[QUOTE=SSBN629 Seattle;9254211]Nice!! Here's what the golden shellback cert looks like.

 

Weight arrived today. Tomorrow I will post results of my testing on the highway. One with trucks, the other, cars only. Fingers crossed 🤞.

 

Thanks for the Beta test.
Good luck!

 

You couldn't be more wrong. It works. Ask me how I know.

 

UPDATE!!! I just did a highway test and I am happy to report this indeed works!!!

I placed the weight on the wheel in the 5 o'clock position. Steering assist ON, lane keep assist ON, histrionic ON. And I was able to go several miles without touching the steering wheel at all. The weight does indeed fool the car to think you are holding the wheel. Its definitely not capacitive touch steering wheel.
My observations;
1 the car corrected itself more than usual on curves. Probably because it thinks your steering it wrong from the weight pulling it.
2 on straight sections it's normal.
3 it works better at slower speeds. I felt 65-67mph was the sweet spot.
4 the car was able to handle sharp curves with no trouble. Road markings were in good shape.
5 my car is the refresh model. 2020 S560 4matic.

This weight is a game changer! Keep in mind you should always pay attention to the road and the car at all times.

 

Good to hear.
Which weight did you get? eBay?

 

For those who don't know, you can also just tap one of the touchpads on the steering wheel when it asks to put your hands on the wheel. That will satisfy it as well. On long highway cruises or in stop&go traffic, I largely keep my hands off the wheel and then just simply tap one of the touchpads every 30 seconds. No wiggling or squeezing required, and I don't even think about it anymore. It's become sort of a muscle memory.

 

I got the one on ebay for the tesla. It looks like a snake. It's black. Very common.

 

That got annoying for me. I was looking for a true hands off. But it does work if you don't mind having to constantly tap the wheel nonstop.

 

Thanks for the update and full review. One thing to keep in mind is that LKA uses the rear brakes to keep the car centered in the lane. So when doing this, the car uses the rear brakes to offset the pull of the steering wheel, thus eating rear brake pads. The convenience might be worth it for you -- just like everything else; you gotta pay to play

 

I never noticed braking with LKA. I do notice the wheel slightly moving to correct the car. Are you positive it uses rear brakes? Where can I find this info? Do you have the refresh model or earlier model?
The earlier models operate differently due to only having 1 camera as opposed to the multiple cameras on the later models.

 

Here's a picture of the weight I used.

 

This is not quite correct. Yes Active Lane Keep uses the brakes to jolt you back into the lane when the car is about to drift out of the lane, but ALKA isn’t what keeps it centered. That system is called Active Steering Assist and it keeps the car in the lane by actively steering it. Two different systems for different use cases. ALKA is always on in the background unless you deliberately turn it off, whereas Active Steering Assist is only on together with DISTRONIC.

Also, ALKA actually uses both the inner front and rear brakes to pull the car back into its lane. I'm not entirely sure why MB chose this brute force method, other than it's pretty effective at getting the driver's attention, especially if they are fading off into the land of dreams. But, Active Steering Assist keeps the car center by turning the front wheels, and not via individual braking torque on the rear wheels.

BTW, there's also a difference between Lane Keep Assist and Active Lane Keep Assist. The former is standard, whereas the latter is part of the Driver Assistance package. The basic LKA only vibrates the steering wheel if you drift outside of your lane, whereas Active Lane Keep Assist as said applies the inner brakes to pull you back. Same actually goes for Blind Spot Assist and Active Blind Spot Assist. The latter will pull you back using the inner brakes if you are about the sideswipe another car. The former will only beep at you.

 

I have a 2018 S63 so the W222 V2. It has active LKA. But @superswiss , LKA uses the rear brakes and that applies to V1 and V2 W222s. You're right about how Distronic Plus uses the steering wheel to "guide" the car, but LKA only uses the rear brakes. The difference between LKA and ALKA is the camera/sensory systems, not how it steers the car. Links to videos showing how far back the system has worked like this:

 

Honestly, it doesn't matter if it uses both or only the rear inner brake. LKA doesn't activate unless you regularly stray out of your lane. So pad wear from it is frankly a non-issue. FWIW, I have LKA permanently turned off, which AMGs allow you to do. I know in the regular models it tends to turn back on every time the car is started. Recently drove a VW rental in Europe, where LKA used the steering to steer the car back into its lane. It was freaking annoying as it started to steer against my intention long before I even came close to a lane marker. It was like a ghost constantly messed with my steering wheel. It was particularly unnerving on the German Autobahn at high speeds. I first thought there was something wrong with the car until I realized it was LKA messing with me. Had to turn it off every single time I started the car, because it stupidly came back on automatically, along with the super annoying speed limit warning that all new cars in Europe must have now. Freaking annoying when the thing starts beeping at you the moment you go 1 kph over the speed limit. Who comes up with these dumb mandates? Everybody just ends up turning this crap off.

 

​​​@superswiss you know a lot, and I've learned a lot from you on this forum. But you are mistaken about how LKA works on W222s. I know from personal experience that LKA eats through rear brake pads excessively and it's been discussed at length on this forum. It's super easy to turn it on or off through the button on the lower dashboard. It remembers the setting and keeps it that way until you change it so it's is no hassle at all. A lost of people don't understand the difference between LKA and Distronic plus, especially how the sytems work differently in the V1 vs V2 W222. I had both cars, along with a few other people. I've explained it well and the videos fill in the blanks. If he uses the wheel weights he's going to cause LKA to kick in to keep the car straight. If he turns LKA off his car will drift into the adjacent lane. There is no middle ground in the real world for a W222.

As far as your "inner brake" reference, I have no idea what that is referencing; you are either braking or not, LKA always uses the brakes on the side of the car it wants to travel in, so if the car is veering left and needs to come back to the right, the car will brake the right rear brake caliper. Same thing for the other direction. But LKA does NOT use any front brake force to steer the car. This video explain pretty much al the systems:

 

We are largely saying the same thing. By inner brake I mean the same as you are saying. The outer side of the car is the one crossing the lane marker first, so it's applying the brakes on the inner side. That's how MB actually refers to it in their documentation. They call it the inside and the outside. The inner side is the side it pulls the car towards. Anyway, just semantics.

You are making a good point, though, that I didn't consider at first. His weight on the steering wheel is essentially interpreted by the system as a deliberate steering effort to whatever side he has the weight on, so the system will attempt to counteract it. If the car comes near the lane marker, LKA will kick in, but for the most part it should be Active Steering that simply steers him back w/o using any brakes. This can actually be easily tested. Turn off LKA. If your theory holds, the weight would cause the car to drift into the other lane. Easy enough to test.

The rear pads are used for many things, such as traction control and torque vectoring, so the pad wear that some of you have observed may be misinterpreted. Your S63 for example doesn't have an electronic rear locking differential like most other 63 AMGs have, so things are certainly a bit different for you with the S63 vs my C63 which has the e-diff, so the rear brakes are used less for traction management and power distribution on the rear axel. The rear pads are also used to moderately slow down the vehicle when DISTRONIC is engaged. It uses the rear brakes first and only engages the front brakes if it needs to slow down more aggressively. So DISTRONIC in general wears the rear pads. Moderate braking in general wears the rear pads, even without DISTRONIC. This is because the electronic brakeforce distribution favors the rear brakes initially to minimize the nose dive a car would make if the front brakes engage first. So this keeps the car more leveled during braking. So these days, the rear pads are generally worn before the front pads, unless you are a very hard driver all the time and slamming the brakes from high speed. Most people doing some kind of moderate daily driving, though, will see the rear pads needing replacement first.

If your theory is correct, over time he would see more brake pad wear on the opposite side of where he has the weight. It's worth an experiment I suppose. I'd be curious about the results. These videos you are referring to are created by a PR department, not the engineers who actually implement these systems. They often have discrepancies.

 

Agreed...you're not only correct, but you're also the origin of a lot of that information for me. And as far as trying it out to see how it works, I've done that a ton, in my 17 and 18 W222. When I want to drive "hands-free" for any length of time I use both systems; they go together like peanut butter and jelly. Both are OK when only using one, but together it's like 1+1=3. In a previous post you mentioned that if the car used the front brakes for LKA, it would steer too aggresively and risk control loss and sacrifice ride quality (meaning feel too jerky), especially if using it while going around a curve. I've found that even while driving on gentle curves both systems are necessary, at least in my opinion. But I learned the hard way about leaving LKA on all the time when I had my 17 W222. Since then I only turn on LKA when I plan to go on a long highway drive, like tomorrow. I'll probably drive around 150 miles tomorrow and will have both systems activated the entire time.

I just wanted to warn the OP and others of the "cost" of using LKA.

 

Wow, so much information to absorb here. You guys are amazing. Thank you so much. I'm also thankful we have a public forum where we can exchange ideas with other enthusiasts. If using the weight costs brakes sooner then so be it. I have a true hands off now!