I stay in South Africa, Gauteng, Benoni

SO my dads c class c220 w203 cdi 2003 model was outside during a torrential downpour and while its raining we notice suddenly the lights are flashing and blinkers are blinking etc etc....
Anyways long story short the front fuse box that holds the Front SAM and the ECU for the engine had gotten flooded and that too from underneath.
Car wouldnt start after the rain and my brother kept hammering the ignition i think until he shorted out quite a bit of the SAM stuff. Water was till inside so yah the battery was F%$^ed too.

Get hold of a ECU Specialist that goes by MERCKEYS and this is his site
www.merckeys.co.za
This Guy is full of himself and ****. Please avoid this guy at all cost.

I tell him my predicament and promptly tells me its gonna be 5k for another ecu and all you have to do is plug the ecu in and it will start the car.
I told him that it looks like just one IC is damaged, maybe we should just swap that from a spare ecu that he has lying about. (I have a background in Electronics and IT)
he checks it and says nah thats the IC with the main info etc etc. i was already frustrated because in the interim i had begun to use my C32 as a daily driver coz my dad had my daily driver so i told him to go ahead.

the ecu arrives but doesnt start the car, call diag guys and they cant make heads or tales either.
pillar to post then finally some kind guys tell me that i can buy a "lockset from a working vehicle which comprises of a ignition module, cluster, steering lock module and ecu of course.
few months later i find a wrecker who is breaking apart an exact c220 like ours so i buy the 'Lockset" for another 6k.

By now the car is sitting by another Merc Specialist by the name of Shawn Kelly who has his premises in Benoni Town who had a c3 diag machine but knows absolutely nothing about diagnostics other than how to erase errors and has the most incompetent bunch of workers under him of the like i have never seen before. i gave them the lockset to install. but lo and behold another 3 months down and they cant even get the car started!!!!! (remember i had seen the wrecker remove the lockset from a working car, he drove to the spot where he then began dismantling it, so i know it was 100% working)

Finally frustrated i order my own c4 sd connect diag machine and buy my own laptop and configure the software myself. and guess what ( i am not a mechanic ). I managed to start the car and have it running under 2 days!!!!!
( seriously not blowing my own trumpet!!!)

i then had a few errors which caused the car to go into limp mode and thus was stuck again. Called a few guys and they all reckoned that i need to virginize the ecu to new state and re code the box.AND THEY ALL WANTED ANOTHER 2.5K FOR THAT!!!!!

Fed up again. i went to the dark side of the interwebs and then learnt how to virginize ecu myself and got the hardware 1k worth. re virginised etc and then one day i had inspiration to maybe fix all my original equipment since i had come this far and from de soldering the IC (which i had initially had request Dale at Merckeys to swap out)i put it into my original ecu, [;ugged it in and did diag and LO AND BEHOLD ITS WORKING NOW BUT WONT START THE CAR!!!!!!!!
a little more investigation and i then find that MERCKEYS Dale had removed a EEPROM IC from my original board !!!!!!!!!!!!!
So basically the Guy has now Officially robbed me.

I then put the eeprom from the replacement that he had supplied me and i recoded it and now all my ORIGINAL EQUIPMENT THAT IS CODED TO MY VIN IS WORKING!!!!

Its been a long hard and stress full 8 months for me and i hope no one else has to go through anything like this for something so simple.

Car now starts and is working beautifully and no thanks to these rotten apples who have no work ethics, principals and morals.

These guys are Dale from Merckeys from Vereeniging who supposedly is always out of the country also on business trips....

Shawn Kelly from WS Services in Benoni Town, Gauteng.
This guy gave me my car back with the steering adjuster broken and a leaking gearbox sump saying that when i get the car started i should bring it back to him and then he will sort it out...(i had to do this on my own too)

Anyways if anybody needs a working w203 c220 cdi w203 2003 automatic Lockset can get in touch with me on the forum.
I will most definately also help with install of the lockset since i seem to be a guru after all this...

 

Those guys suck. I hate hearing businesses preying on people and just outright being terrible people. On the bright side at least your car is working and you've learned lots of technical expertise w/ the car.

"virginising" the ecu is something that many of us would love to learn about. Do you think you could tell us more about the hardware required and the steps you took to do this? It would save a lot of people from the potential headaches and expenses that you faced.

 

Reasons why a ECU has to be virginized

1. You are replacing your current ecu with a used Working one.
2. Your Existing ignition module, cluster and steering lock are working fine and only need to change the ECU.
3. If for some reason your ECU has become corrupted and the SCN coding (coding that links your cars features and specs to your VIN number) has to be performed. (known to happen because of water damage on a small scale or for absolutely no reason at all!!!)
4. When a ECU is Virginized then it now comes in a state where 'Changes can be made to it'. A ECU is 'De-Activated' and 'non personalised' and hence enabling one to perform SCN Coding which can be done by Mercedes Dealers or Third party Mechanics who have access to Daimler Servers (Commonly found).


Tutorial to Virginize w203 c class Engine Ecu

1. Locate and Remove Ecu. Sometimes in the front fuse box and sometimes not (google it to find it for your exact model)
2. unscrew the lid and carefully pry it apart. some might need a hot air gun to loosen the glue first.
3. The IC Required for virginizing varies from model to model but thety are all of the 8 legged variety.
4. Google to find exactly which ic holds the Immobilizer data for your ECU.
5. Diesel engines generally have a IC that has written on it 95p08, Petrol i think has also 9532 or something.
6. get hold of a eeprom reader called xprog-m. Version 5 is the cheapest and does the job. ver 5.55 is the most expensive.
7. solder the ic on the adaptor board supplied by the xprog.
8. install the software and connect device to the computer.
9. read the data from the chip. if the chip doesnt read then swap the connector around.
10. save the data from the chip to file.
11. go to www.digital-kaos.co.uk and post a new thread requesting some to virginize your file for you.
12. take the virginized file and now write back to your eeprom that is still connected to xprog reader.
13. desolder the chip from the reader and solder back in exact same place and direction on the ecu.
14. re connect the ecu and have c3 or c4 machine ready to Configure your virginized ecu. (c3-c4 machine only can code these, not launch etc)

Hope this helps, will update from time to time as i remember finer details and have the time.

 

Good info Dollos. Thanks for the tutorial. Sorry to hear you got ripped off. That really sucks. What comes around, goes around. I know that doesn't help you get your money back, but there will be a time when someone takes advantage of them.