ahmose

How difficult it is to change the battery on the ML430 ?
Looking under the hood, it doesn't look like a trivial job. It looks
like quite a tight fit.
Any advice or tips on how to do it ?
thanks in advance for your help.

saturnstyl

It is a pretty tight fit. I think you will want to buy an OEM battery from the dealer, they are the only ones I have ever seen that actually fit the hold down properly.
Disconnect ground cable, 10 MM wrench.
Disconnect skinny red wire from positive cable 10 MM.
Disconnect positive wire 10 MM
Remove rubber weather strip that runs from side to front
Unhook plastic shroud where the positive cable runs through it, there will be a door that swings open and then you can lay the cable out of the way.
Remove plastic part off metal hold down bracket.
Unhook hose, and possibly water pump off battery hold down bracket.
Remove black plastic tensioner under hold down, where it comes over top of
battery.
Push down metal band, then pry between battery and band on the side of the battery near the fender, this will unhook the band from the battery tray.
Remove 13 MM bolt from battery hold down, and swing it out of there.
Make grunting noises as you pull out the old battery and put the new one in.
Make sure its fully seated in the battery tray and put it all back together.
Set the clock, radio code, resync windows if applicable, and trip computer otherwise the client will be so pissed off that their clock was wrong that they will never return to your service center....

ahmose

saturnstyl,
thanks very much for your very detailed and very helpfull response.
So you think I have to get the battery from the dealer instead of this Energizer
battery that they gave me at Pep Boys ?
Any idea how much the battery from the dealer might cost ?

thanks again and I trully appreciate the help.

ahmose

Well, i installed the new battery and everything is working well. Ofcourse, i had to scramble to find that security code
thanks for the help. It's a good feeling to save a bunch of moolah