I just bought a gorgeous 94 E320. Super low miles and obviously very well taken care of. I do have a wierd problem however that is stumping the mechanics.

This has happened three times - never the first start of the day, but usually after I run the car 30 or 40 miles... leave it for 90 minutes or more, and get back in the car.

The car starts and idles perfectly. As soon as I give it some throttle, the car surges like crazy, like you're cutting power to the ignition or something. It has also happened while I'm going along at 65 mph. It feels like the motor just quits. I look at the tack and can see that the motor is actually still running, but no power whatsoever. I limped it into a parking lot, and it sits and idles perfectly. Try to move the car... and it jumps around, surging continously.

Two independent shops tell me the Wiring harnesses go bad in these cars, and when they do, it causes all kinds of wierd codes and happenings. "Replace the wiring harness and most of these elusive "short" type problems disappear"... so they tell me.

Well, I picked the car up today after the wiring harness replacement, and it ran great for 40 miles. Got it home and parked it. Got into the car 2 hours later... same deal.

The first time this happen (pre-harness replacement) the code read: "182 Safety Fuel cut-off switch signal for LH/HFM N/34"

This last time, there were no codes even though I was disabled with the car for over 40 minutes.

Any ideas?

Please help with any ideas...

im interested in hearing the answer to that as well. That sounds identical to what mine is doing as well. I was told it was the airflow meter on mine. I had it changed and it still does it. When it happens, it won't allow me to go more than like 30mph and if i try to get up to even that to fast like from a traffic light for example, it surges up then again and again until i ease up on the accelerator and kind of coast the gas with it.

im puzzled

When my car experiences this, I can hardly accelerate over idle speed. I limped home on the shoulder the other day going about 12 mph. If I gave it any additional throttle, it would shut the motor down. It would not stop running, but rather cut out and surge back and forth from 500 rpm to 1200 rpm until I let off the throttle. Then it idles perfectly. Park the car, and two hours later, it runs flawlessly.

Strange.

So... c'mon you guys. Help a couple 124 buddies out with a diagnosis!

check it out.... i believe this is your problem: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Merce...QQcmdZViewItem
... IMO, that is pretty much the only part that could be connected with acceleration/hesitation problem your having.
- gorb -

And don't think that you've wasted your money on replacing the wiring harness. Those things were bad on '94-94 and have to be repllaced.

My shop is telling me the same thing; Throttle Actuator as well as a couple other wiring harnesses.

My only concern is... in reading some of these posts... it seems like we can go and replace these items... and it still not fix the problem. These issues are not cut and dreid where anyone really knows for sure what the problem is. It can be a lot of disserent things. Is it the OVP, or the crank sensor, the ECU, or the throttle sensor. Maybe an O2 sensor or several other items that have been suggested.

Maybe, if you're a mechanic or you own a shop, you can try different things until you get it right, but what's a regular guy to do??!! Spend $4000 fixing an electrical issue on a $10,000 car?

Where does it stop and at what cost?

Has anyone figured this one out? I am experiencing the same problem after driving. It only happens after a complete heat up of the engine.

How old it the Dist cap and rotor! I know when they went bad on my car it did not run for S**t!!!


Smokie

Mine does not use a dist., but has a crankfire sensor.

How many miles are on your car? I am curious about the wiring harness replacement. Was the work done by MB dealer or an independent and if you don't mind...how much was the repair? I'm approaching the 90,000 major service and will probably have to do the wiring harness as well as the obvious tuneup.
Thanks!
and I hope an answer comes up here.
kurt

I was just thinking, what do you think are the odds that the dealer could get to the bottom of this? It is always a decision to dwell over for me...should I go independent or to the dealer? And I have a really great independent!
kurt

Kurt,
Your independent tech needs to have either BAUM or DAS system otherwise it's a diggin' problem...

Well, my "new" 94 E320 is finally fixed.

My independent shop thought it was probably the wiring harness, so we replaced it. Wires were in BAD shape, so I don't feel too bad about that... it needed to be done (even at 24000 miles, with an engine compartment you could eat off of... wierd!) My shop goes to MB for the parts ($1000) and charged me about $1500 for the total job.

Anyway, the bottom-line is that I did a lot of studying. My mechanic talked to a lot of other shops that work on older cars like these, and ended up talking with a couple of real "experts" (!) Anyway, everyone's first guess -- including some here on this forum -- was that the car needed a throttle actuator rebuild which we did end up doing. We sent it out to Beckman Technologies and for right around $1100 (jobber pricing about 25% less), they sent us a rebuilt unit (compare to $2000+ for a new MB part.) I realize that other guys rebuild them for about $500, but Beckman seems to have the reputation for doing the best and most complete rebuild. One shop in Florida told my mechanic that he has 55 gallon drums in the back of his shop FILLED with throttle actuators from E320's and he has a pile of wiring harnesses 10 feet tall behind the shop. He said this is the problem 99% of the time.

Incidentally, my guy cut a slit in the wiring harness that comes off the throttle actuator and opened it up just for grins. He couldn't believe the condition of those wires! He told me they were all cracked and split exposing bare wire. There were black carbon-like deposits inside and it looked like it was caused by possible sparking, arching and so on. I was tempted to do a manual wire replacement job... one by one, but decided that I just wanted the problem to be over so we did the rebuild.

Also did an OVP Relay as this car still had the old original one.

So anyway, the car now runs beautifully. It looks like a brand new car, and I'm very happy. Cost me about $3000 total to get it right but hopefully I'll get a lot of mileage out of it. And besides... if I went out and bought a new Caddy or something else, I'd be out about $10,000 in the first year depreciation... so I think I'm still ahead of the game!

Good luck guys & thanks for the help.

Thanks for posting the fix. This is the umpteenth time I've read of a bad ETA on these models. This post has prodded me into replacing the wires in my ETA this winter when the car goes into storage. I headed off any problems with the engine wiring harness with a preemptive replacement four years ago, It's time to do the same with the ETA.