BOTUS

is it as simple as closing the drivers door?

Arrie

No. Been inside both cars with doors closed and no matter what I try to do I am not able to get gear out of PARK without starting the engine first.

BOTUS

have any of you guy thought about this one / removed the front licence plate to see if this helps?

P-B-54.65/130a FEB07 Parktronic triggers without obvious cause at the front bumper. This may be caused by the side edges of the license plate being detected as an obstruction by the PTS sensor. The system may trigger at the front at random. Due to varying license plate widths, the actual width of the license plate bracket will need to be coded if no faults are present or stored in the Parktronic control unit.

I found another old one - this NOW affects my car since an update !!!!

P-B-43.10/04 OCT07 Whistling/clicking/thudding from the driver footwell area when driving in Distronic or Speedtronic (cruise control) mode, the cause may be due to noises coming from the Brake Assist System (BAS) activation of the solenoid valve in the brake booster. The software for the ABR control unit will be updated to prevent the solenoid from vibrating.

Steph77

Hi.
i have encountered a message too. Distronic inoperative.
i have some battery problems when the car has not run for a while.
i only had this after few days of no use of my car.

BOTUS

my understanding was Mercedes car's had the ESP steering wheel / steering angle calibration set on install of a new component. The clock spring comes pre set and must be fitted following a set procedure without disturbing the setting it gets out of the box….

My Autel kit can do this calibration in software on a Ford. But I didn't think Mercedes did it this way. And no one ever suggested you could? And on a Mercedes the Autel one has no options to set up, which I expected (due to the first sentence above).

Then I got hold of a Snap On tool that's a bit more sophisticated and it claims there is a calibration setting for the Steering angle and this Snap On tool supports it. Go in the menus, mine is slightly off centre. But I bottled breaking it as wasn't sure if a good idea. Checking on my father's simpler W211 it claims it too can be calibrated???, but either I went in a step further before stopping or its a different set up (it said something about needs to go lock to lock, which I didn't see in mine)…

The next thing the Snap On one is supposed to support is Distronic, but going in it just kicked me out saying this is optional and I may not fitted. Doh - really! So I wrote and said what's going on why's it do that. Got a message back they would look in to it. Now 2020 Autumn update is just out. I haven't tried but will be interesting to see where we are. I wonder could this out of whack calibration be an element in the ghost pick up we get? My engine was off and I forced the wheel to about straight ahead and it was 3 degrees out of whack. But would be better to find a smooth flat road and let it settle before trying to break it.

This video eludes to this sort of fun and talks about dynamic calibration for front radar systems. This was one I saw the high end Autel kit supports, so with both clock spring tweaked and the dynamic calibration completed it would be interesting to see how things fair...

George993

After digging into it for a while I see a correlation between 5x04 errors (5104, 5304 etc) and the "Park assist not avail, see oper manual" Mercedes software bug. I can find those errors recorded only in the controller shadow memory, the full names are like:

5304 "Component A86/1b3 (Right inner radar sensor, front bumper) is disrupted by interference from an external transmitter"

Where various x in 5x04 correspond to various radar sensors around the car. So yes, that is the trigger - interference from another car. I would rather see s/w ignoring it, instead of beeping and displaying alarms about Park Assist.

Since we have been discussing the "Park Assist" bug for over 5 years and (as far as I know) no one has found a complete solution yet, I'm convinced that the best way to fix it is to remove the Park Assist (either through s/w config, or fuse removal or control module removal). I'm still looking for s/w removal option (needs to remove car option number 220 - PTS), the fuse seems to be 142 - N10/2f142, and the module is N62 in the right side of the trunk, behind the wheel well. Has anyone tried any of those 3 options yet?

DaleB

Don't know why you'd want to remove or disable it completely. It is quite useful when, for example, pulling into the garage. I just push the button to disable it when I start the car, and push it to enable when I want it on. Since no one at M-B is going to touch software for an older car like this, the best we can hope for is that someone will figure out a way to make "disabled" the default mode when the car is started. I don't know if it's possible using developer mode in DAS. I've poked around a little bit, but most of the really potentially interesting stuff is in German, and I haven't taken the time to translate all of it.

I'm quite sure you could do it with the aftermarket Android screens that replace the dash buttons for park assist and suspension height with soft buttons, if you were comfortable with Android programming (I'm not, unfortunately).

Or maybe some day @Polar Bear could come up with a clever fix for this to go along with the GPS tweak.

George993

Various people have different use cases, for me it annoys me more often with beeping than benefits me during parking, so I would be fine without it. But (if the original bug can not be fixed) certainly ability to have it off by default and able to turn it on when needed would be very good. Maybe it can be done with poking through CAN bus - has anyone figured out all the CAN buses pin-outs (the CAN center seems to be under dash next to the OBD), which bus serves what and what are the actual message formats, in this case to turn the Park Assist on/off? Or at least a part of it :-)?

Tomukas

Hi guys, this is very common problem in w221 mercedes models, i dismantle these cars, obviuosly i can put them back in one piece. This chain of problems with ESP, Parking Assist and Distronic Plus being inoperative has one simple answer. First you have to understand that these components are connected in so called common rail, and the common rail extends to your Steering Angle Sensor, ABR, xenon steering angle (ussually one master light left side), and so on so on, to diagnose whats wrong first you have to have STAR, and if you look closelly in STAR, there is one hidden glitch... ITS THE PCD SCREEN ERROR, even though it appears to be working. All you need to do is to change the PCD rear parktronic little screen right next to your rear window, because it ussually fails, but appears to be operative for some time, if you run the test on it, even though it fails, it will still continue to flash and seem operative, but it will cause all this mess by shutting down all the parking systems esp and distronic, because its common rail as well, even though you can turn off the radar, parking systems and ESP though your dash, this PCD component will still be active while you drive, because it senses your turn data through your steering angle sensor and speed through other components in the chain, even though the systems are switched off manually in another words, it will be operative in silent mode, so when one component fails -> the whole chain fails. There is no need to waste thousands of dollars on changing the parking system components like NANO parktronic blocks hidden behind your rear bumper, also there is no need of changing your steering angle sensor which costs hundreds and appears to be "defective" through star because it simply sends the message to PCD and does not get the correct reply back (or gets none at all) and fails. This is normal, when PCD screen is failing, all because it messes with the whole chain of components. This is an easy fix, and it will cost you around 10 dollars max by changing the PCD screen, part number A1715420123 for W221 from 2005-2013 and you can do it on your own, since it has only 2 connective wires and can be easily taken off from your car interior without any screws. And for the record - these errors have nothing to do with ABS system, ABS main block or the ABS sensors. Please keep in mind, that if ABS main would fail, you would loose your power steering and the ABS yellow light would be constantly on in your dash, this includes the misconduct of ABS sensors as well, so the sympthoms would be different from your actual problem described above. Good luck with your rides

Tomukas

In addition, small imput on radar interference, radar interference is also common in W221 even though your systems are functioning 100% good. Benz radars interfere with the heavy load of water. Water is radars enemy in Mercs. If you want you can run a test for your own interest, take 2 litres of water and pour it on your front bumper around the areas of your headlight washers all at once, leave the car running, all the parking systems turned on, radars on, after few seconds you will get an error in your dash, dsc, parktronics and radar will missfire for few seconds and this error will disappear when the interference stops and you would start driving These systems can react with rain and this glitch is straight from the production, they were made like this.

BOTUS

as Tomukas says its a problem, its NOT a bug, the car is doing 100% what it was designed to do (but the world moved on and now it causes problems)

...the parking sensor throwing teddies is NORMAL - and its why its in ORANGE... if it was a serious failure it would be RED

distronic plus can also switch off with ORANGE warning for heavy rain (only had this once)

https://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=9024309&fileO Id=9024312
...to this end, automotive radar systems have undergone an extensive evolution since the first prototypes... and in US and Europe during the late 1990s with the Daimler S-class systems, followed by Jaguar, Nissan and BMW... Moving to the future it has been concluded that the systems must be able to sustain high levels of interference caused by inter-operating sensors... As a part of the increasing demands and due to the technological advances, the traditionally employed 24 GHz systems are getting phased out for the high bandwidth 77 GHz systems

Tomukas

PCD rear parking system display > Led colour blinking RED is Failure to START a device, and Led colour blinking ORANGE is Malfunction within a device or a misunderstood signal from the blockchain (Temporary error), Led colour constant GREEN is Healthy Activity of this device, including two last RED led tabs for Critical Warnings on both ends. If the PCD is failing, you have a fail of ESP (caused by steering angle sensor sending the signal to PCD display about the steering angle possition, but receiving no result back which is 0, so the board PCU marks the steering angle sensor as defective in your car and ESP turns off and fails along with it, then your radar, parking assist and distronic failures follow since they're all on same common rail (same chain of connected devices). Thats right, they did undergo an extensive testing and these systems have evolved, but not as in W222 or W223 these days, where the car parks itself and you just drink coffee watching it drive you right next to your doorstep. For me personally, thats more like an evolution in parking assist within S class. I never said W221 is outdated, but the electric part takes a lifetime to figure out for some owners until they go bold, while many local dealerships know and use these problems to ripoff people and lure them into buying brand new expensive spares from them, which are not even needed. This happened to me, and to many other people, thats why i have shared my experience, since i had these all with my W221 "evolution" which i own for 9 years now and still not even thinking of selling it, once I understood it and we became friends

Extension into ESP being inoperative, Parking Assist inoperative and Distronic Plus not waking up from the same coffin of errors, could also lead to your vehicles "wheels" being Misaligned wheels (most common in post-mortum crashed and geometrically badly repaired vehicles). So whats done in that case if the above plan A does not help you, is a propper wheel alignment, and the steering angle sensor data offset reset to zero through STAR (wheel possition data offset reset to zero), then all error clearing, and a simple car restart. If even more deeper, this also sometimes occurs, because a steering angle sensor is pre-programmed not to exceed 5 degress max, so the thresh-hold is between -5 to +5 on the front wheels of your benz. IF the wheel alignment is wrong, or the steering wheel has been removed and placed back in the wrong possition without the wheels being aligned afterwards, then your steering angle sensor is "brain-dead" it does see everything wrong, and anything above 5 degress is not understood by the car, therefore these components all suffer failure, even though nothing is wrong with them. I had many more cases, what leads to these errors, but its ussually NOT the parktronics under your back bumper. 4 units in rear bump, price per 1 unit brand new is 610 euros in Europe, so we always get the same scenario, a dealership man shaking his head telling his customer, SIR IM AFRAID WE NEED TO CHANGE THEM ALL just to make sure it works... Thats 2400 euro, around 3000 bucks and customers saying.. oh gosh, can we get a loan here? So to make sure NOT to get punked, you can also follow your parktronics and test them all seperately in STAR, radar activity and all these systems, just connect star, and try it in the parking lot, see how your car sees the objects first, even though parking system appears not to be functional through your dash and appears inoperative, radar and parktronics still work while you get these errors, maybe not for you visibly, but for the car, their activity is still visible through star and they aren't ussually the case. Things mentioned above helped me to solve this spydernet of errors, so my 550 has none now. Most likely that your hidden catch is illustrated below, hope it helps > A1715420123 >

BOTUS

Tomukas, of course if the car needs maintenance to fix something broken its a "failure". And your experience and the knowledge you have shared will help others with broken cars.... but the concerns raised regularly on this forum and this whole thread is NOTHING to do with systems or components that have stopped working as originally designed and built. Its ONLY about INTERFERENCE from other vehicles, solely caused by earlier adopters failling to think about others using the technology and the air space is now crowded with electronic crap

Tomukas

Then as you mentioned earlier:

A) P-B-43.10/04 OCT07 Whistling/clicking/thudding from the driver footwell area when driving in Distronic or Speedtronic (cruise control) mode, the cause may be due to noises coming from the Brake Assist System (BAS) activation of the solenoid valve in the brake booster. The software for the ABR control unit will be updated to prevent the solenoid from vibrating. > MUST UPDATE
B) P-B-54.65/130a FEB07 Parktronic triggers without obvious cause at the front bumper. This may be caused by the side edges of the license plate being detected as an obstruction by the PTS sensor. The system may trigger at the front at random. Due to varying license plate widths, the actual width of the license plate bracket will need to be coded if no faults are present or stored in the Parktronic control unit. > THIS IS IT - IF THE LICENSE PLACE OBSTRUCTS PARKTRONICS
C) Bad calibration of the car? Car height? W221 height can be calibrated through STAR, sometimes one side slightly lower then the other might trigger various anomalities of radar.
D) I also get parktronic interference obstruction warning messages through STAR (ussually front bumper), but never had any physical radar shutdown on the road while driving. Not even an error, after i fixed the failing components. Exception few times I used to get beeps out of the nowhere, with all the systems switched on, but they never turned off or became inoperative whilst on the road. The 24 GHz and 77 GHz disturbance is known issue, but its clear that nobody can't do anything about it. The earth is full of electronic garbage. (Changing frequency operating speeds might help, but thats impossible now)... As in the same way I was unable to seperate and to switch off the parking assist from working, which I had desire for, because the car reply was either all or none. In addition to that, I would of lost my parking camera vision too So had to stick with it as it is..

BOTUS

yep, buts its funny my car was never updated (built Nov 2006 and I never had this fault), then I had DTR update, front and rear radars updated, and rear SAM updated in 2019 and then this fault below turned up (always using the facelift rubbish Merc SCN on the car if you plug it in and ask if there's an update). But after going back to an older R SAM module recently (running 2007 software), this fault has now gone away !!!

A) P-B-43.10/04 OCT07 Whistling/clicking/thudding from the driver footwell area when driving in Distronic or Speedtronic (cruise control) mode, the cause may be due to noises coming from the Brake Assist System (BAS) activation of the solenoid valve in the brake booster. The software for the ABR control unit will be updated to prevent the solenoid from vibrating. > MUST UPDATE

The other one about licence plate I wonder if its metallic plates like they use in USA?, UK mostly use Perspex and the size has no impact

Re the invisible front parking sensor systems, they shutdown and re-enable as soon as interference goes away (but also store the code for no benefit). up to 2007 the parking sensors came from the outer cruise radars, By the first mini facelift model year 2008 they moved to ultrasonic parking sensors due to all the complaints. On these earlier ones, interference can happen unlimited times, for example if you're in a queue of traffic on a motorway with lots of Jags and Nissans it can become very irritating (as they bunch up it cuts the signal and re-enables as they pull away, so the fun starts all over) 20 times in a 5 mile trip is easy.. However if you don't find one of the offending vehicles or roadside annoyances it can stay enabled all the time without seeing that message for a month...


.

lkchris

A1715420123 part number is changed to A0015424723

https://www.mbdirectparts.com/oem-pa...zer-0015424723

Tomukas

Oh, I see.. In regards of the license plates, I thought you are in US? Because its not only in US the license plates are metallic, in fact in all of the EU the license plates are just a rectangular shape squared peace of stamped metal Its only the UK which has adapted the perspex type license plates around here, but sadly they're not in the EU anymore Of course perspex ones do not obstruct anything. However interesting theory, I did not know about the older 2007 SAM being more stable. Mine is the post 2008 model, so called first S500 with AMG face and body. After more digging into it, I discovered those under the rear bump. According to the software version numbers they are the latest ever produced for W221, so I guess mine are ultrasonic ones then, so the interference is different, maybe more or less minimal. They're called SRS100-SLR, and I am surprised that they cost a fortune these days now. Mounted all with cheap plastic screws...

BOTUS

if you can see outside the car it has 4 round parking sensors each end then you get the normal later ones, if its an early car with distronic plus and appears to have plain bumpers, then it has invisible radar for each corner to do parking and uses three at the front (including the main visible one in the middle) for cruise control, I think the outer ones are shared with parking duties

anyone know these rear air vents (inside the boot behind the rear wheels) they have a strange antenna on USA spec cars - I thought mine are just plain vents ???

https://www.ebay.com/itm/30181233429...cAAOSw8lBToZ72

Bongo7777

Correct! That tiny battery under the dash on the drivers side of my 2010 W216 CL500 does have an effect on the distronic plus and blind spot assist
if it is not giving at least 12 volts +.
The little bugger is well hidden and it says nothing about it in the books! Mercedes obviously moved them around in various models and years. I also have a 2008 CL500 and the little battery is in the same spot. My distronic would not work at all and the fault could not be found by the dealer who said 'we will have to replace sensor and module'. Then someone said have you replaced the auxiliary battery. It was replaced and it has worked fine since.

adko69420

Hey , i need help . My parking sensors just died idk why when i put car in to the gear R/D it makes beep sound and both front and rear are red . THanks for any help