Hi - My beloved UK 2004 e320 CDi has been off the road for 4 months while I have been travelling. Returned yesterday to a flat battery and having dealt with that have a problem. As you would expect the dash warnings for ABS and ESP failure came up on 1st test drive. I parked up and tried to re-set by turning the steering through both locks repeatedly but they will not re- set. The car had been declared off road and is out of MOT so I need to sort this before test and MOT. Is there something else I can try or am I looking for a garage with Star diagnostics? All advice welcome. Regards

 

As Plutoe said sadly you will need STAR or at the very least a very good other system to find out what's going on with the ABS and ESP systems. I assume you have charged the battery back up to normal voltages and driven the car a little bit?

 

If getting a scanner is difficult, you can always clean the sensors and reluctor rings, checking for damaged wires or plugs.

 

I've had the car at the auto electricians this afternoon. All the sensors are reporting correctly with no errors, sadly wthin a few seconds of driving off the ABS, EPS AND BRAKE warning messages are back. Once you stop the car the messages re set automatically to no errors. Leaving the diagnostics attached we can see that a communications error is reported and then disappears. I hate intermittent faults in guessing this one will be impossible to trace.

 

is your steering angle sensor okay???

 

No error codes being reported at all (other than standard air con)

 

maybe your pickup ring on your axle is rusty/dirty causing sensors to not pick up. You haven't driven vehicle in a while so maybe there may be dirt/debris/or dust on pickup ring.

 

I just had a similar issues. Ended up being grease on the front sensors and faulty fuses. The fuses weren't blown but we're dark on the inside and light corrosion on the terminals. A little brushing electric contact cleaner and fresh fuses with new sensors and everything went away.

 

And to add to my post. I scanned my car with several scanners and even a star machine and none of them picked up on the fuses. Witch caused a lot of intermediate abs / esp problems.

 

Did you just clean or install new sensors? Which fuses and where are they located?