I picked up my 2024 C43 AMG Estate at the end of October 2024

I noticed a noise from the rear which I thought was something sliding about. After some investigation, a trip to a Mercedes Benz Dealer along with lots of searching online I now understand this to be a common fault / issue.

MB it seems are trying to pass this off as normal operation.

The issue is that any time I drive below around 16mph the rear camera deploys, then as soon as I travel above around 19mph the camera retracts. The result is that in city driving the camera is almost constantly deploying and retracting. This is happening in many models of Mercedes cars. Not just C class. The noise is more noticeable in cars which are estates or hatchbacks.

I have read that MB USA applied a fix to a GLE 450 which involved these parts and a software update.

Insulation Load Comp A01-1PV659
Flap Insulation. A01-1PW660
Insulation A01-1PV623

There hasn't been a similar fix for a C class car produced however I did find this tech note "Complaint:

The flap of the reversing camera opens and closes by itself during fonryard travel. No camera image is displayed in

the head unit. The reversing camera or the 360' system functions normally when activated manually or by engaging

drive range "R".

Cause:

This is not a malfunction, but an intended system behavior: Calibration of the reversing camera is in progress. For

this, the cover on the camera is opened for max. 5 minutes in fon¡vard travel. The calibration can be performed as long

as the vehicle speed is < 30 km/h and the steering wheel angle is < '10". lf these criteria are no longer satisfied before

calibration is complete, the calibration sequence is aborted and the camera is retracted. The sequence is restarted

when the criteria are met again.

Remedy:

Complete the calibration successfully. For this, the vehicle must be driven forwards for a certain time (usually less

than one minute) at a speed < 30 km/h and a steering wheel angle < 10".

This should be done in daylight and with no vehicles driving closely behind. The camera must be able to see the asphalt.

When calibration is successful, the camera flap closes automatically."
Yesterday I managed to find a quiet section of road. It was day light and I drove for around 2 mins at 15mph or less + in a straigh line with no cars behind me. As usual the camera was deployed. Then it retracted and it stopped opening / closing continuously at speeds below 16mph and above 20mph. I then switched the car off and on. The fault had retuned again. So I repeated driving for around 2 min, straight on a quiet section of road in the daylight and again the "remedy" worked.

It is a truly ridiculous "remedy" as it's nigh on impossible to find a quiet section of road where one can drive at less than 15/16mph in a straight line, + in day light, + with no car behind.

I'm wondering of anyone else with a C43 Estate has managed to fix this fault?

Here's a video of the camera noise which I hear almost continuously in town driving. I'm stationary here but its' the same noise when I drive.

 

how are they supposed to fix intended behavior?

I don't understand your complaint. It's doing what it was designed to do. Insulating the surrounded area is all you could do to minimize this

 

The "fix" at the moment is this

" Complete the calibration successfully. For this, the vehicle must be driven forwards for a certain time (usually less han one minute) at a speed < 30 km/h and a steering wheel angle < 10"
This should be done in daylight and with no vehicles driving closely behind. The camera must be able to see the asphalt. When calibration is successful, the camera flap closes automatically."


Do you fell that having a camera that opens and closes almost continuously in city driving, making a dreadful noise is a great design?

One fix would be to not have ridiculous "calibration sequence" or for it do one time calibrate at the workshop and that's it.

It's a reversing camera. Just disable this within the parameters.

It will only stop doing the continual opening and closing if one drives in a straight line, at a speed less than 30kph, with no car behind & in day light,

So anytime for me in Scotland just now, between the hours of 330pm and 8.30am I drive my car I have to put up with this constant noise.

Also if I can't find a quiet road with no cars behind me and it's day light and it's straight road I have to put up with the noise.

If I do manage to get this "calibration" to complete as soon as I stop the car the process starts again.

Here's a scenario -

I need to drive to the supermarket

I drive a longer route there so I can hopefully find a straight quiet road I can drive at less than 30kph in the day light. I manage to do this and the horrendous noise stops as the "calibration" has completed. So I coutinue to the supermarket. I stop my car. Buy one item, and restart the car. It now need to find another straight quiet road hope, + I hope there's no one behind me who will be annoyed I'm driving at less than 30kph + I hope that it's still day light,. Then maybe I can drive a part of my journey with no horrendous noise.

How can this possible be as designed. It's a fault in the design which MB wont admit.

They will maybe come up with an updated version of software. This wont be released as fix. No software companies do this. It's an "update" they say since to say it was fix would be admiting a fault in the product they sold. This in turns can lead to people asking to be refunded or compensated.

If enough people complain. MB will maybe update (fix the flaw) the software so it doesn't need to continually go through a "calibration" process.

There must be some flag in the software that once it's "calibrated" this is on. I don't know how the software is written but maybe it's possible to "calibrate" the camera once and then have this software setting / flag marked as calibrated. This might be a solution,

 

I have a 2024 GLA 250 and have been to the dealer several times for this same issue. They tried insulating the rear hatch to soften the noise but that didn’t help. I wrote to Mercedes Benz corporate customer service and was told that this problem “cannot be fixed in this country.” And they suggested I visit my local dealer. Obviously didn’t read that I had done that several times. The service manager told me it is a design characteristic (aka flaw!) and Mercedes is aware of the problem but has no plans to correct it. I am thinking is selling. I didn’t have this problem on my 2019 model.

 

On my EQE 500 SUV this behavior always coincided with a blue box with white P appearing on my driver info screen, indicating car was actively looking for parking spots. If I drove around for a couple minutes below a certain speed the active parking assist would stop looking for spots and the blue P would disappear until the next restart.

 

Most new MBs for some reason have this issue, see the GLE thread.

 

https://mbworld.org/forums/gle-class...very-stop.html

tl;dr Apparently it is the camera calibrating.