briangmb

Folks-

I posted this on another w163 board since I am really curious.

I just swapped out the battery on my 2005 ML350 (first gen ML350). Since I bought the car used, I don't have a full service/maintenance history but I am pretty sure the battery was original. Aside from many printed labels which did not seem to have any date information, there was an identifier "01JFP" hand etched in the battery by one of the posts so I am pretty sure that is the date identifier and that the battery goes back to 2001 (at least the manufacture date)! My reason is that the 0 can't be a letter O since O would not correspond to a month. The second digit, I believe, can't be a letter "i" because that is not used because of number/letter confusion. So my thinking the battery was from 2001 in the month of October (the letter "J").

Is this possible? A battery that lasted 13 years (usage) and 102k miles? Incredible.

Plutoe

That's what you get with an MB battery

briangmb

The only other thing I can think is that the code is "D1JFP" which could be April 2011. Still pretty good but not in the amazing territory.

While I know this topic is not high up on the list of interesting and useful tips to share on these cars, I could not resist sharing.