WTF, this was a downright dangerous situation.

Honestly, only thing that saved my *** from possibly being rear ended was that I was at a controlled intersection and it was a Sunday morning with light traffic.

This morning, I fire up the G and head down to the end of my neighborhood, stop at the stop light and wait for the green to turn left onto a usually very busy 4 lane road with a speed limit of 45.

As I’m turning left, just as I start to straighten the wheel, the engine dies and I get red warning lights on the dash about the various drivers assistant technologies on the car such as blind spot detection, lane assist etc.
I lose engine power and steering assist, I think my brakes still worked but it happened so fast and I was only going about 15-20 mph so I stoped fairly quickly.

So here I am sitting in the middle of a 4 lane road stopped with no power. I quickly put the G into park and cycled the ignition and she fires right up. By this time I had vehicles approaching from behind so I got going.

Has anyone had anything like this happen to them??
This was downright dangerous and like I stated above, I was saved by being at a controlled intersection with lighter than usual traffic. If this had happened while merging onto a busy highway or turning onto a busy road at rush hour, I’m sure I would have been rear ended.
MB is going to hear about this tomorrow.

 

That is very scary! Glad you ended up being okay, but I imagine it's hard to drive the G with confidence now.

Please keep us updated on what you find out and how Mercedes responds.

 

I’m not much on face sitting. LOL

I am going to take the G in tomorrow and won’t be picking it back up until they can explain why this happened and what actions they are taking to resolve.

 

Post back what they find. It may be hard for them if it doesn't reproduce. In 2005 I bought a new Silverado with the Allison and 8.1 big block. It stalled at a light. After I imploded, it started right back up. It never died again and I drove it for 35k miles after that incident.

 

Have them look to see if it through a code - tell them the approximate day/time to confirm.

 

Bob, that’s exactly what I’m going to ask them to do. I know exact time. Was going to ask if they could drill down in the code for the event.

 

It is worth a shot since I agree you were lucky and it could have turned out real bad.

 

This is the exact same thing that has happened to me.. but with my Range Rover. Whenever I make a hard right in parking lot at my office it suddenly shuts off and the battery warnings start flashing.

 

The exact same thing happened to me on January 26 at night while accelerating to get onto the interstate with cars behind me and I have the dash cam video to proof it. Although the video doesn't show all the lights that came on the dash and I couldn't tell what all they were because I was concentrating on getting the G pulled off the road. After 5 attempts it started right up. Service could find nothing wrong and no codes were thrown. It has not happened since.

 

YES.....I have a 19 G63 with <4K miles. This happened to me while driving straight at about 35 MPH. I too had to stop, put it in P & restart. I took it to Park Place in Grapevine TX. They worked with a tech in Germany. The advice they were given was that a number of grounds with G’s have paint overspray. The dealership took pics of these and fixed. In addition they changed out the battery. They had my G for about 2 weeks but since getting it back, this hasn’t happened again. Take it to the dealership and if your advisor needs to talk to mine, tell them to call Stanley @ Park Place Grapevine TX and tell Stanley it’s Pickett’s G63. He can send all the details which should speed up the solve for you.

 

CUZCO AND 69C63

Really appreciate these replies! I will have my dealership reach out to Park Place. Great information!

I took the G in today and basically said keep it until you can figure out what the issue is.

 

I didn't think of ground problems until you mentioned it. If you've ever had ground problems in a car, you know it can be a nightmare to figure out what's going on. I had a brand new 2016 Toyota Land Cruiser a few years ago, and it drove fine...most of the time. Then, out of the blue, the radio might suddenly stop working, and warning lights would light up on the instrument panel. Something was wrong. But what? After stopping and restarting the car, everything would work fine. Then, days or weeks later some other strange problem would crop up, e.g., the headlights might turn on in broad daylight even though I didn't turn them on, the defroster wouldn't work, etc.). Then, everything would suddenly work fine again for days or weeks. Fortunately, the engine never stopped. But all kinds of other oddball stuff would happen intermittently. It was like the car was haunted or possessed

I took it to Toyota several times, but it was intermittent, and they couldn't find it. Until one guy finally said, "it sounds like a loose ground wire to me." Bingo! They found the loose ground wire and tightened it. Problem solved. Never another issue at all. It's my understanding that Land Cruisers have one primary ground wire someplace, and they routinely disconnect it when they ship the cars to the USA. Then, they reconnect it at arrival. Someone must have been distracted and only hand-tightened my ground wire.

I also had strange problems with a Ferrari a few years ago. That car had something like 36 ground wires scattered all over the place. I told the mechanic about the strange intermittent problems that suddenly cropped up. He immediately suspected a loose ground wire. Bingo. He was right. He tightened it. Problem solved.

My G 63 is supposed to arrive at the end of this week. I'm going to ask them if it's not too much trouble to check the ground wire(s) to make sure they are tight.

I don't know if the problem with the OP's G550 is a loose ground (I hope it is because it's an easy fix), but I'd mention it to the Mercedes folks just in case.

 

Mine gets into into the Port of Brunswick in the morning so I will ask the dealer to have them check it out during the PDI.

 

My dealership is calling yours today. Appreciate this!

 

Great. Hope it’s a quick solve. They took pics that’s should help your tech.

 

I'm curious if they told you how many ground wires the G wagon has? Do you have pictures of all them. If I go to the trouble of learning how many grounds there are, and where they are located, that will guarantee that I'll never have a problem with ground wires. LOL

 

Agreed, would like to know where the grounds are located if you have the info.

 

Sorry, I do not have pictures of the overspray on the ground points. I know the tech went through all of them and removed the paint. Sounds like this was new to the dealership, both the issue and the solution.

 

Very interesting (and disturbing) thanks for sharing that and best wishes for a resolution.

When I read the heading, I thought the post was going to be something else, more benign but still irritating. Has anyone else noticed the extremely aggressive traction control while turning? If you accelerate while cornering hard, the ECU will cut power to the wheels. It's extremely irritating. I assume it is trying to protect from an understeer situation if it thinks its approaching loads beyond the tires' grip. But for an experienced driver it just feels dangerous: you are anticipating one set of responses and getting another...

 

This happened to me a couple months ago. The dealership couldn't find anything wrong with it, no error codes. A month later I was driving in the heavy rain and the car started pulling right (like I was crossing the yellow line). A few minutes later it shut off and locked me in the car. I lost all controls on the drivers side: windows, heat, door locks... Turns our a series of wires snapped due to the heat. Very scary!

 

@E552006 Did I miss the final update on this? What was the dealer able to find?

 

Vehicle is still at the dealers.
They are also dealing with door speaker rattles which I have another thread on here.

Evidently my service department is only able to deal with one issue at a time so they haven’t even started the process of diagnosing or remedying this issue.
I will update this thread when they do.

 

Do you have any more specific information? Which wires were the issue? Snapped due to heat?

 

The wiring harness in the drivers side door. They heat up and become brittle. Three wires were completely separated. Two weeks later it happened to my dads G63.

 

Had same thing happen to me exactly.
It's the 4X4 transfer case gear sensor malfuction.
There is a recall for it.