Hi,

On my 2004 E500 Wagon, suddenly yesterday my NAV can't find itself. It shows it has no satellites "connected", but attempts to give direction as if it knows where it is. It thinks it's miles away from where we currently are. This condition persists after several sequences of "rebooting" (restarting the car), even after hours in-between. It also exists in city and country.

I will try pulling the fuses today (F3 and F6, as I saw in another post) to see if that helps, but thought I'd post to see if anyone else knows about this... is this a one time glitch, or impending doom for components of the NAV system?

 

The GPS antenna. Even if the antenna should be protected at the top of the tailgate, these too seem to fail often (like the pre-facelift sedan with the antenna at the top of the rear window).

Have you looked at the GPS status from your Comand, how many satellites does it show, is it "0" or "-"?

 

i am having the same problem since yesterday and no Sat info.Does the Gps shares the same anttena or items with Teleaid?GPS does not know where we are.
What do I check and where is it located in my car?.Thanks for your reply\

Trobador

 

Weird - my problem started yesterday, too. All the GPS satellites didn't fall out of the sky, did they?

The display shows " - " with regard to the number of satellites it's acquired... does that indicate a bad antenna? I tried the fuse reset, removing the DVD NAV disc, but reset doesn't seem to help.

One more trip to the dealer - I swear this car is there more than it is in my garage!

 

The GPS antenna is under the tailgate top cover in an S211 and the rear window glass antenna on a pre-face lift sedan, the roof antenna on a face lift sedan.

"-" means that the navi processor sees open circuit at the GPS antenna port, it could be a loose coax connector (could be an antenna fault too). Tele-Aid is using the same GPS antenna through a GPS antenna splitter.

 

Ok, this is strange, i also started having same problem a few days ago. Sometimes it will take 45 mins to lock onto satellites. But usually my location is 20-30 miles in error.

Something strange here? That all of us are having the same issue?

JM

 

Well, the dealer tells me that my car Navigation needs a "software update" and that there is a problem with the NAV Disc. So, they can't do anything further to fix my car's inability to locate satellites until I get this software update and new updated NAV disc, which is going to cost me $365!

I can hardly imagine that my car can't see satellites all of a sudden because the software suddenly went crazy? Why would the disc/software suddenly go bad? I guess I don't have much of a choice but to do this update. They are going to do it tomorrow, so I guess if any of you guys would call this bogus, love to see your thoughts before tomorrow morning.

 

Also, forgot to mention the other problem was that one of the keys is no longer recognized by KeylessGO. It still works when you use it in the traditional way. Dealer says "you need a new key". Of course, this, along with aforementioned software updates, are not covered under CPO warranty... Is there something that can be done, or am I just screwed on the key front?

 

Ben Dover.

 

weird,
mines just recently gives me the wrong heading, i know i am going west, the display on the console says heading east? and vice versa with the north & south. any fix? my disc is version 8

 

You should tell what how your satellite status is shown, if there is no fix, I guess gyros will gradually loose the correct heading.

 

thanks diesel benz,
well, the picture of the satelite shows between 6 -9 , sometimes i have 12 , the "alt" sometimes i see 100 to 300. any more info you need to help me diagnose? thanks for your help.

 

Looks like your GPS is fine then. I have no idea what this could be, unless completely failed gyros could do this. How does your system work if you unplug the GPS antenna, does it keep track of the current location reasonably accurately?

 

i haven't unplugg the antenna, however, it dosn't acuaretly keep track of my location. i could be at home and it stills shows my last location of where i started from. even if i eject the disc and reinsert, same result, could it be the nav unit?

 

Mine exhibited this symptom as well.

Invision this scenario; You've pushed the "MAP" button and are driving along. NAV has a lock on the sat's - knows where you are and it's already read the necessary maps into its memory. I believe the NAV uses a separate input from the compass, and perhaps other inputs as well, speed, steering angle, etc.

Then it looses it's lock on the SAT's. Since NAV no longer knows where you are, and therefore doesn't know if/when to load the next map, but is still getting input from compass (and maybe others) it eventually just tries to calculate where you are based on where it KNEW you were the last time it was locked onto the sats. None of the other inputs are accurate enough.

I've been in the Potomac River, state parks, neighboring states.

Here is what I did to solve (I hope) the issue of the NAV loosing it's lock on the Sat's. See this thread: https://mbworld.org/forums/e-class-w...-workshop.html

Dan

 

Hi All,

The dealer informed me that I needed new NAV software and charged me $365 for the DVD and $114 for the labor!!!! They also installed some new firmware for Command/Audio system... I haven't picked the car up yet, so don't know if it's fixed, but I can hardly believe my car lost it's view of satellites because my NAV disc took a crap, particularly since it was still mapping and not throwing any errors.

I also can't believe I'm going to pay $114 for someone to install a DVD and download whatever firmware patches their are for Command!! My car is under CPO - I have to pay labor for firmware updates? I mean, the damn thing is under warranty. I feel like I've gotten screwed.

I haven't even confirmed if it's actually fixed yet, but if it's not, I think I will have a meltdown.

 

The dealer followed standard protocol. You bring the car in with an electronics problem and the first thing they do is check to see if the current S/W version is the latest. If its not the latest the first thing they will do is up-grade to the latest version before they attempt any further troubleshooting.

If the system was working just fine one day on the old version and then just stopped working, my guess is that it isn't the S/W (or disk) version that is the problem.

Unless they can verify that the S/W or disk version is causing the problem then yeah, you just got hosed.

I do know when I wanted to install the latest disk version (8) they told me the S/W needed to be updated in order to work with the new disk version.

Dan

 

This unit does not have a compass (that the navi would use), it mainly works with the speed signal and gyros when the GPS signal is lost.

 

Any improvement? Is it any better with the new software/updates?

JM

 

Well, the system works again... is it because they updated my NAV software, or BECAUSE THEY REPLACED THE DAMNED GPS ANTENNA? Of course it was because they replaced the GPS antenna, which any of us could have told them based on the symptoms, but they gave me the song and dance about the software being the problem. It wasn't until I picked up the car and reviewed the repair order did I see they replaced the NAV antenna under warranty after telling me the problem was my NAV disc and charging me $249 for the software and $114 in labor to update it.

Long story short, the system works thanks to the new antenna, and now I have the latest NAV disc and system firmware. They backed out the labor charge of $114 labor, so I only ended up paying for the updated map disc itself. I'm not too happy, but at least have the latest maps.

I am trying to make myself feel better by thinking that if I'd have bought the latest map disc/NAV software on my own, it wouldn't have worked without firmware upgrades to my Comand hardware which would have meant I'd have had to pay the dealer to apply those firmware updates in any case, so somehow I came out ahead by not paying the labor... A stretch, I know.

Thanks to all of you for good input.

 

That's the right attitude. Now you're completely up to date, and they really only charged you for the new Map. If you ever updated the map at a later time the disk would have screwed up your system anyway, and you'd come away with a bad taste in your mouth at that time. Now your literally "good to go".

 

So how difficult is a DIY replacement of the antenna? It looks like its mounted on the rear window (i have pano roof). Is it just stuck on there with tape or adhesive?

JM

 

JM, though possible it's not likely the antenna itself. More probable is the connection of the antenna wire to the splitter - as I found with mine. Look at my post above and click the link I included.

Dan

 

Since checking the connectors is pretty straightforward, this should be done first but unfortunately the GPS antenna is prone to fail on the W211 (pre-face lift) and the owner might end up replacing the antenna after all.

I would test with another antenna connected to the splitter or directly to the navi processor before starting to work with the GPS antenna, it is quite difficult to replace the antenna.

 

Difficult as not a DIY job?