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Greetings everyone. While my 2007 E550 is in the shop for conductor plate replacement, I decided to do some digging. I have been driving around with codes P0012 and P0025 for over a year now. My car has 147k miles on it. It’s been a reliable workhorse for me but As I understand, codes P0016 and P0017 indicate a bad timing sprocket (or balance shaft in the V6 engines). I have never decoded my VIN until now, because I was scared of my suspicions being confirmed, that I have a bad timing sprocket and will have to have the whole engine torn apart. It seems I am just barely outside the affected range. I should’ve did this research before I even bought the car a few years ago, I came from a 2003 E500 with over 200k miles that never ever broke down on me no matter how hard I abused it and I’d still be driving it today if it wasn’t totaled and I figured the E550 would sorta be the same(boy was I wrong, although mine has been pretty reliable). My car was delivered October 20 2006. Two other independent shops have looked at it for me months ago (although they weren’t Merc specialists, I just used them because they fixed a few other problems on my car for free) and they both told me I need a new timing chain. This was about 9 months ago when the pandemic first hit. So can I just change the cam magnets? Or is there something else I don’t already know about? For the last few months, I’ve been telling myself that I have a ticking time bomb and that I should trade this thing for an E55 while it still runs. Looks like I’ve dodged a huge bullet. God is good
codes P0016 and P0017 indicate a bad timing sprocket (or balance shaft in the V6 engines).
And no, I do not have the P0016 and P0017 codes. CEL comes on if I gas the car hard in the morning without letting it warm up all the way, and then goes away after a little while. So basically, the CEL comes and goes.
Last edited by Diablo_CLS55; Mar 15, 2021 at 07:40 AM.
Yes, the magnets were known to be bad for that year too. The later ones were supposed to be a new design so just get MB ones.
Thanks for the reply. I will look into getting those changed. My Indy told me months ago that he could change those but he couldn’t guarantee they would fix anything and that I was likely a victim of the balance shaft problem. Suppose I kept driving with the bad magnets, could anything bad happen to my engine? Would my valves get bent?
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