I bought a new 2002 E320 wagon from the Mercedes Benz dealer in Torrance, CA back in February of 2002. Absolutely nothing seemed to be wrong with except for the annoying cupholder. Then I started have wierd things happen--like the rear driverside window wouldn't roll down but when I tried it again five minutes later, it did. Or the radio would remain on after I turned off the car and removed the key. Or the radio display wouldn't work but if I turned the radio off and back on, it would. These things happend so infrequently that I didn't take it in to the shop because I could never replicate them. About a month ago, with only 15,000 miles on the car, I started getting them more frequently. Finally, I got some bizaare strobe effect with the interior lights and some malfunction indicators warned me to take the car into the shop. So I scheduled an appointment for the next day. But the car wouldn't start the next morning. The lights would go on, I could turn on the radio, but the key simply wouldn't turn. So I cancelled the appointment and got the phone number for the emergency road service people. To their credit, within a half an hour, a guy shows up and starts looking at the electrical system.

He checks the battery under the rear seat and finds the source of my problems. The connector to the positive terminal on the battery wasn't tightened down because the nut had been stripped out. It was a pretty damn easy fix because he just got another nut and tightened the thing down.

Before he fixed it he showed me how the cable connecting to the terminal had about a 1/8 inch play in it. When it touched, you could see the sparks flying off of it. The underside of the seat was OK but the plastic cover that goes over the battery had been melted and charred.

What's amazing is that I don't know a clutch from a carburator and I could look at the battery and tell you something was wrong. Whoever bolted that cable onto my battery had to know that it wasn't tight enough and that the bolt was stripped out. But he left it that way knowing that eventually it would start a fire.

Of course, this happens two days after that report comes out about Mercedes quality plummeting.

Now I wonder how many other nuts aren't quite tight enough and what will be the result then they start to fail.

So the moral of the story is, if you have a Mercedes with intermittant electrical wierdness, check the battery.

Has anybody else experienced this?