JoeMa

Just today the tailgate on our 2013 GL 550 stopped working. We cannot open it from the door, with the SmartKey, or from inside the drivers door. Has anyone else heard of this or better yet, know what would cause it to stop working? I have an appointment to have the service department take a look at this tomorrow but thought some one might have an answer.

blittle

There were issues like this back on the original 07 model but I have not heard of it since..... they will solve it at MB of Lanc.! I will be interested in what they find.... if you are there in the early morning, the donuts are fantastic!

fabbrisd1

What did mBrace say when you called them ?

The one other time I have seen this happen is when that particular customers older father closed the door manually (not knowing about power close) which triggered a safety interlock - in that case tech reset.

JoeMa

The service department had to replace the latch assembly. I'm surprised they had one in stock. But it is working again and they even gave it a bath.

blittle

Good place!

JoeMa

The power lift gate stopped working again on our 2013 GL550. This is the second failure and the shop has been trying to resolve this issue all week with no success. They replaced the latch (again) and also replaced the lift motor but it continues to fail when the vehicle is on a slight incline. They are stumped and have reported the problem directly to Mercedes-Benz corporate who is talking with the engineers in Germany.


If anyone else has experienced issues with their 166 lift-gates, please post your comments. This may be more wide-spread than we know.


The number of days in the shop are beginning to add up for a brand new $93,000 SUV. I've never had to file a lemon-law case but the thought has occurred to me.

wamochi

sorry to hear that. i haven't had any issues w the tailgate at all, but i don't think i've ever parked at an incline either (and had to open the tailgate)

fabbrisd1

Interesting question - no I have not seen that particular problem before - and no there is not a rash that I am aware of - however I might suggest three firendly things to your dealer that they may or may not have already covered - one, is to replace the double/button tailgate button assembly - since a malfunction of the "lock" button can frack things up - see Owner's manual page 90 - 2nd there can be hidden "chafing" of the wiring that runs from the tailgate into the body and that part of the wiring harness is available on special order only - third, check alignment specs of the rear tailgate - of the three frankly I would personally suspect that two/button/modular switch - other stuff gets into the Keyless Go system, kindof zany actually..

JoeMa

Thanks for the suggestions. I called the service manager to pass this along and they did check alignment (and replaced the latch and latch-motor) but they did not replace the 2-button control. He also told me a regional MB technical rep is coming into their shop tomorrow to look at the problem. Finally he said MB called them back to report this is a known issue related to a software glitch. He said that if the interior lights are on when we press the button to close the tail-gate, the problem can occur.


I am one very frustrated customer!

2014gl550

I bet that is why the interior lights do not come on when opening lift gate only.

somersetjon

So if you are standing outside and push the close tailgate button whilst the interior lights are on, you break it and it won't open again?

If that's so all you guys looking for lemon law fixes have got a real simple one there?

JoeMa

Actually, I spoke to the sales manager (great guy) and he is looking into exchanging our 2013 GL for a new 2014 GL at minimal cost to us. He realizes how unsatisfied we are becoming. We'll see where that ends up. We really enjoy the car (when it's not in the shop) and wish these annoying issues would go away.


I must admit that the 10 years we were purchasing Lexus vehicles, we never experienced anything like this. But I also understand that these issues may be an isolated occurrence related to our car only and not a broader indication of MB build quality.

JoeMa

I spoke to the service manager today and he said the problem is related to the ambient light level setting. If you set it to 1 or 2 (mine was set to 2) the control box for the lift gate latch and the ambient lights keeps the power on to the latch and eventually burns it out. MB issued a service bulletin about this problem on January 2, 2014. They are working on a software update to correct the issue. He said if the level is set to 3 or higher there should not be a problem. Just very odd that it is only now becoming a problem.




So for now they turned ambient lighting off to keep the latch assembly from burning out. I'll monitor this closely and report any further issues should they come up.

wamochi

that seems like a very weird explanation. i'll have to check my ambient light setting but i don't think i've ever changed it from the default factory setting. and i regularly ( i mean 3-4x a week), leave my tailgate wide open for a few hours after getting out the car because i forget to get back to the garage and close it after getting the kids and all the crap out.

i also did that in my X164 also and never had an issue with the tailgate.

JoeMa

We got our GL back today (8-days in the shop!). Ambient lighting was disabled and the lift gate does work normally. I'm gun-shy about enabling ambient lighting and setting the level to 3 or higher as we don't want our GL back in the shop any time soon.


I'll post to this thread again when the software update is released by MB and applied to our GL. The shop doesn't know when the software update would be available.


If I recall, ambient lighting is set to 5 from the factory. That may be why most owners have not had this failure. They never changed this setting as I did.

fabbrisd1

A brief explanatory - the bulletin referenced was released regarding the W166/M-Class - most likely the reason the dealer did not print the bulletin for you - as they did not want to confuse the issue.

I took a look today with my shop foreman and service manager - and we all three agreed the GL has the same circuitry - and frankly we have not encountered this issue before - we set ambient lighting at 3 for delivery - yes factory is set at 5 - and we did experiemtn with a ML and GL, and setting at 2 or 1 did not cause any problems on our stock vehciles.

However - a bit of explanation here - the bulletin calls for replacement of the mechancial latch - yes - however it also calls for re-programing of that rear control module - and the fact is that software was never released to US service - it exists as factory/vendor programming only - so MB is working up the software "patch" now so it can be made available thru our "service cloud" connect.

From the bulletin, and my review with my guys - I expect this is a very rare issue -

JoeMa

Fab, I'm not surprised your testing you did not result in an immediate failure. We set our ambient lighting to 1 when we took delivery so it was several months before the first motor burned out and several more months before the second motor went belly-up. It is odd that MB would not include the GL in the bulletin so I hope this is the actual problem we're experiencing and a real fix is coming soon.

blittle

Joe….I've been "out of the loop" for quite some time….just now catching up with this thread! Sorry to hear about your "struggles!" I'm sure MB of Lanc will do the best possible……will be very disappointed if they don't! I'll be visiting them soon…..inspection time! I will be interested in what my mechanic can tell me regarding the issue!

Dalema

Strange one indeed - sounds super frustrating - no one should be without their brand new car for that long. Also doesn't like they have truly fixed your car - you can't use ambient lighting - it's one of the nicest features of the car. I'd take the 2014 swap!

Thanks for posting - I'd suggest starting a separate thread with the issue in the heading - like - don't set ambient below 3. And link this thread in it - so all owners are aware.

Ntuck

Hey JoeMa,

I just saw your post on my thread about the lift gate not closing. So I also just posted on there that as of today it will now not open. I was able to put the key in and manually do it but then it auto latches again. I could turn the key and push the gate open manually and you can hear the motor but it won't work any other way. It won't work if I try to open from the outside and it won't work when opening from the inside with the lift gate button either. I also after only 5 months of owning the car have had to replace the key fob battery. So I just got a new battery (knowing it wasn't related to the tailgate but you never know) and still nothing. I saw all your notes about the ambient lighting. I too leave mine on level 1. I don't like it any higher because it's too bright and I guess should probably just turn it off, but sometimes it's nice to sort of see in there.

I will call the service department tomorrow and figure out what is going on. Sounds like my motor might be going too? I have no clue. I was just in there 2 weeks ago with a bad wiper motor. They stopped working in the middle of the rain and then went into high speed mode for 3 seconds and then stopped. I had to manually flip them on and off to even get to where I needed to go. They ordered the part and now good to go. But, this will be my 3rd trip in just a few weeks of bringing a brand new 2014 GL 350 that I special ordered and received Aug 8th 2013. Seems like a lot of problems for a car I have had for 5 months. I hate to ***** fest on here because I truly LOVE the car. I just hate all the little things that have happened. Will tell them also about your experience. Interesting that yours is a '13 and mine is a '14 and both with problems on the latch.

Thanks for posting! Will let you know what I find out.

Ntuck

Took my GL in this morning and got it back. They replaced the latch assembly on the tailgate as well. Hope this doesn't happen again like it did to you, JoeMa.

JoeMa

Did they mention that setting the ambient lighting to 1 or 2 burning out the motor? If not, you might read through my posts above carefully to avoid burning out another motor.

Ntuck

I mentioned it to them and they had no idea what I was talking about. I have disabled it for now. Seems like the strangest thing that the ambient light would burn it out at a low setting. Did you end up keeping your 550 or getting a new one?

JoeMa

We still have our 2013 GL550 but may be trading it if these prolonged visits to the shop continue. We never encountered problems like this with our Lexus vehicles. Year after year Consumer Reports ranks Lexus at the top of the customer satisfaction list and I'm beginning to appreciate how important that is. Our GL has a lot going for it but so far reliability is below average (for our GL anyway). We're hoping Mercedes Corporate and/or the dealership help us move to a new GL at minimal cost. I just don't know at this point and I don't want to be unreasonable. It just doesn't feel good to have our $94,000 vehicle in the shop so many times.

fabbrisd1

The software update that will solve the "ambient lighting conflict with rear tailgate" has been released today. After updater full 1-5 ambient setting can be used.