I have a 2013 e350 sport sedan with this intermittent and faulty hood latch warning light saying the hood is open, when it's not. The wire in the latch on the left side looks like it's attached. Does anyone else have this problem?

 

Open the hood, lower it about a foot away from latched, then slam it closed. Sounds horrible, but should clear the error message.

Letting the hood close with it's own weight usually doesn't work... the hood is latched but the sensor is not engaged. HTH

 

Had it on my c230 - had to replace the switch. I believe it was pretty simple.

 

The switch is all of $25. Just replace it

 

This topic has been discussed before, and the concensus was that a hard slam of the hood ensures that the hood seats completely (so that the gap in the front of the hood and front grill surround lay flush). Without the hard slam, there is a miniscule step where the hood sits up (barely perceivable, maybe 1/64").

My C-Class W203 has always been this way, and the W212 is the same.

 

Yes, the hood needs to be slammed hard to make it close all the way. People at gas stations look at me like I was a mad person when I slam the hood when checking my oil level (old habit) at every fill-up.

New to me S-class has this slam built in. That hood pulls itself closed so hard it feels something will break. It has very strong springs that slams the hood closed from less than a foot open harder than I ever slammed my E-Class hood. And people look at me with this car too...

 

I'm brining back this old topic, but new to me. I slammed my hood so hard, but still get that annoying message on dash. What switch do I need to replace?

 

Had this happen to me a while ago. I kept slamming my hood and the message would still pop up. What I did was I opened my hood, took a look at both side where they latch onto. One side was noticeably higher than the other so i took a screw driver and press down onto the latch until it reset itself, went back into my car and released the latch and closed the hood. Seemed to work.

Pic isnt from a W212 but the latch is similar. I pushed down on the middle silver latch part till it reset itself.


I pushed down on the middle silver latch part

 

I have run into this as well. I have noticed that regardless of whether the hood is open while the car is shutdown, if the hood is closed while the car is shutdown, the sensors do not seem to register the hood latches being engaged. Now, I wait for the car to be woken up, while the engine is running, or at least in the accessory mode before I close the hood. Every time I do that, I don’t get that hood open warning chime, which is downright annoying.

 

My car has the latch sensor only on one side. I think it is driver side.
Take the latch up (two bolts) and check the sensor. Perhaps loose wire harness or the sensor is just bad.

As long as the hood is closed and latched locked, no matter how you do it, the sensor should see it closed.

In my earlier post (four years ago) I talk about slamming the hood as I have to do it that way to make latches lock properly. I could also do it by pressing down at latch locations without slamming but as it is aluminum hood, I'm afraid to cause dents so I slam it instead.

 

In my case, I didn't realize the hood had right and left latches. Upon closer inspection I saw that one side of hood was closing nice and snug but the other wasn't. So, I applied even force to close it and now it's all fine. My Japanese car has only one center latch and doesn't need that much to close it. I guess I could say the same things about Mercedes doors, you need more "force" to close them