London Lad

Hi All,

Just got my 55 back from 3 days at the dealer with the following results:

Grunting noise from rear off side brake:
Fluid changed and system bled as per WIS to prevent cavitation in the inlet valves of the electronic braking unit. Success! No more grunting and much smother release.

Leaking screen washer bottle:
Bottle split. New bottle on order.

Squeaking front brakes:
Discs ‘deglazed’ and copper slip on rear of pad. Success no more squeaks.

Squeak or chirp from super charger clutch: Confirmed as super charger clutch but not repaired as this is ‘acceptable and state of the art’ as per WIS bulletins. We will see.

Graham.

blueSL

Graham

How many miles have you done in your 55 now - are these faults which appear with mileage? I've only done 3000 in mine because I don't use it as a daily driver...

vraa

We have some ten thousand plus, but then we have a 500 not a 55.

Also London Lad, could that bottle split happen because of the cold weather?

London Lad

Hi Blue,

No, only 4500 and I have had these sorts of niggling faults from new. I can accept the faults in a car of this complexity but I cant accept the god awful dealers who know nothing about the car.

My approach now is to identify the fault using logic, this group, comparison with friends cars or physical testing.

Then try to get 'someone' to check WIS.

Bypass condescending 'service reception' staff.

Get mechanic out with me in the car on a fault demo run.

After checking that the mechanic is friendly, befriend him and subtly drop the WIS number into conversation.

Of course this is no guarantee of success. The dealer still has many weapons in his armoury: "They all do this, its a characteristic not a fault", "We can’t reproduce the fault", "Parts are out of stock", "We can’t book it in for 6 weeks"

Vraa,

No, in fact it’s been hot here for the last few weeks. I’ve not seen the old bottle yet because the part was out of stock! But I suspect it will be a manufacturing fault or poor assembly rather than wear and tear.

I'm off now to clean the boot marks of my door speaker grills !


Graham


Graham.

vraa

blueSL

I couldn't agree more about the dealers. It's the layer of incompetence between you and someone who knows what they are talking about which gets to me. As soon as you're into a Call Centre, you know you're in trouble. Tried the Mercedes ones in the UK and Germany? Useless.

It's not just cars of course. I'm currently trying to get NetGear to own up and admit their products are crap but all I get is responses like "reset the box", "upgrade the firmware", hopeless. BTW and off topic, can any one recommend a reliable wireless LAN supplier?)

It's the same with Ferrari. I've just moved my Ferrari out of the dealer network to an independent; they know what they are doing, are less expensive and you get to talk to the guy who's worked on your car. A revelation and the car's never been better. Trouble with the SL, even after the warranty runs out, is that the car is too complex for independents, even a 129 causes them problems in the buggy areas of electronics/hydraulics.

London Lad

Blue,

I've played with / installed lots of 802.11 gear.

My view:

Most domestic kit is rubbish if you expect to run it 24/7, customer support is worse than MB.

The possible exception being 3 com.

For serious installs I have used Cisco, very costly but works 100%

Strangely I have found that once you get a netgear item that works it usually stays working. At this moment I am running a 824M router, switch, adsl modem, firewall thing with a PDM amplifier. On the other ends I have 3 PCs running netgear pci card, ibm pci card, 3 com laptop card.

All kit except the laptop is on 24/7.

Graham.

vraa

Netgear is horrible. I should know, we have an MR314 and a WG602 wireless AP's. Move twenty feet away and there goes your signal. I've heard that D-Link is good, but they still (IMO) have no name. If I could start all over agian I would go Cisco for their name and they have been suggested many times. Same with Cayman, of course I'm not sure if they make wireless equipment or not.

As far as routers go? I used to have a Linksys and a Netgear one, both couldn't handle my load, now I run an ICS server

Netgear NIC's have problems with powerful objects in my house it seems. I take my laptop to my cousin's house who had the Linksys wireless AP (All these models numbers are slipping my mind) and it runs flawless, even OUTSIDE!

At home, my laptop suddenly starts acting like my gf and won't do anything unless I bribe it or I just quit! Same with my computer itself, I have two NIC's and if I take them out my boot up time drops about three minutes and it identifies both cpu's correctly. Have the NIC's in.. let's just say I can make my own tea now!

blueSL

Looks like I should look at Cisco then. vraa, it's a WG602 I'm having trouble with, keeps hanging up and needs power cycling.

stephens

Enterasys wireless equipment is the best. Previously known as Cabletron, they purchased the technology from Digital Equipment Corp.
We have Enterasys kit working in the field in point to point (building to building) and point to mulitpoint applications for years without any maintenance requirements. The same cannot be said for Cisco Aironet equipment, which is also more expensive. Another good alternative is Avaya.

vraa

Just a suggestion, personally I've never had hands on administration with a Cisco machine. I've just heard that they were good. My WG602 has horrible range, I've tried all three official firmwares, and I always have frequent disconnects. Sometimes I wish I could turn my computer into a wireless AP without spening a great amount of time and money.

Is this stuff that can be installed in a home and thing? You mentioned that you have it building to building, I'm not sure if my dad will want something with that range! Of course it would be awesome.

stephens

Yes
In point to multipoint configuration we use them for wireless office access. The product you are after is the Enterasys Roamabout. www.enterasys.com