new to this forum with a "new to me" SL400....
 

I've been lurking here a while during my car shopping but I'm now the very happy owner of a 2015 SL400 with about 31,000 miles. Coming from a CLK550 I already miss the mechanism that extends to hand you the seat belt, but not much else, that's for sure. I've got lots of manual reading and STFF'ing to do but a couple of quick questions if you'll indulge me:

1. When driving really slowly I see a blue "P" in the Multifunction Display; what's that telling me? That I can put it in Park??
2. During my test drive, while the salesman was driving, I felt the seat expand and hug me when cornering, which an MB Manager friend told me is Active Multi-contour Seats. I haven't felt that in the less-than-24 hours I've had the car: is it a passenger side thing only or am I just not cornering hard enough?

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...b89d5783a0.jpg

[QUOTE=eddieo45;7710511]
1. When driving really slowly I see a blue "P" in the Multifunction Display; what's that telling me? That I can put it in Park??
2. During my test drive, while the salesman was driving, I felt the seat expand and hug me when cornering, which an MB Manager friend told me is Active Multi-contour Seats. I haven't felt that in the less-than-24 hours I've had the car: is it a passenger side thing only or am I just not cornering hard enough?
QUOTE]

The blue "P" has to do with the Parking Assist system. You'll need to read up on using that. I've never used it on any of my cars that have had it.
The seat function you describe can be turned on and off, using the Command control. Just push the button that looks like a seat, on the center console and the menu will pop up.
Congratulations on your new car and may you enjoy thousands of safe, trouble free motoring.

Exactly what I thought/feared. My daughter's ML had the side mirror auto-fold feature turned off, which I only realized after someone clipped her side mirror while parked.

To turn on your active bolsters, you need to go into the menu for the seat adjustment, and make sure you are adjusting the driver's side (steering wheel and chair are visible)
Also, you can adjust the width of the bolsters in the same menu. If it isn't visible, highlight the lumbar support icon and scroll.

For the parking assist (small P icon) it will parallel park for you!
When you find a spot, the car will "measure" it to see if it can park there, and if it can, an arrow in the direction of the parking spot will appear. Hit your turn signal, press OK and do as the cars says.
Et voila, you have had your car parallel park for you.
Demonstration:

I try to never parallel park, where a vehicle can park in front of me. Way too many drivers out there will bump into the car behind them when parking or leaving. If their vehicle is a pick-up with a trailer hitch or a huge SUV, just a little tap can be a very expensive repair. Too much of a risk with today’s painted bumpers. On occasion, if truly necessary, I will put my S560 in a parallel spot, but my SL will NEVER be parked in such a manner. I’ll park a block or two away to spare the nose of my cars. Of course, I’m retired and am rarely in a hurry.:)

Can I hijack my own thread to ask a couple of STFF questions? The manual - like most MB manuals - is so poorly laid out...I couldn't find Active Multicontour Seats in the table of contents under A, M or S, for example.

Anyway, the two questions I have today are about 12v power sockets and the behind the seats storage. I saw "sockets" in the manual table of contents but the corresponding page had nothing on the subject; is there another besides the lighter itself?

And the storage: is there just the one behind the driver? I couldn't figure out how to open anything behind the passenger seat....

No storage behind passenger seat. I believe that space contains a fusebox.

In my manual, the seat section of the index (page 21) refers you to page 314 on how to control them.

Use the digital owner's manual in the Comand system, it's much, much more detailed and I found features I didn't know my SL had, such as a brake hold function and tons of cool tricks with the headlights.

In the book as well, although not the most user friendly. For my car the brake hold is on page 191.

The book seems to cover the lights quite well. What have you found out about the lights that is not shown in the manual? Is there a hidden function like in the case of the Boeing MCAS?

The AHA and ILS and a few other small things. I guess the Canadian owner's manual are much less detailed, because mine is only 300 pages and tells you that the complete manual is in the Comand system. Also, I found a few other cool things like the difference between the 3 auto climate control modes.

Quite a difference! 608 pages in mine. Is the Canadian manual in English and French?

I have looked at the Comand version, but the book is much quicker to use. Sometimes old tech still works better. That said, I also use the PDF version on my computer.

Beautiful car!

My version is English only with some things here and there I. French. I think the Quebec models have a different owners manual in both English and French, and lucky for them, no front plate bracket!

Thanks; doesn't seem like many modders on this forum but I'm looking forward to debadging it....


...removing that front plate is mod #2!

When I took the front plate mount off of my 2013, I went to Home Depot and got some rubber 'plugs' that filled in the holes, not obtrusive at all. And with a black car, you will not see them.

I did that with a silver CLK350, painting them with touch-up paint. I got lucky with my next car, a black CLK550 from Florida that had never been drilled. I agree that it should be pretty unnoticeable, especially with Distronic sensors every several inches.