I have a 2003 Mercedes c230, it has 155,xxx miles on it now. It was driving fine, however it was pulling to the right really bad so I took it in for an alignment. They told me that my control arms were bent and needed to be replaced on the front wheels. I ordered Front upper and lower control arms online and took them to have them installed and get the alignment done.

I got my car back about 10 days ago. While driving it I had noticed that the pull to the right was not gone and still pretty severe. This weekend I left to visit my parents. It's about a 130 mile trip all highway. Car gets there fine just the annoying pull to the right.

When I get off the exit ramp and accelerate the car is stuck in gear and will not shift it just continues to rev. It even revved past redline so I pulled over, turned the car off, back on, and it seemed to be working ok, but it seems the transmission was doing hard shifts like it was having a hard time deciding what gear to go into.

This morning I get into my car and turn it on and it starts flashing ESP Malfunction. The car usually idles right around 1,000rpm, but right now it is idling at 1,500rpm and revving up to 2,200rpm, then dropping back to 1,500 then revving back to 2,200 and continues to do that back and forth.

When I put the car into drive it drops back to normal RPM's (1,000) and doesn't rev up and down, however it doesn't drive. I step on the gas and it does nothing, doesn't rev the engine, nothing just sits there.

Please help, what could this problem be? Any possibility they broke or forgot to connect or install something when replacing the control arms?

Side note, I just paid the last $6,500 owed on the car to get the title, and now this problem happens. Since I just spent so much to pay off the car, I have little money left for repairs, so I'm hoping this is a relatively cheap fix, but it seems like it's going to be very expensive! Fingers crossed that it isn't!

Thanks for any advice!

 

Well, no ideas I guess. Called AAA and will be having them tow it to the shop tomorrow morning. Really hoping it's not an expensive repair! I'll update when I hear from the mechanic.

 

Sounds kinda silly but hows the charge on your battery? I havd a bad battery didnt show up on my display and turned out it was near zero charge..it gave rough idles car wouldnt go over certain rpms while in driving mode and tranny would not shift correctly

 

Thanks for the reply!

I checked the battery yesterday and it was reading 12.4 with the car off, and 14.4 with the car on, so would seem to be fine, however this battery is probably at least 2 years old, maybe more. I have owned the car for 2 years and have never replaced the battery, and not sure how long it has been in the car from the previous owner. It is an original mercedes battery however I don't see any dates on it, at least I didn't notice any type of expiration dates when I was testing the voltage yesterday.

Anyway the battery could be bad even though it's putting out good voltage numbers?

 

Ok... sorry, another little update! This car has gone absolutely bonkers, and is possessed by a ghost!

I come home last night and the radiator fan is running even though the car is off, and the key is NOT in the ignition. It would rev up, shut off, rev up again, shut off. Mind you the car hasn't been driven in 60 hours at this point, so it's not like the engine was warm. Weirdest thing I've ever seen, and I posted a quick video from my phone to youtube of it:


I've confirmed with a neighbor that this must have been going on for about a 6+ hour period while I was gone from the house. This has definitely drained the battery, which is now sitting at 10.2v and the car will not start.

The car is flashing the following warnings:

Restraint System Service SRS
Brake Lamp Visit Workshop
Brake Fluid Visit Workshop
Brake Assist Not Available BAS
ESP Not Available ESP

I have pictures of all of the warnings as well but am not going to post them unless for some reason they are needed. The brake light seems to work fine, and there is plenty of brake fluid in the reservoir so I'm not sure what the problem is at this poing. What a headache so many warnings flashing up like christmas trees on the dash. Anyone have any idea what could be wrong here at all?

I will pull the CEL codes later today and post them when I get my OBDII reader back.

Should have the car towed to the shop here in about 6 hours, so hopefully will get more info at that point in time.

 

Sorry to hear lad,I would get this checked by a certified mb Mechanic !!! I never experienced anything like this maybe could be sensors !! Do any of your w203 guys have any input to this?

 

Sounds to me like the ECU may be bad because that is what has caused many on here to have fan running issues (never heard of issue while car off though)
I had some esp/brake light/brake wear errors because of corrosion issues at the connector for the abs/esp computer. Maybe you could check that connector it is the black box with the break lines going into it. all you would have to do is look in the electrical connector and see what it looks like mine was corroded like crazy and I had to replace the computer.