cm60k

Anytime Paul,

That called "Gas Sneaky Reset", it's actually for TCU reset, it's not reset for whole system,

disconnecting battery at least 2 hours, or all night is good idea, try that, if nothing happen,,

prefer to diagnose the car via STAR/SDS only, to see all Electronic values with variant codes...

ZAYED,,

Glyn M Ruck

Paul. Sorry ~ been tied up. That reset is purely a throttle reset. All it does is align the pedal with the throttle plate. i.e. Pedal on the floor = WOT.

If you have 3.8bar or 55psi at the Schrader valve on the fuel rail your fuel pump etc is fine.

I don't like the sound of the engine cranking. Sounds as if you have no compression & your chain might have jumped. Please pull the plugs & compression test all 4 cylinders & report.

Sorry the CPS was such a sod but it is. All procedures in the Wiki. Usually does not require Star adaption & self adapts. WIS method is belt & bracers.

Cintoman

I ended up disconnecting the battery to my car, and I'm leaving it as is for the night. I'll reconnect it in the morning, and hopefully, resetting the ECU this way resolves the issue. I'll report my findings.

Cintoman

Cintoman

No need to apologize Glyn. Sorry...I just read your post after writing my above post. OK. I'll see if my local AutoZone can loan out all the tools for me (fuel pressure gauge, compression tester), and I'll see if I can report my findings. I'm not sure if I'll be able to get to doing this on tomorrow (Wed), but I should be able to on Thursday.

So, based on what you say, my hopes of startup upon connecting the battery back are pretty nil. Sure hope it's not the timing chain.

Thank you again,
Cintoman

Glyn M Ruck

Remember to compression test at WOT. You will need two of you. One with foot on throttle & cranking the car & one handling the compression tester.

EDIT: I hope I'm wrong but something does not sound right in your clip.

cm60k

Paul,

Completely agree with Glyn, cranking sound is worried, take it slow with inspection, don't be hurry,,

let us know...

ZAYED,,

Cintoman

As expected, I connected the battery back up, started the car, and I'm still getting the same sound. Now I'm really starting to get worried.

Hoping I don't have the same issue that JD203 had in his thread here:

https://mbworld.org/forums/c-class-w...ngine-wow.html

or Hogger's thread here:

https://mbworld.org/forums/c-class-w...ine-apart.html

Cintoman

cm60k

I hope NOT Paul,

it's soo necessary to take the car to good garage that has STAR/SDS to diagnose everything careFULLY, then you can spot out the next step..

ZAYED,,

Cintoman

Hey Everyone,

Earlier today, I was able to properly test the fuel pressure at the Schrader valve on the fuel rail. And while starting the car, I got exactly 55psi. Spot on with the specs. See attached pics.

This weekend, I'll move onto the next step...compression testing each cylinder. I'll report the results.

Thanks again!
Cintoman

Glyn M Ruck

OK ~ good. Fuel pump & relay healthy, filter not blocked & fuel pressure regulator is accurate.

Tick!

LILBENZ230

Oh dear Paul. That is exactly the same noise my ex's Toyota Camry made when it snapped its timing belt. The 5S-FE was a non-interference engine, though.

Fingers crossed.

Cintoman

Matt...oh gosh. I'm sure hoping that's not the case with mine.

I ended up doing some work earlier today (Saturday). I removed each of the coil packs and then each of the plugs. I believe the cylinder order is 4-3-2-1, with 4 being closest to the firewall and 1 being the closest to the front of the car. Is this assumption correct?

If so, with that assumption, here's what I found with each of the coil packs/plugs:

4 - a very little bit of oil on the boot, and some oil/gas on the plug.
3 - clean
2 - clean, but the plug was on there really tight, and tough to remove
1 - clean

With all the plugs removed, I then placed each plug, one by one into its' respective coil pack boot/sleeve and tested each individually for spark when cranking the engine.

Results:
4 - could hear spark sound, but it was weak and couldn't really see the spark.
3 - good spark sound and could visually see the spark
2 - good spark sound and could visually see the spark
1 - good spark sound and could visually see the spark

It looks like coil pack 4 might be a bit "weak". I'll do some more testing in the morning using a new plug and testing each coil pack one-by-one to see if there's any change.

So we have spark, we have fuel, and we have air. My neighbor, who's helping me out also noticed that he could see part of the pistons going up and down while looking down into each spark plug hole. Which leads me to thinking that if the pistons/rods/valves were bent, we wouldn't be seeing this movement necessarily, would we?

While cranking the engine, we also noticed some pressure if we put our hand over the spark plug holes. I'll be doing a compression test on each cylinder in the morning.

Just to confirm on the compression test: all 4 coil packs and all 4 spark plugs should be removed. Then screw compression tester into one plug hole, crank engine at WOT, and I should get some compression results. With the other 3 plugs removed from the other cylinders, I'm assuming that each cylinder is "self contained", meaning that even though the other 3 cylinder's plugs are removed and "open", that shouldn't affect the compression results of the other cylinder that I have the compression tester screwed into, right? Basically meaning that I don't have to plug the other 3 cylinders with the spark plugs while testing the one cylinder with the tester, correct?

Thank you again,
Cintoman

Cintoman

Ok, so I tested compression this morning on all 4 cylinders, and it's at ZERO for each one. Nothing at all. The needle didn't even budge. I also tested the compression testing tool on another car to be certain the tool is working fine, and it is.

Was thinking of removing the cam cover to check out the timing chain. But not sure if I should even do this now or not.

Finally, I tested the "weak" coil pack on the other connectors, and it remains weak no matter where I plug it into. So that coil pack may be on the way out. But that's not really a major concern now.

Any suggestions on next steps?

Thanks again,
Cintoman

LILBENZ230

Zero compression.. I'm going to go ahead and call this one, Paul. I believe it has jumped time. The sound of the engine, the compression results, and the fact that this is increasingly common on the aging M271s all point to this.

There is really no excuse for this crap, especially on a car with south of 100k miles. The issue is what forced my hand to get rid of my 2005, though I adored it.

Time to get it to a shop. It goes without saying but I hope you can avoid the dealer.

Cintoman

Matt,

I'm going to have to agree with you on this one too, as much as I wish you were wrong. There is absolutely NO excuse for something like this. I've had other cars (foreign and domestic) that had no problems with close to 200,000 miles on the engine. And no issues whatsoever.

I too adore this car, and take so much pride in how it looks. No one can believe its age and how many miles were on it...it looks this good. Paint/body/interior is in meticulous condition. Wheels with not a scuff or scratch on it. Washing/cleaning/detailing it weekly, if not more often.

Thankfully, I know of 2 Indy shops. One in Providence (German Motors), about 15 miles away, and the other (European Auto Solutions) in Waltham, MA, about 60 miles away. I just had a control arm done by the latter, and the owner Ed is great over there. I have calls/emails into both of them as of last week, giving them the status of what's been going on. I'll have to see what each one thinks, determine what the cause is, and how much they'll charge for the work. I think what needs to be done on the car goes far beyond my mechanical knowledge.

Such a depressing moment right now, which I think will become even worse when I find out the true damage.

Cintoman

Glyn M Ruck

Sadly a jumped chain & bent valves.

I'm fairly optimistic that this will be all that will be damaged. I'm afraid the simplex chain is a weakness of the design & should be a service item. Change that lazy coilpack.

Get your chosen Indy to get the head off & inspect & report.

Sorry Paul & good luck!

Glyn M Ruck

For others that read this thread. I know I'm repeating myself. M271 engine only.

Always listen for a chain rattle when you start the vehicle cold after an overnight stand that disappears after a few seconds as the oil pressure rises.

The minute you hear this pull a new chain & fit a new, use once, tensioner element.

This will prevent 99% of these incidents.

Method in the Wiki.

LILBENZ230

Paul your 05 is a real beauty with great options. I hope you can get her fixed without too much financial strain and enjoy it for many more years.

I also hope as many people as possible see Glyn's advice and take heart.

tommy

Or stop buying cars with that engine, of course.

LILBENZ230

I would never recommend buying an M271-equipped car to anyone. I really loved mine, but the timing chain was the deciding factor for me to move on. Jury is still out on the newer M271s in the C250 (and CLA and others)?

VVF

I read some Russian forums on the issue, and they have a lot of skipped chains/ruined sprockets at 50k KM (!) on various flavors of M271 engines.
Seems like even the turbocharged ones eat sprockets for breakfast.
I'd think it's because of the oil people use, since we know these parts do last much longer, say, in the US.

Good luck Paul.
If you get a reman head for $750 (per Hogger), and the rest is well,
then for "reasonable" price (compared to the $1k+ quotes for just the chain) you will have a new head,
and engine good for at least another 100k miles, which is not too bad.

LILBENZ230

I wish we could say it happens due to maintenance but that just isn't the case. Paul does not sound like the type to neglect things. I will say that I always used the M1 0W-40 229.5 oil, kept it topped up, ran it 13000 miles between changes on the paper filter (that's the only one available in the US) and I was just getting a little chain noise at 146,000 miles when I got rid of mine.

There doesn't seem to be any particular reason some go 150,000 like mine and some can't make it to 100,000. I don't know where the variable is.

Cintoman

Glyn, your endless advice on this Forum has never steered anyone wrong. And if there's even just one other person with this 271 engine that reads this post and gets this work done on their car as soon as they hear the noise, then I'll at least be happy that someone else doesn't have to go thru what I now have to go thru.

The part that bothers me is that I DID hear the sound on startup back in Sept/Oct 2013 or so, brought it to an Indy shop, and they vehemently denied it was the chain, going so far as to say that those rarely if ever fail, and if they did, it wouldn't be until around the 200K mile (320K km) range. They also mentioned they serviced a bunch of these cars/engines, and never had issues with the timing chain. Even on cars with far greater mileage than mine.

They attributed the issue to bad camshaft adjusters. Replacement (at USD $900 each), plus, if I **really** wanted the chain replaced, they'd do the whole job for a little over USD $2,200.00, if I recall correctly. Of course, this happened right around the time when I unexpectedly got laid off from my job, so the income I had coming in from my job, was now gone.

Looking back, of course, I should have just insisted on doing at least the chain. But taking their words and experience, plus my now zero income, led me not to get the adjusters and the chain replaced. Furthermore, I changed my oil afterwards, and ever since then I heard the startup rattling sound again perhaps 2 or 3 times. I attributed that the noise to my car being a bit lower on oil (it drinks about 1 quart per 12,000 miles), so it might have been down a little bit.

Thank you Matt. My plan is/was to keep her for at least another 4 years or so. I purchased it in Sept 2006 with 13,025 miles, exactly 1 year after being put in service. I hope to fix her back as new, because, like you, I absolutely love the car otherwise. I feel that I haven't even "got used" to the car yet, even though I've had it for nearly 8 years already, putting over 86,000 miles on her.

Again, I can't reiterate enough on how much knowledge there is on this Forum. Glyn and so many other moderators, as well as the rest of us Members and MBWorld Fanatics, quite often know far more than most dealers and indy shops.


You're right Matt. The minute anything wasn't right on my car, I'd be up researching and figuring out how to fix it. Whether it was a dinky little light under the rear view mirror that burnt out (a big thanks to e1000 who built an LED one for me), or figuring out how to correctly wire my illuminated side sills, to going outside in near 0 F with buckets of hot water to wash the sand/salt from my car, often on a daily basis during the winter (neighbors most definitely thought I was ), I was always making sure my car ran 100% and looked 100%. I also remember going out at 2am to my local 24-hour Walmart to buy a rear license plate light because mine burnt out as soon as I pulled up at home. Couldn't stand that a light was burnt out, even if she was parked and I was in bed asleep.

Latest update: I'm working on getting my car over to an Indy shop. The 2 I called today (mentioned in an earlier post of mine) haven't called me back yet. But I do have another I will be calling in the morning.

samaritrey

Sorry you had this happen keep us updated

Glyn M Ruck

Yes ~ the cam adjusters can rattle & Benz has a de-burring procedure that does not work in my experience.

We have had an epidemic of these chain failures in SA.

The noise the cam adjusters make is different but also somewhat oil pressure dependent. You learn to distinguish the difference.