There may be threads for this already but honestly, I do not know how to search as I get a million finds for anything I try to find. Useless,

So, new thread.,

As I want to keep my 2012 S550 running for a long time I have done some preventive maintenance to it.

-Replaced all Cam Shaft Sensors
-Replaced all Cam Shaft Solenoids (magnets some call them)
-Installed scarifying "pigtails" on all Camshaft and Magnets wirings. (Three of four Cam Shaft Sensors had leaked thru, rest were clean).
-Replaced all Spark Plugs and indexed them correctly (there is another thread for this)
-Replaced all ignition coils
-Replaced rear struts (had no leak but changed for the rear "jumping sideways" but struts were not the problem)
-Replaced the propeller shat center support bearing (huge improvement in vibrations)

What else could there be that could break you down hundreds of miles away from home? Something reasonable to fix DIY.
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Guibo/flexdisc (hopefully you did this when you did the propshaft support bearing).
If you have ABC: replace the accumulators and vibration dampers (and fluid).

 

change the gearbox fluid and filter
put a crank sensor on it
buy some rear ABS sensors ready for when they give up
top up ac gas
clone comand harddrive

 

Checked flex disks and they look brand new.

 

Why? There is either a leak to be fixed or not. Do not overcharge the AC system. However, getting a couple of cans of r134a refrigerant may not be a bad idea since new cars have switched to r1234yf and r134a may be hard to find in a few years. I know it has gotten stupidly expensive, but not as expensive as the r1234yf stuff.

What does cloning the hard drive do?

 

cars are not domestic refrigerators - thus they do not have a pressurised container around the compressor - car ones allow gas to escape to atmosphere when not used regularly, and on your car you have rubber hoses and O ring joints, rather than copper pipe and soldered joints - all of which means its normal for gas to escape - its is permissible / deemed that up to 10% gas leakage occurs per annum

the hard drives in NTG3.5 systems love to die - at massively higher rates than the similar drive in the NTG3.0 system dies - as the later version "magically" came in a caddy for easy removal - clone and fit the new drive before you need to be nice and find someone to lend you a drive image you need to load - and then find some other nice person to code your options across

 

Timing chain tensioners and check valves. I bought the kit from FCP. Mine is only at 50k mi but needed them already. Very noisy on startup.

Keep oil change intervals close, these are boosted motors.

Drive belt/tensioner.

Replace coolant.

Motor mounts and tranny mount as a set.

And you are correct, search function is useless. Not only on this forum, but on other auto forums as well, as many are hosted by the same host.

 

Of these
-I changed ATF and filter right after I got the car at 75000 miles.
-I checked the a/c charge and it was/is good. Working really well.
-Good reminder on the crank sensor. I replaced it on my 2013 S550 as preventive maintenance but forgot about the whole thing with this 2012 model. Will certainly do that.
-I have one used working wheel sensor from my said 2013 as one on left front went bad and I replaced both and kept the right side one as emergency spare. Never thought to have them all done but now…
-How would I go about cloning the hard drive? I actually thought about this before as to save music and Navi map data but I have no idea how to do the cloning/copying process.

 

Sorry I forgot some things I already did.

Of these:
-I change oil at every 5000 mile. I even had BenzNinja to change the interval to 5000 miles in the car so when I reset it at change it reminds me at 5000 miles instead of 10000.

-I replaced all serpentine belt pulleys and the belt. The belt that came out looked like a new belt but I replaced it anyway.

-I did also coolant right after ownership of this car at the same time with ATF.

-Motor and transmission mounts I replaced just two weeks before the center bearing. I wrote about this in another thread how I just jacked the engine up enough to be able to change the driver’s side motor mount. Had to disconnect trans mount for this.

Man, I did all this and already forgot about it. Perhaps because I was mainly thinking about items that could stall the car and leave me stranded.

-I have thought about the chain tensioners but I do not have any start-up rattle that I can recognize so thought not to touch that before I hear it as it should not stop me somewhere away from home when I start hearing it. I would have time to react to it.

 

Sounds good. I forgot you did mounts already.

If you're interested, I have been running this crank sensor for the last thousand miles with no problem. I installed it when I was chasing that shifting stutter that I later discovered to be the vacuum pump check valve but I left the new sensor in because it is an absolute pain to replace. Do yourself a favor and just drop the driver side exhaust to get to it. Or just leave it. Crank sensors are simple hall sensors. Not much to them to go wrong.

 

I changed it on the 2013 S550 with the same engine without dropping the exhaust so I can do this also in this car. It is not the easiest job but doable and is a very critical sensor for the engine to run.

Yes, it is a simple sensor but they do go bad from heat (where I live) and definitely will get this replaced and I will use the part for MB dealer for it with the higher cost, but I need a reliable sensor.

 

Yeah I forgot you did that on the other car as well. I think you went in from the top, right?

I just swapped mine while I was dropping the exhaust to install the catless downpipes so it wasn't bad at all. The entire exhaust system is actually surprisingly easy to drop.

Have we seen your 2012? I feel like I'm all confused now between your '13 and '12. I don't remember what happened to the '13. Post some pics and refresh my memory!

 

My 2012 is almost exactly the same with the same options as the 2013 was. Took me six months to find it as I wanted a southern car without the salt belt corrosion in the undercarriage. Finally found one that was first registered in CA and moved to LA with a medical doctor that had traded it in at a dealer where I bought it. Beautifully preserved car without a hint of rust or anything. Clean as new.

Just a hint for anyone looking for a used car: they sell tons of Florida used cars, like the model I was looking for, but when checking the CarFax lots of them are cars from up north MI, NY and that area with lots of salt on roads.

The only difference that I know between the cars is that this 2012 model does not have the small separate intercooler coolant reservoir under the engine cover. Also, the COMAND version could be different but neither one came with Bluetooth music option so perhaps they are the same NTG??, which I'm not sure what version it is.

Below picture of the accident. The small Chevy Sonic almost had the engine in the driver's seat when I did not even feel the hit. Neither did the airbags deploy. Looks like not much damage to my car but the passenger side door went bad and they just totaled it.

This accident happened just a couple months after I had that center support bearing replaced. I also had just a few months old front struts in it.

 

I would be pissed! Who got the ticket?

Is that bald guy the driver of the other car?

This is actually something I consider, and why I don't put very many miles on mine.

 

Small town and it was a local young woman who drove. Probably did not get a ticket either from the local police though was 100% guilty for the accident.

The guy in picture is the police officer who did not even let me go talk to the driver as they did not have insurance card to show. Guess he protected them from me if I learned they have no insurance. Next morning they had it though.

I bought the car for driving on my long work trips for safety and comfort so I’ll drive it until wheels fall off. Hopefully it last long enough that MB returns to correct path with their car design from the ridiculous sedan design line they now have.

 

I have a SATA caddy - you pop in the old drive on one slot, and pop in a newer bigger one in the other slot and press a button, x mins later brand new copy ready to go

trouble is the w221 drives are PATA and the gits stopped selling PATA caddies a while back - I expect some out there, but I don't know where - or some fight with nasty software and random PATA to something else cables

 

Otherwise known as IDE, I use mine all the time. I was a computer nerd back when IDE was hot.

 

I do not know of BT music steaming built in on any w221 - the strange long rectangular proprietary socket NTG3.5 cars get in the glove box - allows you to add various cables (should have been the full pack in the car) for multiple cable wired connecions

and there was an odd slightly glitchy BT Merc streaming box of tricks.... or you run a Bovee tune2air WMA 3000A straight in the proprietary thing

NOTE Bovee WMA 1000 is a very similar gadget - but it takes the old 30 pin apple connector for fossils with that set up

 

I have that strange socket in the glove box that has that cable with AUX connection so this means I have NTG 3.5, right?

I have a MONSTER -MBA9 Bluetooth receiver connected to this AUX port so I can stream Bluetooth to it. It has awesome sound quality, just amazing. Highly recommend to anybody thinking of adding Bluetooth sound streaming. I use it mainly for listening internet radio stations now as new phones in 5G can do it well.

I also have this socket in the glove box of my 2010 E550 so is that a NTG 3.5 too? That car did not have Bluetooth audio from factory but MB had an upgrade for it, which I had installed under extended warranty that the car had. It has great audio reception too and that upgrade made the audio way better especially for BASS that lots of forum members complained at the time.

 

ONLY the W221 had an NTG 3.0 or the later cars that got the 3.5 NTG 3.5 which came in with production from Sept 2009

pop the fold down flap below heater knobs - if you can see a screw to remove the caddie on the front of the comand unit its def a NTG3.5 unit

on the E class - these had a later unit closely related behind the scenes to the NTG 3.... they got the NTG 4.0 but the 4 was also heavily updated during its model year production cycles

not claiming below is 100% accurate - but something similar....

early NTG4.0 couldn't do music streaming and never could
cars a few months later got Bluetooth music but it was turned off in hidden eng menus - these can have it enabled
I think by the time BT music was turned on from the factory it was the NTG 4.1
not long after it evolved across many vehicle models and in many different external user interfaces with the NTG 4.2
which then went to NTG 4.5 and ended at 4.7 I think

 

My 2013 has an MMI connector, which I think is a sure sign it's NTG3.5 in addition to the card slot being SD and not compact flash. I'm using a CHOOCL Bluetooth Car Audio Adapter that plugs into the female MMI connector in the glove box.

 

It's called an MMI connector or Multi Media Interface. I'm using the CHOOCL gadget that plugs into that connector and provides bluetooth audio streaming and will display track information from an Android Phone's music player app, Spotify or Podbean.

 

Yep that's it - wasn't aware it was the same socket Audi used - shocking they agreed on a std, didn't last very long did it.....

 

Water pump
Low / High pressure pump

Airmatic components after 10 years if your car has it

 

I already replaced the rear struts as part of troubleshooting the car’s “side step” at rear that was not the strut issue at all. Now I have emergency spare struts…

The front struts had been replaced already. Noticed this as the brackets for the wiring were missing and had to order those from the dealer.

That low pressure pump is actually two pumps due to the “saddle” tank design?

The high pressure pumps I actually replaced on my previous car as one of them started making very bad rattle against the cam shaft. Did not know which one so I replaced both. Then thought if it could have been a problem with a lifter… so I know this job too…

How big of a job is the water pump?