I am newbie here so be please be nice. I have the most wonderful wife in the world and for my birthday she bought me a 2003 CL55 AMG. It is the car I have always wanted and now I have it. the problem is that I drove it for one day and the "Advanced Body Control Drive Safely" warning came on. I parked the car immediately. After reading some threads on this site mostly by "Oxygen" I have decided to have it towed to an authorized service center and have it repaired. however I know nothing about how to fix this car. If it was a Corvette or RX7 I could rebuild it blindfolded.

I looked under the front bumper and found a hatch on the drivers side with fluid leaking from it. I opened the hatch and found what I believe to be the tandem pump. coming out of that pump on the bottom are two what I believe to be high pressure lines. the more inboard line has a metal coupling about 4 inches from the "pump" about 8 inches of house before another steel coupling. to the rear of the first steel coupling the line is ruptured. I will take pictures and try to post them. My major question is how screwed am I?

 

Very

 

^ what he said.

 

*UPDATE*

I went to a service center two doors down from my work. I brought pictures of the ruptured line and we were able to idenditify it on the schematic. Good news is the line will only cost $125.00 and take two days to get. the bad news is it is the longest line in the entire system. They are going to call me later with the labor quote. Wish me luck.

 

sorry to hear that. How many miles are on the car? I recently purchased a 03 55 as well and im very concerned about this ABC issue... It would be cool if you could post up some pictures as well. Good luck and keep us posted.

 

This weekend when I am home (at work now) I will post all the pictures I can. Also I will post the parts diagram, part numbers, labor cost, everything.

I had a very hard time getting any creditable info on this subject and for the past three days have taken a crash corse in the ABC system. It was very frustrating.

When I have the solution I will post that as well.

It may be worth your while to call MBUSA and see if they have done the recall yet on your car fo rthe ABC lines. They claim to have already done the work on mine but I call because the line ruptured exactly where the recall said it would. I now have to send MBUSA a writen request for them to tell me what dealership did the work. Once I find out who supposedly did the work I'm going to contact the service manager there and see if they can prove they did the work and if it was guarenteed.

Either way I have decided just to pay for it for now so I can drive my car.

 

I was able to get abetter look at the line this morning. The line that is ruptured is connected to the pump at connection "P".

I looked at another thread regarding a similar issue and I am bit confused. He lists 5 connections for the new pump however none of them are "P"

Can anyone tell what the line that connects to "P" is called?

(I am just curious, the guy at the shop already ordered it but now I am at home just waiting for the part to get in. I can't drive it right now I just assume learn every thing I can about why.)

 

Great! Its always nice to have good information regarding this stuff.

Oh, and good luck with the car..

 

Sorry it took so long, and sorry no pictures yet. The camera resides in my wife's purse.

I have spent the last several days learning, talking to people who know a lot about how these things works, I bought a book, I even went and looked at a totaled CL 500 at a wrecking yard, and reading a whole lot online. This is what I have learned, in summary;

The ABC system has basically two sub assemblies. the front axle and rear axle. Each is ran by an individual "Valve Block" each "Valve Block" has a high pressure line that runs to an "accumulator", one front and one rear.

The accumulator's job is to absorb any shock to the system. The system runs normally at 3000 psi. when you hit a speed bump pot hole ect. the system is shocked with a sudden jolt of pressure. The Accumulator is for the most part a nitrogen charged hydraulic shock absorber at the end of a high pressure line. Imagine squeezing a water balloon in your hand, the fluid has to go somewhere. If there is no where for it to go the Balloon pops. Well so do hydraulic ABC lines.

I have learned that over time (depends on your driving style) these Accumulators lose their nitrogen charge and become stiffer and stiffer until they become nothing more than caps at the end of the high pressure line. When the shock comes through the line it bounces off and and runs backward through your system until it blows out at the weakest spot. In my case the rubber section of the high pressure line leading from the front valve block to the front accumulator. For some of you it can be your valve block or tandem pump. That is the reason for continued problems. Once you replace a part a different part will just break next time you hit a bump to hard because you only fixed the symptom. not the problem.

The moral of the story is every three to five years change your accumulators. They are perishable parts like break pads!(part number 220-327-01-15 ~$175.00 each) there is another Pressure Reservoir ( i think is what it is called) attached to each valve block I don't have the part number but you might want to change that too. (Please correct me on proper nomenclature)

I am also changing my ruptured high pressure line (part number 220-320-00-54 ~ $125.00)

I might fix it myself in garage I am a competent amateur mechanic and have tools. (No SDS or lift) I just want to do it for the experience and then have it towed to the shop for the bleeding and rodeo. Have not decide yet.

I hope this all helps someone.

 

so you just have to replace the high pressure line and accumulators?

 

Yup. I only have to replace the line because it's broke.

I would strongly advise anyone with an ABC system who doesn't know when the last time their accumulators were serviced to have them replaced.

 

The part number for the hose I think is wrong. will update when I know for sure.

 

Is the accumulators that round ball thingy?
Firing up the WIS to look it up.

 

Appreciate your info. Thanks for sharing. I'm a DIYer myself and will be looking for this thread if I ever have to get there.. to repair or even do preemptive preventive maintenance.

 

Yes the Accumulator is the little ball thing. The part number I posted is correct for the front and back Accumulators. We misidentified the ruptured line off the diagram but have since ordered the right one.

 

* update *
Parts Ordered

x2 Accumulators $171 each
x1 high pressure line $256
total parts $598

Labor 2 1/2 hours @ $90 each (includes Rodeo and bleeding) $225

total $823

Plus the filter and fluid (I'm sure it will be a lot of fluid)

Tow appointment made for Monday @0730 hours
(super bad A$$ premium AAA membership $121)

Owning and AMG.....Priceless (literally) (I have not even made my first payment)

 

Car works! They want to keep it overnight to make sure they get all the air bubles out. I watched the rodeo it was pretty cool. The front accumulutor was completly jacked the rear one was still good. the filter was awful that got changed the ruptured line was ruptured that obviously got changed.

After I pick the car up tomorrow I will post pictures of what a broken accumulator looks like, and all the other ones I took. the shop is two doors down from my office so I have been there a lot watching and learning.

 

$1,049.25

 

Nice to have a fellow member who digs deeper into knowledge about the "evil" ABC system, for example, rejects the high $ or dealer solution, and shares info. And keeps refining the process.

Exemplar.

 

good job man, enjoy your car

 

I am glad you got it to work. Thanks for all the advice, I am planning to take mine to get service pretty soon and will also do the ABC fluids at the same time along with the tranny fluid. The rodeo test looks cool, I have seen a couple of videos of the techs doing the test.
I plan to take my car somewhere here in SoCal, San Gabriel area. He is a Benz tech and services cars at his own time at his house, he has all the tools to do it. When I do get a chance, I will try to document all the things he does to the car and share it as well.

 

I have all my broken parts and will photograph and post this weekend. however this is what the shop owner and I came up with.

every two (2) years change your ABC filter and fluid. [it is really easy to change the filter it takes 30 seconds and cost $50]

every four (4) years change your accumulators Yeah it sucks to blow $600 but it beats blowing $6000 when you eventually blow up your ABC [Its only $150 a year any way]

I had my work done at Richard's Stuttgart Motors in Sacramento CA. They did excellent work I was pretty much there every step of the way. they let me hang out in the garage they even let me help a little bit (I like to work on cars) Their base labor is only $90 and hour they only charged me for 4 hours at full rate and 2 at 6/10th. There final bill was less than half of what a competitors shop quoted me for the same work. and they checked the car over stem to stern for free and pointed out some other issues that are not urgent but need to be addressed and even showed me how to do it myself. They showed me a lot of cool stuff that I didn't know about my car. They gave me the print out from my computer so I know everything that ever happened to it. Even if you have to have your car towed a few hundred miles I think it's worth it to go to them.

I will only take my car to them from now on.

 

I take back my earlier comment "very"
You did a great job working the problem..
Yeh next time I have a car problem i think I will run it by you first. I will of course pay your fee for service. Ron your humble cl55 amg owner

 

Kahn. You are a new member here and right away you proved your self to be an excellent valued member who has shared very useful knowledge for all of us. Good luck with the car and enjoy this machine in good health! Looking forward for the pictures!

 

Excellent new poster.

Two comments. The normal pressure the abc works at when the pump Is healthy is around 184 bars. However, when you rodeo it starts at 128 bars or so and you should get at least 4-5 "shakes" before the pressure drops to 100 bars and the rodeo is suspended for few seconds before the pump builds up to 128 bars again and the rodeo resumes. This behavior is a good indicator of your pump and overall ability of the abc to hold pressure. Sds shows pressure during rodeo and if you get only 2 or 3 shakes before the pause you are having pressure problems. Also if your rodeo is aborted by sds (runs less than 15 minutes) you are having serious pressure problems.

Second, unfortunately the miniacumulators on the valve blocks are not serviceable and are a part of the valve blocks. However, when the valve blocks are to be replaced a new improved part number is available. You can recognize the new valve block by the fact that the two miniacumulators appear one piece while on the old one they are two separate cylinders.