Hi Everyone!

I have a 2013 GL450 , with 145.000 km in it. The car is mine from 2015, there was no problem with it at all.

But 2 month ago, there is a strange thing happening only just sometimes, when I start the car. After 3 hours standing, when I turned on the engine , it was not start in that moment -when always-but was "thinking" 3 seconds , and then started. After driving, I stopped again for 10 minutes and 30 minutes, and the car started perfectly. the next day after a night, in the morning-car stands in garage- the car started perfectly, came home , started again the car after 3-4 hours stand, its started again after 3-4 seconds after turning on. If it sits for 10 min, 1 hour, 1 day, 2 days, 7 days, it starts nice. But if I start after 2-8 hours , it will not start nice.

Do you have any ideas why is doing that?

 

Your battery is going bad.

 

have you replaced the battery in the last 4yrs?
What is the temperature where you live?


The sub-40°F weather always exposes dead batteries.

 

To be honest, it sounds more like the starter. Sluggishness when hot is a symptom.

However, when you have electrical problems, always start by ensuring a solid baseline of good battery and alternator.

 

Hi, we have changed the battery 2 month ago, because we also think of it first. We live in Central Europe, the temperature at the moment here is 7 celsius, there is no real cold here in the winter.

 

Battery have been changed 2 month ago, so its not that.

 

If I had a nickel for every time someone ruled something out because it was just replaced ... Test the battery anyway. Establish a baseline that you have a known good battery and alternator in the vehicle.

 

We also thought first for the battery, when the car first time did this thing.
W e went to check the "old" battery , it was in a 45 % condition, but we decided to change it . So now it's a 100 % battery , nothing has changed, so battery is not the issue as I wrote.

 

You are not heeding the advice. I don't care if it is a brand new battery. Check it. This is basic discipline. I purchased a new battery that had been sitting on the shelf for too long. It was ruined. In poorer areas, the AGM batteries are not turned over as fast as they should.

Check the alternator next. Not that it is a likely culprit in this case, but the alternator, starter, and battery form a three-legged stool; the battery and alternator support each other and can drag each other down, while a weak starter can exhaust a battery due to excessive discharge on starting. The battery is consumed by electrons in and out, as well as depth of discharge.

 

Adding to this, I would advise that once you have a proven/tested good main battery, check the ground strap(s) from the engine to the chassis (if it were my car, I would do a clean ground straps campaign all around the car). Contact resistance is a function of temperature as well. MB engine ground straps are usually from below and exposed to the elements --> corrosion. Just clean it, use Deoxist, tighten it correctly, and continue.

Forgot to ask: have you scanned the vehicle for any codes? in particular when it is misbehaving

 

Welp. First of all, this is in the wrong forum. @MJ50 hate to bug you again.

Second, you do not state what "does not start" means. Does it crank without starting? Do nothing when you turn to Start position? Crank sluggishly?

 

It’s slow cranking when hot, is what I’m reading.
that could be starter.

the dead giveaway for that is that DAS won’t let you do a compression test, and will also throw a code for implausible crank speed iirc.

have the car read out. If you have a bunch of current and stored unrelated garbage codes that points to a low voltage event caused by a bad battery.

 

Note he specifies that an intermediate waiting period results in no-start. That reminds me of my "vapor lock", in which if the motor sits for a few hours it has a long crank.

Hot sluggish crank applies to minutes after you stop the motor.

 

My experience with similar symptoms has been the starter. My conjecture is that a worn down starter gets heatsoaked during an extended stop and has a much harder time starting.

 

moved to X166 forum...

 

Sorry but English is not my first language, but I try to explain. So, I turn on the ignition, and then I turn the key again to start the engine. This is the point when the car -if the engine is still hot- starts immediately! BUt if car sits between 2-8 hours , the engine will not start immediately , cranking about 3-4 sec and then starting.

 

What you are describing sounds like a long crank issue. Could be a lot of reasons - from bad fuel pump to bad throttle position sensor, MAF sensor, or even bad spark plug-to-coil wire.

I have a 2013 GL450 with 186K miles and had this happen a few times recently. In my case it only happened 2-3 times over the last 2 months, so I haven't bothered to investigate yet.

 

Yes,it was scanned at mb, because check engine lamp came up before this first happened, that time we were told that nr 4 and 5 cylinders have lower pressure than the others. But they do not know why. Last week I also drove the car there, to look up this further(check engine lamp went away , its not on), now cylinder nr 4 is ok, now cylinder 5 and 6 have lower pressure, the service do not know what is the reason, or is there any connection between the bad starts and the lower pressure...

They looked at the injectors, -i was told-, they are fine, now they can not do further, only change the whole engine. It sounds very crazy ,also the price is crazy too-30.000 USD- because I can not accept that this car, which goes like how it goes, would have got any kind of engine issues. I think if the car has a bad cylinder , its always bad, not for certain times.

So I would not like to bring the car to that mb service again, and try to find ideas, if someone met with this issue.

The next thing I would like to change its the fuel filter, it was never changed, it is with the ac pump.

 

Hi RobDav,

Did you ever find out what the problem was?

 

Hi, yes thank God , it is solved.
We have changed the fuel filter, this was our first thought last year to change, but the mb official service told us , not to change it, because they are sure , its not the problem.They thought its cylinder problems...

So 3 weeks ago we changed it with them, engine sign was on at that time, and the car performance was significantly less, from 0 to 50 km/h it was a bit more time to speed up.

Since the change, no engine sign, and first of all, the starting issue solved, so it starts everytime perfectly. If you read my previous posts, you can check, that " the engine not starting immediately" was the issue with the car since last September.