the engine in my father's E class was also the one available in (W221) S320 tractor variants

a while back I had been messing about and noticed it seemed to be running gutless - forget what I'd been doing at the time - but had various limp modes ages back when the swirl flap motor gave up, anyway way, back then I checked and was all clear in diagnostics - so I dug deeper in Xentry playtime and came across a frankly ludicrous setting I expect few non franchised dealers are aware of

forgot specific wording, something like - Reset of flow rate after replacing air filters.

I followed what I suspected was a pointless time-waste - but the car was very different after doing this - performance perked up, mpg improved, and it seemed far smoother everywhere

(I had actually changed the air filters a few hundred miles ago but never did it - and they had been really filthy), yesterday I decided to clear the EGR (which is properly stuck and I can't remove) so spraying in this time - methylated spirts and water 50 50 atomised 2.5 litres over 20 mins or so. I had just done this on a 3 ltr 4 pot Toyota tractor and after 10 mins a load of smoke and blue crud came out... on the E class I had last done this 20k miles and about 5 years ago - and it had done much the same using the better 50 50 methanol and water mix - and in-between (3 years back) I had run some spray in EGR cleaner nasty, that produced severe knock like you can't believe - and I can't recco its remotely safe or actually did anything - you spray that in at idle for a second, knocks like the end of the world, let it settle for 2 second repeat https://www.wynns.uk.com/product/diesel-egr-cleaner/ pdf https://wynns2021.wpengine.com/produ...381_TDS_EN.pdf


Anyway so this time, hot engine 10 mins of boredom at about 2k and not much happening - the car didn't even seem to react to the water meth spray at those revs - began to think maybe it was clean - but upped the flow rate a smidge revved it a bit then dropped the revs and now it began to make blue smoke - as I sat there contemplating hydraulic lock and a destroyed engine - with half the filth in the blocked secondary inlet ports, 1/3 in the VGT and the rest blocking the EGR till it doesn’t, I went to idle and now some moisture was def going around the system getting straight past the pistons and round the EGR - a minute later the car was surrounded in a dense blue cloud that kept coming out for 5 mins





if you have never done this previously on tractor engine'd cars you'd think you'd trashed the engine - but its normal, this is the gunk getting out the system - it started to hunt and struggle to run - so cut the 50 50 flow till it stabilises - then go again - this time it stalled and I thought here we go - but it caught straight away - let the CAT warm and the smoke clear - then getting greedy did it again - tried once more and it stalled and refused to start - gave it a min to think about life - held throttle open 50 % and cranked to 30 seconds and it fired up second attempt - chugged like a trooper - tiny bit of smoke, sounding weird, then stabilised and got over itself

took it for a drive to see if it was still in one piece, had any turbo left - (don't forget this filth is already there and could get at the turbo at any time - this way you loosen it up and do it "gently" when the turbo isn't really working so it should be less damaging ) - fortunately the car drove 100% normal and didn't even chuck any further crud out

the weird thing all through this it never throws an engine light and it has no codes stored - goodness knows what faults they are trying to monitor when running but if that doesn’t throw a light goodness know how other stuff can - next day ran full xentry on it - reset the air filter flow rat,e and noticed below it a throttle pedal reset - so gave that a go too - I expect it will ruin better than it has in years - but it does make you think you might have messed up when you see how much filth comes out and how it runs when reprocessing this filth....

oh and Xentry claims it has DPF which it doesn't (it was an option on all bar the S class in this era) - and it provides values for how its behaving and claims last Regen was 56k miles ago ??? ODD !

 

Tractor variant?

 

Diseasal😉