Fai+H777

When I turn on my beautiful beast a clicking sound resonates from inside my dash. I went to the stealership and he said it has something to do with a piece of plastic hitting on something in the aircon.

He quoted me around NZ$3000 because he said the whole dash had to be removed..... It only clicks like 4-5 times then stops..... 3k

Anyone had this problem or have a better solution than selling my soul for want of a piece of plastic?

AndySays

warranty wont take care of it?

Fai+H777

No warranty. I imported the car myself from Japan.

RumbleUK

Hey Fai, yeah this is a pretty common problem and the stealers do charge that because of the time it takes to fix the problem.

You might want to try resyncing the a/c system, to do this you hold down the defrost and recirculate buttons, hold both these buttons down until they start flashing, the syatem should start resyncing and should finish in about a minute, if after a minute or so the system is still going through the motions then just turn of the engine remove the key and wait a while and it should stop resyncing. This process sometimes rectifies any stuck or sticky stepper motors that cause that clicking noise.

And no not worth the money to get it fixed otherwise, unless they happen to be removing the dash for someother reason?

rpayer

I had this issue with my 320. It is common with the w203. Mine was covered under warranty but without it only would have been $700. You need to go to another dealer or something...

Fai+H777

Thanks! I'll try it once I get my car back from the mechanic. You won't believe it but the last person to own the car had the wheels attached by about 3mm. I mean if that came off while I'm on the motorway it would cost me thousands if not tens of thousands in damage let alone damage to myself. Some people...

MBenzNL

that is BS...the dash does have to come apart quite a bit but swapping out that one little piece of plastic doesn't take longer then 1 hour on cars without a booster ventilator in the armrest and without a digital climate control...on the full optioned 203s it might take up to 2 hours if things don't go too well but that is still only 2 hours max.
If the dealership needs longer then 2 hours they should send their techs to some usefull training courses.

greetingz,

raklert

OKay Fai. this is very common problem on 203. Its the clicking noise(sounds like engine knock) comes from a gear in the AC (i dont know how to call in english) the reason its make noise because MB use piece of **** plastic to make it. What my friend did was take the car to aircondition garage and have them built a custom metal one. It cost like USD200 and finish in one day.

Whatever you do dont go to that stealership of yours. NZD3000 is absurd price!!! Try AC shop in your area that specialize in Benz and have them look for you see if they know whats going on.

LuxuryC240

By doing what you said, has this actually worked for you with the same problem? And also, say I try doing that, nothing else can go wrong with the system right?? I bought my c240 from a non-mercedes used dealer and it makes this noise, im aware of the cost of repairs, but I'm extremely weary of causing a problem if there isn't one because the noise doesn't bother me too much and the heat works fine and stuff. Its a 2003 with only 45000 miles, the car is excellent everythings perfect except the click. Thanks

slammedcclass

i have the same clickin noise thing it does it every 5 minutes or something and it pretty loud. my car is only 17000 miles and it started doing this when it was 12000 miles.

benzmodz

I am flying into NZ some time soon. We can do it together with a service kit that costs about $50. The dealers order these fix kits for this problem and the rest is labour and profit. Only takes 4 hours. So why not put something towards my plane ticket and the rest is your good luck.

TechSuperstar

Hey check out my thread labeled "noisy air conditioner". You might be having the same problem I had. It is most likely a bad flap attached to one of the stepper motors. You need to find which one it is. Try directing your air to the top, to the floor, to the middle, and feel each side for the blowing air (I wasn't getting any air to the floor). I ended up paying $500 for what they said was a 4 hour job, when i could have done it myself in an hour.

JohnCL

What are you waiting on? Get it in under warranty.

Fai+H777

Not all of us have warranty

Racin_fool

in the other thread, I posted up instructions you can follow to do the repairs yourself. There are more than just that one for the lower footwell flap actuator that fail, but that is by far the most common I have seen cause this clicking noise.