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Thought you folks would find my story interesting so I will share it here.
I have a 2005 cl500 which I bought from the second owner about 3 months ago it has about 120k miles. I had just got out of work, hopped in my car backed out and floored it out of the parking lot. When I let go of the gas I heard a small metallic jangling noise from under the car. When i reached the red light in front of my work the car shut off and would not start again. cranks over and never fires up.
So I pushed the car to the side of the road and after calling a friend and getting a scanner found the code p0335 crankshaft position sensor circuit. OK easy fix i thought i went up to the parts house and swapped in a new crank sensor on the side of the road. still no dice. same code p0335 keeps coming back, so I crawl under the car remove the plastic cover and take a look inside the bell housing where I find a chewed up aluminum bolt.
A week goes by. I finally have a chance to take the tranny out and look what I found- the bolts holding the bell housing to the rest of the gearbox are made of aluminum and the heads of the bolts are popping off. the first to brake destroyed the tone wheel for the crank sensor. When I put a socket on the rest of the bolts and gave them a little twist 4 more snapped off with very little effort. So I went ahead and replaced all of the bolts with regular steel bolts.
anyone else have this problem? why did these bolts brake? it does not look like anyone has removed this trans previously... simple thermal cycling wore out these aluminum bolts?
I love the car- big, fast, beautiful body, affordable to purchase because of depreciation ,but many of the design decisions on this car are just mickey mouse **** not meant to last.
Also note i ordered a used flex plate with the same part number only to find the holes for the crankshaft bolts were in a different configuration. And so it goes.
tranny with new bolts
why use aluminum bolts?
broken aluminum bolts from Mercedes transmission. The heads snapped off with just the weight of my 3/8 ratchet
potato quality photo of damage to crankshaft position sensor tone wheel. this caused p0335 and no start
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