I can safely say there is a solid increase in MPG (thankfully). Biggest improvement will hopefully be town/village driving where it should warm up quicker and hold the temperature better.

Just need to go on a long run now and see what it really can get. I reckon 35-38mpg is do-able on a 60mph motorway run if I had the patience.

Another thing I've found is that the box gear changes are very old fashioned. Most modern gearboxes I'm used to will try kicking up to the highest gear possible at all times. So even at 30mph you find the box in 6th or higher on a modern unit. This however feels like a mechanical unit of old (even though it's fully computer controlled). So at an indicated 30mph cruise it is in 3rd gear and just under 2k rpm). However 31mph (exactly 50kph) it kicks up to 4th gear and 1.1k rpm. It'll stay there until about 27mph and then it'll drop back down again. So certainly careful use of speed when driving should also give quite a boost in fuel economy too.

Either way I'm massively happy the consumption has decreased - seems to be a solid 16% decrease for slower speed running. Right now it's not that far off what my very similar bhp Boxster 2.7 6cyl did (albeit that ran on super unleaded and this is regular).

If my maths is correct then a 80l full tank fill I'll be saving £19 per tank from the extra range. Basically two tank fulls of non motorway driving will easily pay for that thermostat and the replacement coolant.

[purplebargeken]

See, told ya it was the thermostat... smug face.

[RoverFolkUs]

18 hours ago, SiC said:

Ran it up to temperature and tried to burp the system. I think these Mercs are good in their design to not get air locks. Certainly didn't notice any major level drops even when up to temperature with the stat open. This is where having a handheld diag tool is invaluable compared to dragging a laptop out. I've got an OBD extender cable somewhere I need to find as this will make bonnet access of the tool even easier.

It seemed to peak at around 93 to 94c when revved at which point the engine fan kicked in. Sat there at idle it seemed to sit around 87c to 90c.

Gauge is just under the 100c marker now.

 

Went for a test drive on the same route as before. Now not a completely fair test as, even though I had dinner and it cooled off a bit, the car wasn't completely cold as per last time. Also I reset the mpg before setting off this evening as I'd been idling it a long time on the drive.

Anyway, unsurprisingly it got far better fuel consumption numbers than before.

Engine temperature stayed rock solid on the gauge. Maybe went up or down a notch but barely noticeable. Generally sat as above. Engine temperature on the scantool seemed to be around 87c to 89c which is the stat opening temp.

 

As I was quite warm and comfortable where I was sat, I thought I'd go for a quick spin up and down the motorway. Some of the junctions were shut, so I ended up going much further than initially intended. However it gave a good idea of cruising fuel economy. 

It was actually hitting 31.8mpg, just I lost a bit when I booted it past a load of bunched up cars/lorries so I could get to the junction exit easily.

Considering I got 30.9mpg on the long journey home and certainly never hit 31mpg, I can safely say there is a solid increase in MPG (thankfully). Biggest improvement will hopefully be town/village driving where it should warm up quicker and hold the temperature better.

Just need to go on a long run now and see what it really can get. I reckon 35-38mpg is do-able on a 60mph motorway run if I had the patience.

Another thing I've found is that the box gear changes are very old fashioned. Most modern gearboxes I'm used to will try kicking up to the highest gear possible at all times. So even at 30mph you find the box in 6th or higher on a modern unit. This however feels like a mechanical unit of old (even though it's fully computer controlled). So at an indicated 30mph cruise it is in 3rd gear and just under 2k rpm). However 31mph (exactly 50kph) it kicks up to 4th gear and 1.1k rpm. It'll stay there until about 27mph and then it'll drop back down again. So certainly careful use of speed when driving should also give quite a boost in fuel economy too.

Either way I'm massively happy the consumption has decreased - seems to be a solid 16% decrease for slower speed running. Right now it's not that far off what my very similar bhp Boxster 2.7 6cyl did (albeit that ran on super unleaded and this is regular).

If my maths is correct then a 80l full tank fill I'll be saving £19 per tank from the extra range. Basically two tank fulls of non motorway driving will easily pay for that thermostat and the replacement coolant.

Brilliant result, and with the shameless use of hindsight, just what I expected to see 😉

[SiC]

I reckon a good 80% of cars I have bought have required new thermostats not long after buying. From random purchases to even cars I bought off my parents. So much so, Mrs SiC jokes about it. 

I did want to diagnose it properly with a scantool rather than relying what the gauge was trying to tell me. Most modern temperature gauges like to give an alternative rose tinted view of reality. Which is why I think people always miss that the thermostat is on its way out. 

[EyesWeldedShut]

22 minutes ago, SiC said:

I reckon a good 80% of cars I have bought have required new thermostats not long after buying. From random purchases to even cars I bought off my parents. So much so, Mrs SiC jokes about it. 

I did want to diagnose it properly with a scantool rather than relying what the gauge was trying to tell me. Most modern temperature gauges like to give an alternative rose tinted view of reality. Which is why I think people always miss that the thermostat is on its way out. 

It always seems to be batteries for me - just lucky that way maybe.
FTP Bini is due back here at 6am tomorrow and I'm thinking that's maybe piddling coolant out of the thermostat housing as Guy The Gorilla who was caring* for it in it's previous state of neglect appears to have torqued everything up with a 10 foot long lump of scaffolding. The thermostat housing on this is made of cheese.
I'd rather a thermostat than the rad though.......

[Snake Charmer]

I see a debate has started about tyres on Faecesbook! 🤣 Didn’t take long for the MO to be mentioned.

[SiC]

For those that aren't on the FB group, I asked if 205/60/16 would fit on my rims as some lower models had them. The current 225/55/16 are harder to get tires for and are a good 30% more expensive over the 205/60/16.

I don't even know if MO rated tyres are even still made in this size. 

[Snake Charmer]

Have you looked at prices on Black Circles? Mine came with budget Chinese tyres, luckily fitted in matching pairs on each axle and I was quite surprised at grip levels even in the wet although they would not have been my choice. When they started to get low l fitted the 245/45-18's with a plan on having the 16" wheels refurbished and fitting winter tyres but that went out the window after the accident. I quite liked the Uniroyal Rainsports fitted to our Vectra for the short time before we scrapped it, @Talbot had those off me for his S210.

 

[SiC]

27 minutes ago, Snake Charmer said:

Have you looked at prices on Black Circles? Mine came with budget Chinese tyres, luckily fitted in matching pairs on each axle and I was quite surprised at grip levels even in the wet although they would not have been my choice. When they started to get low l fitted the 245/45-18's with a plan on having the 16" wheels refurbished and fitting winter tyres but that went out the window after the accident. I quite liked the Uniroyal Rainsports fitted to our Vectra for the short time before we scrapped it, @Talbot had those off me for his S210.

 

Blackcircles are my usual go to source for tyres as easy. In February this year I put 4 Uniroyal Rainsports on the TT - 225/40/18 and they were £91.50 a corner (Kwik fit mobile as they were the cheapest). Currently £95.15 a corner on black circles.

225/55/16 in Uniroyal Rainsports on black circles is £119.58 a corner. 

So these tyres are over £25 more expensive for 16s than the 18s on the TT!

205/60/16 is a more respectable £100.50 a corner. But they're narrower and not sure if they'll fit on my rims. 

The 17s in 245/45/17 are £143.94 a corner...

Tyres seem spectacularly expensive and not a lot of selection for this car.

Tomket in 225/55/16 is £73.50 a corner. While they have good reviews on blackcircles from E-class owners, I'm not sure I want to go with a potential Chinese death ring. 

If I have to suck it up to get decent tyres then I will have to. Just wanted to hunt around first to see if there was a cheaper, safe alternative.

[Talbot]

50 minutes ago, Snake Charmer said:

 I quite liked the Uniroyal Rainsports fitted to our Vectra for the short time before we scrapped it, @Talbot had those off me for his S210.

Which have been superb, and are only now (30k miles later?) looking like I need to change them, as they're getting a bit low on the inner edges.

[Pat Earrings]

4 hours ago, SiC said:

Blackcircles are my usual go to source for tyres as easy. In February this year I put 4 Uniroyal Rainsports on the TT - 225/40/18 and they were £91.50 a corner (Kwik fit mobile as they were the cheapest). Currently £95.15 a corner on black circles.

225/55/16 in Uniroyal Rainsports on black circles is £119.58 a corner. 

So these tyres are over £25 more expensive for 16s than the 18s on the TT!

205/60/16 is a more respectable £100.50 a corner. But they're narrower and not sure if they'll fit on my rims. 

The 17s in 245/45/17 are £143.94 a corner...

Tyres seem spectacularly expensive and not a lot of selection for this car.

Tomket in 225/55/16 is £73.50 a corner. While they have good reviews on blackcircles from E-class owners, I'm not sure I want to go with a potential Chinese death ring. 

If I have to suck it up to get decent tyres then I will have to. Just wanted to hunt around first to see if there was a cheaper, safe alternative.

Tomket aren’t Chinese they’re an Eastern European tyre brand produced in Czech Republic. They’re meant to be half decent tbh

[SiC]

5 minutes ago, Pat Earrings said:

Tomket aren’t Chinese they’re an Eastern European tyre brand produced in Czech Republic. They’re meant to be half decent tbh

Interesting I didn't know that. My Slovakian mate who was a big tyre snob loved Barums but I was never sure if that was more the fact they were Czech. I've a set on my MGB and they're fine, but admittedly not a highly stressed application. Also they're owned by Continental and so have a certain amount of R&D expertise they can call upon. 

I have nothing against the Chinese nor their products. Just I'm always wary of any brands I've never heard before no matter their country of origin - just like Tomket. I'd consider possibly Nankang and I know some of their latest sports tyres are very well regarded. 

Would be good to hear anyone's real world experiences with them. 

[Snake Charmer]

All I can remember seeing Barum being fitted to is motysicles (MZ?) or old 13" shod cars in the 80's. 🤣

I don't recognise some of the names currently on Black Circles. I checked V2.0 and they are all Chinese or Korean so that's 8 16" wheels I currently have with tired budget tyres. The two sets of 18" wheels I bought had two Continentals and 6 budgets that led me to check Mercedes at traffic lights, expensive shiny cars with budget tyres seems to be a theme.

Does make me smile when I see a 30-40k cars on budgets and my shed is on refurbished wheels with Goodyears. They did stand me in around £250 a corner with new bolts and centre caps though.

[Snake Charmer]

Have you used the Satnav in anger yet? I had a look and struggled with it, could not find my work address. I think the disc is 2015.

[SiC]

5 minutes ago, Snake Charmer said:

Have you used the Satnav in anger yet? I had a look and struggled with it, could not find my work address. I think the disc is 2015.

Haven't even bothered to be honest. There is a firmware disc kicking around labeled 2006, so presumably it's incredibly out of date. I'll have to try it around Bristol and Cabot Circus as that was radically changed by 2008 when it was built. 

Is there a disc for the satnav system or is it loaded internally in its memory? I haven't looked too hard but I've not seen any additional cd units for the satnav.

I did notice the video button allows you to play DVDs! So you can be driving along watching a DVD and holding the inbuilt car phone to your ear. How times have changed - feels as alien to do that as not wearing a seatbelt!

I'm tempted to potentially fit one of the many android based carplay/etc units in. Just I know it's going to require a lot of faff getting looms from the front all the way into the boot. 

[Snake Charmer]

Left hand side of the load area next to the rear SAM hides the Nav unit.

Disc I have, not very up to date. I may have a solution here. 😉

Beige, I think the same as yours? 🫣

I have an A-Sure Android unit in the other car bought from @Jazoli a while back. Sound quality is not up there with the original unit and can be a bit temperamental but Waze works well and the screen is huge. All the fitting was in dash, nothing in the boot but no Nav on that car.

[SiC]

Full nav is a MOST fibre optic setup iirc. Thus kits tap into the boot CAN to avoid having to work over that. 

To be honest the FM radio reception on the stock unit is fabulous. I can pick up local stations that my other cars can't. 

Just wished it could easily have Bluetooth hands free retrofitted without spending hundreds. There is MOST Bluetooth modules on eBay but I'm not sure if they can be connected in easily and made work. Possibly though if these NTG2 COMAND units were used when that module existed. 

I did see the hookie update discs for sale at around the £30 price point. Seems expensive to me for paying someone else to download and burn a dodgy copy. That said, I'm not one for bittorrenting/Usenet/etc anymore. I'll probably let it be for now. 

[Snake Charmer]

I was thinking of Benzninja for a map update but having looked at the system again the latest update seems to be 2019. I will try the A-Sure Android unit first.

[SiC]

I broke it.

Not intentionally and it was my good intentions that did it. 

As I was getting low battery warnings, last week I thought it would be prudent to stick it on charge. With the battery deep in the boot, some tearing into was required.

Of course opening the boot it did a Mercedes as the automatic load cover just flopped open rather than retracting gracefully.

7 seater seat base needs removing and other bits pulled out of the way.

 

Then I left it. It ended up being much longer than I expected due to a bad bout of food poisoning that has wiped me out for the last 7 days. 

While waiting on another gut movement, I was Googling about charging Mercedes in-situ. While flicking through I saw a brief mention that it shouldn't be set to charge above 14.8v. 

Erm. Well I set the charger onto reconditioning mode. Checking the manual it states this pumps the voltage to 15.8v to fully charge all the cells.

Oops.

Checked the code reader to see what was up. A bunch of different codes on several modules but this is the battery fault.

 

Checking the voltage of the battery and it seemed more than fine. 

Bumhats. Have I fried something? 

Not sure quite what to do at this point as the code wouldn't clear. So did the usual thing of turning it off and on again. I removed the negative terminal, left it for a bit and reconnected.

 

This fixed it and the codes now just show up as stored. These erased fine and the dash warning has gone. Phew!

The climate control has decided to throw this new code up since too. I think a coincidence. Also stored not current. Seems to work fine? Maybe just a sticky actuator.

 

The left side suspension definitely leaks out more than the right. I started the car up to allow it to pump itself back up. On these self leveling rear suspension setups, the car doesn't know what each side position is at. There is only one central height sensor. So while it has pumped itself up, there is still a tilt. Hopefully it'll right itself once on a drive and pressures equalise from cornering?

I know you can kill airbags by keep inflating from flat. I want to get this through an MOT (next month, I need to book!) before spending out on anything like that. So I'll keep them relatively topped up till then. Tbh I'll probably put eBay Chinese special units on it. £100 for a pair versus £800 each (iirc) from MB.

[SiC]

On a related note about battery discharge, I noticed this has an AGM battery in the boot. Whether it should have one or a flooded pack seems to be debated online. Most online checkers seem to say AGM.  

Now here's the rub. AGM batteries have different charge voltages to flooded lead acids. Flooded 12v packs (traditional) usually charge at around 14.1v. AGM 12v however need a higher voltage - around 14.7v. 

I'm getting an indicated 14.0v or so on the dash diagnostics mode with the engine running. Perfect for flooded packs but too low to fully charge an AGM pack. 

So either the alternator has been replaced in the past and not the correct regulator for AGM batteries or these cars are really designed for flooded batteries. 

It could explain why these cars seem hard on their batteries. Apart from the mass of control modules that all seem to only switch on/off by the CAN bus rather than a relay - which relies them on doing their job. Also the large amount of electronic gubbins on board. But also if the wrong type of battery is used and it's not getting fully charged, it'll shorten it's life. 

[SiC]

Also I had fun with this button. 

Thankfully probably for my passengers, it doesn't work in reverse. Otherwise I'd have too much fun bopping them on the head.

[Schaefft]

If it helps, my E65s power module needs to be flashed to a newer software version to support AGM batteries as they only introduced them a year or two later. Yours might only need coding, hard to tell.

[SiC]

Could be coding but I don't think the alternator is "smart" on these, so I don't think the car electronics can control the output voltage. I need to find some proper factory service manuals and literature for this really.

Probably also should invest in a STAR - just pricey. 

I do like having VCDS making all VAG ownership relatively straightforward electronically. 

[SiC]

Back again

Diagnostic tool said this was the voltage so the battery computer definitely can see it but is very low.

 

Checking that the battery computer is reading sensibly.

 

So it appears the auxiliary battery is dieing. I'm not entirely sure why yesterday it was showing 12.7v. Maybe because I had started it at that point and the battery computer started charging it. So it knew it was dead already but still made an attempt to be usable. It's starting to get near freezing now so presumably that and it sitting the last week was its final straw. 

Need to find a reasonably priced aux battery now. Possibly even main battery too. I'd rather have waited for the MOT to change these but that auxiliary battery is especially important with an SBC brake system as it provides emergency power for the braking pump if the main battery suddenly died. Kinda handy to have. 

[SiC]

Found these on the internet. Interesting read. Confirms main battery should be AGM. 

I think originally from this document?

https://www.scribd.com/doc/54283365/Mercedes-Dual-Bat-System