London Lad

Hi all,

I just got my collection date. I can collect from the factory any time after 18th September. Roll on the 18th.

jco-amg

Congrads!

What colors and options did you choose?

I just checked with my dealer and I am #13 on their list...placed deposit 1 1/2 years ago... they will get at least one a month starting in Sept.... maybe more if production increases...VIP cars are coming in now....so I still have a bit of a wait! I wish I had picked up an SLK 32 last Spring to sooth my anticipation

ps...good news...he confirmed the stone trim will be available here in the US...

Also no W211 V8 estate for the US again....

bobafett

Which dealer is possibly doing this? All of the latest information says that the very high volume dealers are getting 4 cars a year...

--Dan

London Lad

Its silver arrow silver with berry red exclusive leather. I'm in the UK and I first sent my letter of intent to order in 1973 so it wasn't quick!

jco-amg

Nice choice...I like it but my wife doesn't like the red interior...Good Luck!!

MB Manhattan...owned by MBUSA...they have said all along that their alotment would be similar to the CL 55 was has been one or two a month. I forgot to ask how many they have reserved now...they already had 26 by November 2001!!!...So I am guessing by now they have close to three years worth spoken for.

bobafett

I called them, and last update I got from the sales manager (dont even remember, i called about 30 dealerships in a mad flurry) was that they are getting on every 3 months if they're lucky.

But then that was about a month ago.... Not sure what the latest is now.

--Dan

jco-amg

I certainly hope that you are wrong about that...
It may be that most of their allotment is now reserved and they are discouraging any further...who knows???

My contacts have a always given me reliable and consistant information on allotments and delivery times in the past...so I am trusting them now...

According to those numbers they would have deposits for over 7 years of production!!!...

Richard

Good Luck !

Mine was delivered to my dealer 4 weeks ago, but they never got it to pass its PDI :-( Its going back to MB in Milton Keynes on Monday , and if they fail to fix it it goes back to Germany ...

- If it doesnt turn up working by Wednesday, i wont take it until 1st September (as we in the UK get a number plate change on 1st September and 1st March)

Apart from the fact that I really want this car, I missed out on the glass roof because I wanted to be the first with the SL55 round here. Of course, they are coming through with the glass roof now .... Im going to tell the dealer to retrofit it ...

Cheers

R

blueSL

Yesterday (8/2) was the first anniversary of the original announcement of the car, both the SL500 and the SL55. Seems to me they've made less progress than I expected in actually getting the cars onto people's driveways, especially the SL55.

Richard's experience worries me. I understand the car is new and their test gear may not be completely up to date and the technicians are new to the car, but what happens 5 years down the road, 60k miles and something electronic develops an intermittent fault. How much time and money is it going to cost to fix it?

Richard, how are you managing to keep your cool with the dealer?

Richard

Im keeping my cool with the dealer (just) because

(a) They really have done everything, its Mercedes UK/Germany thats letting them down - although MB UK is now taking it very seriously
(b) I want them on my side when I negotiate some compensation (etc)

Mercedes UK will be lending me a car (not a SL55) from Tuesday, (instead of the dealer) which means it will be even higher profile in MB. Ive opted to take a CLK430 from MB UK, even though I had a new CLK240 from the dealer - because I want MB UK to be going out of their way, not the dealer.

I'll post the resolution when its resolved. There has been some good progress this week ...

If I put my "computer networking" hat on, then it seems to me that there are various controllers logging fault codes. According to Star Diagnosis these relate to the EIS (ignition switch) and the Cluster (both of which are criticial networking components).

However, the fault codes all go away when the engine wiring loom is disconnected (ie engine controller still connected to car, but not to engine itself)

This suggests to me (sadly) that is a simple sensor fault on the engine somewhere causing this (or the engine controller) and the fault codes are not EIS/Cluster - i.e Star Diagnosis is not actuallty telling the full picture.

The net result of this is that perhaps the cluster and ignition switches have been replaced (and delayed the fix) at big expense for no real reason

But that is speculation, lets wait and see

blueSL

It will problably turn out to be something completely trivial, like a loose ground connection or a connector incorrectly wired. Question is, has anyone else in the UK taken delivery successfully - is the problem specific to your car or the support infra-structure?

Richard

There are other working ones in the UK, and in fact the dealer has another one (just arrived) and the dealer compared the engine wiring looms for both cars (identical). The dealer has had two others before and they were fine.

There was a suspect ground (early on), and I personally suspect its that that has damaged one of the more complex sensors (such as the oil sensor).

The engine controller is not logging any faults - the other ECUs are logging "stored" faults, but not "current" faults - which suggests to me that one of these sensors is powering up badly/wrongly and giving out a duff reading which is causing the other ECUs to whinge.

The car runs fine, just has these stored faults ...

Cheers

R

blueSL

Nightmarish complexity...

Richard

Yes, and I beleive that owning one of these [and lets included the S/CL and new E] outside warranty may not be a clever idea ...

It scares me that the Star diagnosis system isnt saying "XXX is broken, replace it"

I imagine in 5 years time though, the Star system will be much more advanced ...

blueSL

It scares me too. I recently paid $1000 to have part of my SL600's Adaptive Damping replaced after a couple of mis-diagnoses and it was all put down to "this is a 10 year old design, newer cars are much better".

However clever the dealer diagnostic software may become in the future, it's going to be limited by how smart the car is now which is effectively frozen as soon as it leaves the plant.

I worry that, ten years down the road, an SL with a major electronic problem is going to be one S-of-a-B to fix. I will not keep the car that long of course, but expectation of future maintenance costs is one of the factors which sets resale values, and I have taken a real bath with my SL600.

Richard

Well, they have so far spent

About 15-16 man days
1 new instrument cluster
2 new electronic ignition switches
1 new engine management system

I *know* this dealer is superb and well experienced, its had their top people on it, and MB UK's top roaming engineer aswell.
.. and of course, I beleive the technicians make most money when they do the fixed price jobs quicker (ie get bonuses) not when they are being paid on "open time" - so I doubt they are thrilled.

Id *hate* to be paying for that myself

GMW

Hi Richard,

Just a few questions:
Is the only problem you are experiencing with your car the stored faults (ignition and instrument cluster only, i believe)when running the Star Diagnosis? When sitting in the car and starting it does the instrument cluster display any warnings or faults? You mentioned that the car runs and drives well?

I am asking all this because considering we will be getting an SL55 as well the sooner they sort out your car's problem the better for all of us.

Just in case, I'll also ask my local MB senior service mechanic if he might have any idea of what might be wrong. He just came back from a DaimlerChrysler training course in Germany and one of the cars they focused on was the SL55 AMG. Plus he always loves a challenge, he usually doesn't sleep untill he solves a problem.

Richard

Theres a whole load of "stored" (not current faults) claiming to be CAN communication errors with the EIS and the Cluster. Note that the only faults on the engine CAN bus (CAN-C) connected units relate to the EIS and Cluster and nothing else.

- These are not present on another 3 SL55s

- These can-not be cleared down, i.e they are recurring once as the car is "powered" up

- These did not go with a replacement EIS (twice) and Cluster

- These all go complelety if the engine controller is disconnected (and in fact if the engine controller is still connected to the car side loom (ie CANbus, power, downstream exhaust sensors), but not the engine side (ie spark plugs, injectors, timing, oil sensor)

Then theres a bunch of intermittent interior CAN (CAN-B) bus faults - although it is possible/likely that most of these are caused by the above, and the rest by the fact that the batteries both need a good charge up.

Note that on Friday (just before close of play, car being sent to MB UK headquarters on Monday), the dealer discovered which set of sensors when connected cause the problem. So it is likely (in my book) to be one of those sensors or the engine management system) returning some rubbish values as they are powered up but then behaving sensibly.

Note also that they havent fitted the replacement ECU because the latest star diagnosis didnt recognise it

Cheers

R

bobafett

All I have to say is that I admire your patience. I've been there with another car, and it's not easy - I know.

Hopefully they'll have the whole thing sorted out. Have you considered what they will / should do if the car's problems can't be fixed?

--Dan

Richard

Dealer has already said that they will give me a letter saying if there are continued CAN bus faults with the car (as shown by Star diagnosis) they will replace it ..

bobafett

Glad to hear it.

--Dan

blueSL

Wow, this is an interesting one. You use the word "claiming" to be CAN Comms Errors. One immediate question is whether the test gear is mis-interpreting or mis-reporting the errors which is sending everyone on a wild goose chase. What if a "bad sensor value" is being mis-reported as "CAN Comms Error"? You'd think it unlikely, but this is all new stuff.

If it really is a comms problem and replacing the ECU doesn't fix it but disconnecting bits on the "other side" does, that suggests some sort of interference being introduced. My money's on a simple electrical problem (grounding/mis-wired connector)....but then I'm not a gambling man.

Richard, are the comms we're talking about here coax or optical fiber?

While you're suffering (badly!), it's actually good news for the rest of us because it's certain an expensive experience like this will cause the problem and its eventual solution to be documented minutely in a service bulletin.

Richard

CAN is a highly resiliant twisted pair bus, that essentially uses 4 wires +, Gnd, CAN-High, CAN-Low

It is inteferences resiliant (because Can-High and Low are opposite to each other), and either CAN signal line can be shorted to +, gnd or cut.

Every controller connected to CAN listens for messages, anyone can transmit. If you press a button (like selecting reverse) , the gear-stick controller says "he selected reverse", and anyone interested picks up the messages and actions it. For instance, when selecting reverse the rear SAM will turn on the reverse lights, the interior dimming mirror will stop dimming and the passenger side mirror will drop.

Its been used for years in MB cars. There are 2 can bus networks in the car (running at different speeds), CAN-C (engine bay) and CAN-B (body). The EIS (electronic ignition switch) and the Cluster sit on both bus's. The EIS acts as a gateway between the two, and I think the cluster acts as a backup gateway.

With vehicle diagnosits the test gear is actually rather dumb - all it does is to take error codes from the individual control units and prints them in english. The "test" gear is actually built into the individual control units and they monitor all sort of stuff - this actually increases reliability because the tests are run continuously.

My gut feel for this is that there is a simple fault (sensor gone, or ground or earth fault) and the control units are either reporting the wrong error code, or Star Diagnosis has the wrong error message programmed in it for the given error codes.

Alternatively, even things on the same CAN bus are talking to the engine bus via the cluster/EIS and therefore they are correctly reporting a CAN communication error - but really need to be more verbose with the error. AND, that the engine management should be reporting the fault and it isnt.


As an aside, I know that all manafacturers are spending serious amounts of money where technicians replace expensive electronics that havent actually failed (or in fact have software programming errors) - I guess they will be spending lots of money on much better diagnostic equipment over the next few years ....

blueSL

Well, whatever it turns out to be, your car will soon be back with MB UK and they will be able to hook it up to their intranet and let the boys in Stuttgart or wherever take a look.