Lots of Systems Inoperative, Reset, Now Check Engine Light is On
 

Newbie here. Love the forum. I wanted to share out my experience this morning. I am new MB Owner, bought a beautiful MY2016 E350W4 Sport CPO with just about 25K miles on it. Just made my first payment two weeks ago, and have owned this thing since Feb 1. Today, after about 5 minutes on the road, I got an alert and the following systems became inoperative:

• Cruise Control
• Lane Keeping Assist
• Collision Prevention Assist Plus
• PRE-SAFE
• Blind Spot Assist
• ABS and ESP
• Attention Assist

Additionally, the BRAKE, ABS, ESP and ESP Off lights were illuminated on the Dash Cluster. I also had no Power Steering assist. I decided to drive the car to work and park it anyway. Once I got there, I tried to call MBRACE and I was on hold for over 5 minutes, so I decided to ditch that. I then tried to Stop the engine with the Keyless Go button, and the engine would not shut off. I had pop the cap and insert the Key Fob to turn off the engine.

I scheduled for service at my dealer, started the car about an hour later to bring it over. Voila, all the warning lights and messages were reset and the car started up, and Power Steering worked just fine. The only difference this time was that the Check-Engine light was illuminated. I drove it over to the dealer for service and we'll see what happens next. They say they may need to keep the car overnight and through tomorrow.

Anyone else see this? I have searched the forum, and I see that folks have had individual failures - but not necessarily all of these at once. When I purchased this CPO car, it is still under the original Warranty, and I also purchased extended Warranty and Service Package (thankfully, I think).

On a side Note - this is the early model year 2016 (delivered 07/2015) edition from what I'm told -- the "last" edition in this W212 series for this E-Class (212-088). I'm hopeful that they would have worked through all the bugs and have loaded up all the fixes in it before it came over in the first place, then updated it during the CPO process. I did have to get the Maps updated in the NTG system - but I would love to know what NTG firmware version (I think I have NTG5/NTG5.5 hardware according to my VIN Datacard) I how to go about updating the firmware to one that might support one of those CarPlay updates I think I read about. My dealer here seems to be very secretive and not forthcoming about it, and it doesn't appear to really exist. Perhaps it doesn't.

Thanks in advance for any insights!

JP

Welcome! Since you still had an active CEL, there must be an issue and that should hopefully help the dealer zero in on the problem. Every MB I have owned seems to be more glitchy than any other car make I have owned. Sometimes shutting down the car and restarting will get you going again and the issues never come back. Weak batteries can cause a lot of issues on these power gobbling cars. Some of the driver assist functions will shut down if the battery is weak, but you had several go dark at once and it must be something else that is causing it (especially with a CEL). Let us know what they find.

I feel like that's an ECU issue since it's so many things at once.

That aside, all of those things being turned off is basically the same thing as what happens when you put your car into dyno mode. You weren't screwing around with dyno mode... were you?

Wouldn't even know what DYNO mode is ... but now i'm intrigued! :)

I would be curious and hope you post what the dealer comes up with.
If I see something like that, first thing is to scan the vehicle modules - a generic obd2 scantool might give you something but not really in depth. You need something like Autel MD808Pro or icarsoft 2 for MB. Others are out there too.

When a bunch of stuff starts getting wanky, a common root cause is a communication error between the modules, or between the ECU and a module or a SAM. Modules are linked via CANBUS hi/lo speed network, and if there's a glitch somewhere, several modules can report a problem when it's actually a single point of trouble. The ECU and modules communicate with each other and the modules communicate to each other as well. If there's an issue, then several modules may become confused so to speak. Sometimes it's as simple as a blown fuse or connector issue but the process to find it can be tedious without a decent scantool and possibly a scope if needed.

Case in point, our son's suburban started going nuts with Stabilitrak and ABS inop, poor starting/running, lean Bank 1 and 2 codes, and transmission slamming into gear. He's got a boatload of kids so the vehicle is needed in service. I checked ignition coils/wires, injector firing, fuel trims, all kinds of things to locate what was the source trouble that was causing all these things. I knew that it was not everything going out at the same time. Turns out this started almost immediately after filling up. The alcohol content reading in the fuel was very high at 27% but when I looked at a fuel sample I found a large water content. There were no misfire codes but the engine was essentially running lean and misfiring, causing the ECU to command rich enough to put the drivetrain into a limp mode. Basically the engine was trying to run on solvent and water even though its a flex fuel vehicle. We drained the fuel and refilled again, voila - no codes and it went back to running great.

I mentioned this process because it could have been possible to run down a rabbit trail looking at transmission, wheel sensors, etc. The lean codes/misfire was the clue that I decided to focus upon, the fuel analysis verified that the fuel was the problem. So in your case, I'm not suggesting fuel but that's what I mean about trying to find the root cause that's impacting the reported troubles.

Hopefully even if the issue has not happened again to you, the dealer will be able to find any stored codes to help explain what happened. Good luck.

Will definitely post the dealer findings. You raised two great points that I always think of, and that's proximal cause. The only two things that I can think of:

• Key Fob was noted to require a battery replacement, so that was done.
• Gas was filled up just a two days before.

WIll send that information over to the Service Manager just in case it helps.

And @TeeEl - I looked up DYNO Mode, and definitely not! :)

My "Gut" tells me it is going to be a simple Aux Battery replacement, perhaps ECU.

Current thinking from the Service Tech
 

So the call from MB Service this afternoon has them going down the path of possible corrosion of pins related to the Radar System and the eventual replacement of the harness. Too late to do that tonight - so it’s kept overnight and into tomorrow. Hopefully that will do the trick.

Final Update: They did conclude that the entirety of the problems related to the driver assist functions failing with the Radar System was with the corrosion. THe culprit was the wire harness and the sensors for the for the Blind Spot Assist. So that's being replaced and I'll have the car back within the hour. Should be under original car warranty.

Yes, sometimes a connector issue. Great that it was solved, thx for noting resolution.

That is the second time I have heard of this corrosion of the blind spot assist modules and harness. They sit behind the rear fender. I'm surprised this happened to you with a newer model, but thanks for letting us know. Which Chicago dealer took care of your issue? My cars are serviced at MB of Hoffman Estates.

My car just did the same thing randomly
 

Today I was driving and suddenly my traction control (off) light turned on, then ABS and traction control (inoperative) then collision prevention assist plus (inoperative), then Lane keep assist (inoperative), then Cruise control and SPEEDTRONIC (inoperative), then in red it said “without changing gear, consult workshop”, after that my RPM kept jumping up and down, and the car’s temperature drops to 20 and then back up and keeps jumping up and down, after that my speed pointer stayed at Zero. Then my steering wheel got very very very heavy to the point i was scared my car wouldn’t turn and go straight, thankfully i got it back home, I was pressing gas but the car tops at 40km/h. My car was in an accident almost a year ago and the insurance didn’t cover everything so my “Left rear bumper intelligent radar sensor” has been broken for some time, is that the reason this all happened and what’s the fix? Also I’m scared to take it to the dealership because the prices here just for a check are very very expensive and I want to be sure what to do before going to them.

Also when I tried shutting it off or putting the car in different gears it would take multiple tries to do so and the car took forever pressing the button to shut off.