StephenK

? My 2005 SL600 seems to produce a lot of HEAT from the Engine. People who have walked up to the car and talked to me thru the window have made comments of the heat and after shutting the car off, as you walk by you can feel the heat. The temperature gauge is in the normal area, is this normal???

redcoupe

Yeah this is normal.

blueSL

It's hot in there - the radiator coolant would boil if it wasn't under pressure and especially when idling in high ambient, the car is sitting on a thermal knife edge. My old SL600 is exactly the same, the front wings/fenders get very warm and stay that way for a while when the car's switched off. So sounds completely normal to me.

vraa

The front fenders I think on almost all cars get very heated.

I know on all our cars they get almost too hot to touch.

sillydriver

That engine does hold a huge amount of heat. After parking my 600 and starting it hours later the temperature gauge will still read 40 C or so. The thermal inertia is much more than even the AMG supercharged V8.

tiggerfink

This must explain the antifreze smell in the area where the drivers side door connects to the frame. I thought I had a leak in that area, but dealer said it was normal.

Trimmer2

Turbos generate a LOT of heat...

Twinturbo

The huge size of the engine, the extremely hot turbos and huge radiator capacity generate huge amounts of heat. As the car is still, the hot air cannot be replaced by cool air, and you can get huge heat waves. Completely normal, and even if the engine was overheating I dont think you would notice from feeling more heat coming from the car. Nice car by the way

tiggerfink

My car is just a SL500, but I noticed the radiator smell and heat when the car sets more than 5 minutes after being off. So the SL600 and SL55 must be very hot.