ps2cho

Get it from autohausarizona.com
For my 260E it shows $54.

xsun

seems like i figured out the problem without spend a buck! After i removed poorly wired CD changer, everything go back to normal, no more stalls and rough idel. I guess they wired CD chager into Engine control system.

Brian_I.

Hey Xsun, just curious, how do you adjust the engine idle speed?

appatula

I think he adjusted it via the throttle cable adjustments. I don't think this is a good band-aid for a low idle, as (PLEASE CORRECT ME IF I"M WRONG GUYS) purposely adjusting the cable to attain a higher idle RPM can cause the torque converter to heat up when your sitting at a stoplight in (D) drive.

rayhennig

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Idle is controlled by whatever fuel injection/management system you have. Mine's KE-Jetronic with a 'mechanical' MAF, yours may be later with the HFM management and a 'hot wire' MAF.

Either way, tweaking idle speed with the throttle cable confuses everything as it opens the butterfly valve and allows air through. There are idle control valves to do that. The management electronics will be utterly baffled by these tactics. I know this because a young MB specialist tried the same thing on mine when I complained of stalling.

The ONLY answer is to find the root cause of the stalling problem. With mine, it was a cheap rotor arm but I suspect yours doesn't have one. Assuming you'r is the later HFM system, I cannot say more but there are loads of posts here and elsewhere that address this.

All the best.

RayH

appatula

That's exactly along the lines of what I was thinking. Best to adjust your idle mixture with a DMM capable of measuring duty cycle, this will fix most idle issues.

Andrew_Culture

I'm also having the stalling problem, it's fairly intermittent though. I only picked the car up a few days ago and it’s a damned shame that after spending weeks convincing my wife a W124 was the right car to get that it stalled every time we slowed down or stopped, she made me go home and take a different vehicle instead!

I bought this car off an enthusiast and Merc parts dealer who had replaced all the HT leads, alternator etc very recently and he reckons the stall is happening because of a vacuum leak so I’ve got our super hero mobile mechanic coming to check that out in a few days time.

In the mean time I’m going to have a look for that fuse, if that’s all the problem is I’ll be a happy chap indeed!

ps2cho

I doubt its a vacuum leak as it would have to be a massive leak which would show a lot of other driving poiwer + fuel economy problems.

I'm sure its just the OVP. Get that changed first before paying him any money.

Andrew_Culture

Thanks for your help, it's really appreciated.

I'll take the battery out and check the fuse tomorrow, and of course I'll report back!

Andrew_Culture

The fuse was fine, albeit jammed in there like a right sod!

I took the car out for a spin after putting the battery back in and it didn't stall once, as is the nature of an intermittent fault!

73Elsinore

As far as I know, the HFM-SFI M104 does not have an idle control valve or an idle air bypass valve. I had my engine top end all apart during the head gasket job and I never found any devices in the intake or on the manifold except the throttle body itself.

Someone please correct me if this is wrong...

Andrew_Culture

Our friendly local mobile mechanic just popped over to take a look and found a loose tube under the air filter which he has fixed.

He says I need to get a hole in the exhaust fixed before any CO2 problems can be diagnosed, so it's going to an independent Merc specialist tomorrow.

loclark757

I have a 1988 300 E. Fuel economy has become terrible. Ive put a lot of money into the car. It stalls out when coming to a stop. If I go into the grocery store and get back to the car to leave it sometimes takes 10 key cranks to start the car. Then just keeps stalling out. Its gotten worse over the past couple years. Air and fuel seem to not be getting along...

Im thinking its either OVP or Idle Control Valve...About to take a look when the weather clears

Andrew_Culture

A quick chat with the parts people at my local Mercedes dealership (preceded by lots of long confused phone calls with local scrap merchants/ breakers yards) revealed that a brand new OVP unit could be mine for just £70. At this price I decided to take the risk of replacing what might be an already working part and jumped in my car and headed across town to hand over some cash to said franchise holder. Pausing only to stall ten or eleven times of course. So now I’m the (proud?) owner of a brand new Mercedes OVP unit, and tomorrow morning I’m going to fit it and see what happens, I’ll report back here of course.

Oh, I'm writing this up on my blog now! -
http://lawsie.blogspot.com/2009/11/m...n-slowing.html

Andrew_Culture

The new OVP relay was very easy to fit, in fact I don’t think I’ve ever done any work on a car that was so brief and easy.



I took the car for a spin to see if it would still stall. I held the brakes on corners, held the brakes at traffic lights and generally did everything I could to make it stall and it didn’t. I was feeling cautiously optimistic, and decided to go to our local farm shop to buy some gourmet mayonnaise (I tell you this, because sometimes details are important) and had to hold the brakes for an age waiting to turn into the entrance. Shudder, poot, the engine stalled.

I gave up on buying Mayo and headed home. My optimistic side is trying to tell me that the stalling problem wasn’t as bad, but my pessimistic side is telling me that if the Mercedes specialists can’t fix this problem on Monday then I may have to sell the car. I’ve only had it two weeks and have only done 115 miles, and 100 of those were the drive from where I bought it to my home!

Andrew_Culture

I’m just back from the independent Mercedes specialist ‘Prestige’ in Ipswich with some good news, some bad news and some weird news.

The good news.
The idle circuit air hose was badly split so they taped it up and ordered me a new one, cost is just £12! This will probably almost entirely eradicate the stalling problem. They noted on the diagnosis report that the OVP unit had been replaced, so I feel kinda like I did the right thing in replacing it.

The bad news.
The exhaust manifold is cracked and the oxygen sensor has become one with the rust therein. The catalytic converter is also shagged (my word, not theirs). So there’s air rushing in where air ought not to be rushing in, and the engine is getting all confused and running far too rich (hence the petrol smell I described earlier). The catalytic converter is contributing to the problem by kinda suffocating the engine, thereby twisting the knife that cases the stall. A replacement oxygen sensor will cost about £136.00 (not too bad), a new catalytic converter will cost £1162.00 (oh mercy).

The weird news.
The idle circuit air hose will be fixed within the week, and should almost entirely eradicate the stalling problem, in fact it’s already FAR improved with the Heath Robinson repair they put in place today.
If I’m happy with the performance of the car after the hose has been replaced then fine. If it’s still an issue then they’ll replace the oxygen sensor, mig weld up the holes in the manifold and remove the catalytic converter entirely – it turns out cars as old as mine don’t legally need one! So I’ll feel a little bad that my car is chucking out some nasties into the atmosphere, but that will be nicely balanced by the fact that I’m keeping an old car on the road! Keeping an old car going (to a certain extent) is surely better than buying a brand new car? Replacing the catalytic convertor is quite simply never going to happen, in fact if I was forced by law to replace it I would have to scrap the car as I can’t afford it!

73Elsinore

Well done Andrew. In regard to the knackered cat converter, what about an aftermarket cat, i.e. a non-factory part? Are those available to you in the UK? On this side of the pond, that is an option in locales that allow it by law. Just an idea. Please keep us apprised of your progress in solving this stalling problem. Pete

rayhennig

There are places that have genuine MB cats for far less than that. In your shoes I would probably junk the cat but if you come over all green, you might find one around 500 Euro. Then there's shipping and installation costs but you should be well short of £1100.

RayH

Try:

www.mb-parts-teile.com
www.speed-autoteile.com
euromercmercedesparts.co.uk

Andrew_Culture

Yeah, that was basically the price from Merc in Germany. We can get non-factory parts (we call them Pattern parts) but the older the vehicle then the less there are on the road, then the less chance there is that anyone will make pattern parts.

Thanks as always you lot!

Andrew_Culture

Update 29/11/09
When I took the car in to have the new idle circuit air hose fixed the garage informed me that they’d found a non-Merc catalytic converter for £120. The car does drive better with the new hose but once I’ve started stalling I know the rest of my journey may take ‘some time’.

So I’m going to clear out the remainder of my non-existent W124 budget and buy a new cat £120 (US$200), a new O2 sensor (about the same price) and then pay the garage a few hours labour (at a very reasonable £60 an hour) to fit the parts and weld shut the hole in the manifold.

So fingers crossed this will fix the problem, because if it doesn’t I’m going to be driving this car until the MOT runs out in November then I’ll have to scrap it!

Andrew_Culture

THE END!

I saved up £500 to get the o2 sensor and the catalytic converter fixed. The split in the manifold also needed sealing up and the garage was also going to attend to that.

I woke up extra early to get the car down the garage, ‘this is the day’ I thought. I cheerfully mused to myself that when all the work was done by the end of today I would have a lovely car that I would keep for years.

With a song in my heart I turned the key in the ignition; well at least I tried to. The key wouldn’t budge and in my attempts to turn it I managed to lock the steering. No amount of gentle jiggling would free the ignition or the steering column so the garage sent out a professional key jiggler but he agreed things were looking grim.

So in addition to the o2 sensor, the catalytic converter and the welding on the manifold I was now in need of a new ignition system, steering lock and steering column parts. Even if I used pattern parts this would add about £350 to the current expected bill of up to £500, this brings me to a total of £850, which if you’ve been following this sorry tale is more than I paid for the car in the first place. So the end has come, the garage are going to recover my car to their premises and rape it off anything valuable in lieu of their bill for today’s work.

So I owned my 230te for thirty days and drove it about eight times. I’m feeling so screwed I limp a little when I walk and my wallet hurts so bad I can’t sit down without wincing. I haven’t owned a car for a year and a half and then once I had saved up the cash to buy one I just pissed £800 (US$1400) down a big black hole.

I’m done, I can’t afford another car, and considering I’m an IT consultant that has to go on call out this is not what I would call a happy ending.

190E 16V

Andrew - very sorry to hear about that.
Console yourself that you knew where to draw the line and cut your losses.

Better luck next time.

Andrew_Culture

Sadly so, that's the 8th car I've scrapped and I'm only 33!

Maybe I ought to make more of an effort to earn a proper wage so I can buy a car that works

DEUCE&ME

I had the same problem as many have described with intermittent engine surging and threatening to stall at stops after warm up. Researched potential causes on this forum and others. Potential causes were numberous including defective electronic thottle actuator ($1,400 part plus labor). Took my beloved93 300e to the Mercedes dealer and they quoted me a price of $1,400 for parts and labor of $600!). They didn't describe the fix, just the cost.

I took a chance before getting rid of her that the problem could be bad gas. The tank was 1/8 full when the problem first surfaced. In the old days before computer controlled cars, my first thought would have been water in the gas or some kind of contamination. I added new gas to about 3/4 tank and the problem was still there.

As a last ditch effort, I got some Octane Boost and put that in the tank. The surging/stalling improved significantly and infrequently. I read an article about how Ethanol mixed gasoline can cause problems for cars and especially older cars and very much for old cars that aren't driven much. The article said that Ethanol gas is only good for 60-90 days.

I only drive my 300e once or twice a week for short hops. The gas in my tank was at least 60 days old. I guess I was a prime candidate for Ethanol-related performance problems.

I put some Sta-Bil in the tank and the surging/stalling problem went away pretty much right a way. I drove it for 50 miles or so through stop and go traffic and the surging/stalling disappeaared. I have subsequently added 3 ounces of Lucas Ethanol Treatment to my tank. I drove 60 miles today in all driving conditions and she never acted up. No surging or stalling and a consistent power band that I've always loved.

Perhaps the simplest (and least expensive) solutions are the best solutions!