C32-4ME

Sorry if I am breaking some kind of double post rule - but I need to figure something out by tomorrow afternoon!

My car did its little trick at the shop after the 185 goodies were installed and the shifter refused to go any further up than the "N" position after pulling into the wash bay

It did this to me last Thursday, but it seemed to either "fix itself" over night, or was released in some way by doing the screwdriver procedure.

My faith in the shop here is dropping like a rock. They charged me an hour of labor to see if they could find any reason why it got stuck at my home (it was fine when I dropped it off). No codes were found, no nothing....but I got worried when the Tech called me and asked where the brake switch was , telling me it was not under the pedal like it should be. He was puzzled why the brakes were even coming on, and wanted to know if I had bypassed it in some way

He also wanted me to explain to him how to do the screwdriver thing!!!

To make a long story short I drove down to the shop and showed him in person...but this time it did not work.

The car has been sitting there for 6 days as of tomorrow, but they have only worked on it one day (closed for the long weekend).

Does anybody have any ideas what might be wrong?

Thanks!

Scott

hammertime21

Find another shop, if possible. If they cant find brake switch and dont know how to take it out of park with screwdriver to get out of park, they shoudnt be working on your car. Is it just stuck in Park? It could be a brake switch, but you mentioned a "wash bay", was it detailed? If any liquid got into the gear selector module("shifter"), that could be the problem.

C32-4ME

The car is "limited" to drive and neutral, the shifter will not move up to R or P.

Yeah...I am kind of ticked off at them too right now. I made a call first thing this morning, and the service writer told me to call back as the tech just got in ( 8:30am ). I call the SR back at 2:00 and he puts me on hold, then the tech gets on the phone and tells me the laptop he was using last week had the wrong brake schematic on it??


I ask him what the deal is and he says that he "pulled 4 or 5 codes" today, and that it looks the shifter solenoid and/or ESM "Electronic Shifter Module" might be causing the problem, but he cant tell for sure without tearing half the dash board apart to get to it.

I asked him if the codes confirm that the parts are defective, and he said he was not sure...could not tell until he could test the actual part.

Ohh boy....I have a feeling this is going to get worse before it gets better. I guess I could stop them right now, and take it to the nearest dealership
(about an hour away).

hammertime21

yeah... the ESM ("shifter") has a high failure rate, especially if something was spilled there, or "detail solution" was used around shifter. But, is is easy to diagnose bad "ESM" with mercedes SDS, and there is no need to tear apart dash to "test". they are just buying more time cause they dont know what they are doing.

C32-4ME

Thanks for the help hammertime...that sounds like the most likely deal here, as there was some liquid spilled in the shifter area (water). It was not much, but I bet it did get down into the mechanisim.

Do you know if it takes 2 hours to swap out an ESM? Do you happen to know the part number?

Thanks!!!