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When I turn the steering wheel all the way either way it makes a distinct tick sound a few seconds apart about 3 times from outside of the car and underneath..does not seem normal.........any ideas oe experience as to what this may be? any theories helpful..power steering pump, steering rack, etc???
There is a DTB about this... It is the cross brackets...
DTB referring to squeaking cracking sounds... The cross brackets under the suspension need to be removed...
If you drive your SL65 fast the V12 engine could fall out!
Just Kidding!
They remove the cross brackets clean and lube the area around the bolts and reinstall (about 1 hr). My tech spayed under-coating on them where they bolt on...
Wow. I am so glad you posted this. My car also makes the loud click noise when turning the wheel while trying to park. Any chance we could get a couple of pics of these cross braces. And the locations of where to lube.
Could someone please snap some pics of what needs to be removed/lubed/and reinstalled.
My car sounds terrible when i parallel park. Or turn the wheel anytime while sitting still for that matter..
Are there some suspension diagrams i can use as a visual reference??
Thanks in advance..
The cost of 139$ was for labor....car has to be on rack where wheels bear weight of the car.........some disassembly of underbody before getting at diagonal struts where bolts are cleaned, lubed and retorqued........ about a hour to deal with..........I have a picture but can't extract from document....send me your email via PM if u would like and I'll send u what I have....Star Bulletin that I secured did not have photos.........
Car is QUIET now on turning steering wheel all the way at rest or very low speeds - backing out of driveway, etc...
Fixed the issue. It just required jacking up the front, removing the under-paneling, removal of a few bolts, and adding some thick lube...
Here is the DTB i promised..
(i tried to clean it up a bit)..
Hi All, so my SL55 had the issue addressed in the DTB in this thread. I could have taken it to the local Mercedes dealer and had them fix it but I decided to tackle it myself for fun as I had some free time over the holidays.
I do not have a lift in my garage. And since this fix requires lifting the vehicle by the wheels/tires and not just with floor jacks I had to figure out how to do that. A quick Google search yielded a Turbo Diesel site where a guy posted a thread detailing how he built wooden blocks to lift his car. I followed his guide and built 4 blocks to lift the SL. Each block is 24" long and 16" wide. Each block has two layers/stages. The first stage is 8.5" tall and can be used on it's own. If you need additional height you can put on the second stage and that'll give you a total of 14" of height (enough to pull a tranny out). I tested the blocks out on another less expensive car that I have to make sure they held and sure enough they didn't budge one bit. The design is solid and very safe to use. One thing I'm missing is a block for my floor jack. I wasn't able to use the second stage to get to a total of 14" because my floor jack wasn't tall enough. I was still able to complete the fix using the 8.5" blocks (I did the modification he recommended and added 1.5" to the stage 1 block so that I'd get 8.5" instead of his original design's 7").
The SL DTB fix was easy to do. I took my time and cleaned all of the bolts and parts that had to be removed thoroughly. I torqued everything down and reinstalled all of the under panels. I've driven my SL 100 miles so far and the squeaking is completely gone. This car kicks ***.
Just seen this! I have been looking since while about the loud noise/click when I do full steering lock - the only thing is I have a W 215 CL65 so does anyone know if the fix also applies to it? Thanks for any help
Fixed the issue. It just required jacking up the front, removing the under-paneling, removal of a few bolts, and adding some thick lube...
Here is the DTB i promised..
(i tried to clean it up a bit)..
Old thread but I wanted to say THANK YOU for sharing this DTB and fix to that annoying creaking/clicking sound (when turning at low speeds) on my 2004 SL55 with 70k miles!
The repair steps in the DTB doc and what others shared here are what you follow and this absolutely FIXED my issue and the car sounds/feels like new again with ZERO annoying clicking noise!!
The most time consuming part of this is getting the front of your car up on jacks and then removing the 3 splash guards. The 2 diagonal struts connect in a V shape and require a T30 torx bit to tighten the 5 total bolts which includes 1 bolt that connects the diagonal struts together and then 4 other bolts (2 on each side) to connect the middle of the diagonal strut and then the very end of the strut. What was surprising is 3 of my bolts holding the diagonal strut in place were super loose and required zero effort to remove which is the cause of the noise since the diagonal strut connect point was very loose as were the next 2 middle bolts. I think you could honestly skip the steps of removing the struts, cleaning, lubricating and just use the T30 torx bit to tighten those 3 bolts to 70nm torque and will fix your problem.
Anyway, just wanted to share my experience and thank those for sharing this fix!!! 70k miles and she drives like new and no clicking sounds!!
07-31-2010, 10:21 PM
Question - Ticking sound - steering - SL65
DTB
DTB
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