For about two years now I have been having a problem starting the car in cold (60 degrees or below) wet weather. The key won't turn, sometimes the radio will work, or sometimes the windows will work, but the car will lock and unlock.

Then after working on it awhile (taking key out, trying it again, letting the radio play, locking and unlocking, tryng the windows) it will suddenly start. After that, it will work fine, except that the wipers and turn signals will suddenly stop working or suddenly start to work while you are driving.

MB has looked at it, but circumstances have to be right to re-create it. Otherwise, they don't see a problem. They have seen it have the problem, but have no answer or no diagnostic about what the problem is.

I love this car, but hate being let down in the cold rain. Has anyone had this problem?

 

It sounds to me as though you have a water leak. I would check the drains at the bottom of the windshield for debris clogging the drains.

 

Someting is shuting down your interior can.
Your dealer has to find out what it is (my gess is a rear window motor).
If you want to try that your self unplug both rear window motors, if that fixes your problem plug one of them back in & check.

 

Hm. I will try that next (if I can figure out how to do it and if the car will actually not start up when I don't need it!)
The latest twist: Damp weather now doesn't seem to be the entire problem. All yesterday it was between 35 to 40 degrees and fairly dry and it would not start all day. (The car was in the garage, so I don't think water is the problem.)
Today was a little warmer and as it got to 40 degrees, I could open the windows by unlocking the car through the trunk using the manual key in the trunk lock. When it got to 45 degrees it started right up!

 

We managed to find and solve the problem - so I thought I would post it for anyone else who might need it.

At first, they replaced the battery and they were confident that this solved the problem. I was not, and it did not.

I brought the car in again 2 days later, and reiterated the problems with the wipers, turn signals and windows. (miraculaously it started but nothing else worked). One of the things that I noticed was that the wipers and blinkers wouldn't work until I dropped my son off at school and he slammed the door. Right after that, everything would start working. This strengthened my feelings that it was something in the circuits in the front of the car.

They practically took apart the whole front part of the interior but finally found the problem!!! In short, there is a connector that controls the electricity for these items. One of the pins from the connector was broken off in the female part of the connector. Thus, when it contracted in the cold, it "disconnected". As it warmed up and expanded or was "wiggled", it made the connection.

Pardon some of the gibberish, but I am going to copy what they wrote on the invoice:

Broken circuit 30 pin in connector x26/23 CP 4.0 tech 204.
Short test found codes P1603 and P1570 in the ME control unit, indicating CAN communication error and start enable not sent. ....found connector s26/23 under the passenger rt front carpet to cause the blinkers to be intermittent when wiggled. Disconnected connector and found the female end (I assume he actually meant male end) broken inside the connector for the circuit 30 power that goes up to the EIS. It goes on to say that he rewired the three circuits with new connectors. So I think I have 4 connectors under the floor instead of one. I am not sure why they did it this way, but it works.

The part # was: 001-546-99-41 Cable Connector. The total for the 3 connectors was $15.84. The labor was substantially higher than that.

I tried to tell them several times that I thought the problem was with some connection in the front of the car, but no mechanic has ever listened to a woman...

 

Wow. Congrats on fixing things. You are lucky to have had a mechanic that was actually able to solve the problem. Many others would still be throwing expensive parts at the problem.

BTW, the service people don't listen to men either...