Uggg...E55 powerloss again...ideas?
 

I was traveling last night though traffic and running an M3 for short bursts 30-60/70 mph 3 or 4 times...no contest really then about 3 minutes later I got on it again and there was no power. I was in "S" mode and the car felt like the tranny was not shifting and it basically felt like the car did not have a supercharger on it.

This happened 4-5 weeks ago under this configuration:

Evo headers and bypass (pre cat) pipes, Hennesey pulley, Evo cooling kit, Kleeman LSD, Electronic cut out exhaust, K&Ns, and SPEED TUNING chip

my set up is the same now except that I have the Kleeman Chip

the car was fine and was a total beast but not it has been very inconsistent and from any roll in "S" its basically a slug. Its very disappointing.

Any ideas on what this could be? Thank you all.

Overheated?

Although I have no answers....I have had the same thing happen.

Practicing launches on remote road and Maxima came out of nowhere. I went into normal driving mode and he blew past me. That pi$$ed me off and I went to "blow his doors off"...I punch it....baawwwwwwwwww. It just chugs past him. Weird part was that he was punching it and my blower was off and I still slowly past him.....just was embarrassing for me.

Somewhere there is a post on the Maxima boards..."almost beat an AMG yesterday" Guess these type of things plus blower chirp, plus heat problems plus etc... is the reason we are going N/A.... sure I hate it too, but whad ya gonna do.

Twin turbs are make everything alllllll better. :y

Jackpro...interesting this did not just happen to me...

What are your mods at the time of this? Does this still occur for you? If so how often and under what conditions (S, C, M mode)

For me it feels like the tranny is not downshifting...like you are going 20mph go into WOT and you are in 5th gear and nothing happens. From coming from turbo charged cars it feels like a hose or IC pipe is loose.

As far as overheating it was 81 degress out and I did have the A/C on ....the temp bar was about 100 F.


4 hours later after letting the car cool I took it out around midnight....

From zero the car seemed ok, from ANY roll it was awful. Its so awful that if it is not fixed I cannot have fun with the car and therefore would have to sell it after fixing it... guys its that bad/depressing but there has to be a solution.

I spoke to RPMtuning and they are calling Kleeman today. Apparently RPMracinginc.com had a SL55 AMG with 30K on it which had the supercharger pulley clutch go out? I hope that made sense. Anyways I was told it was slipping...perhaps that could be the root cause but why would the Speedtuning chip be consistently poor (15 out of 20 WOT kicks) versus being fine for the past 5 weeks until now with the Kleeman chip.

Has anyone installed a boost guage in their cars? I would never put it on the A pillar but likely store it in the center console just for feedback pursposes.

Comments and thoughts welcome! Thanks.

I basically have the same mods as you do but all through Evosport and Powerchip for the ECU with no issues now. I did have that feeling twice but it was because the supercharger pulley belt was going so fast it kept popping off. I was doing some WOT bursts on the freeway and all of sudden it felt like a n/a v8 and when I got home I noticed the belt had come off the supercharger pulley. After the techs looked at it on the dyno, they said my supercharger pulley was moving so fast that the belt would just find its way off. They reshaped the pulley to grab the belt better and I have had zero problems since.

I hope you find out what is wrong without having to use a dealer. Good luck.

May be hard to pin-point since you are using many different tuner parts. I have not seen any issues with my K2/w LSD and IC mod. If anything with all this 95-100 temps we have had the car takes off as it would in colder temps.

I know some members have had issues with Speedtuning when doing more then just a ECU swap. Is the Kleemann ECU programmed correctly for the Evo headers which are more restrictive then Kleemann's and the pulley?

You may want to give Cory a call directly at Kleemann USA.

With all the brain power on this site I am sure we will figure it out :y

I know it's a different animal, but I had the supercharger clutch go out on my SLK32. What sucked was the 300 mile drive home from the beach without the blower.

Could this be an intermittent problem with your clutch?

Thank you all...I am going to give Cory a buzz when they open today. I will take a look to at the supercharger belt.

Wayne,

I do think this could be the issue. However from an "M" mode roll the car today seemed ok but from an "S" mode it was not. Very inconsistent.

How many miles where on your car before it went out? Did you notice any intermittent power loss or was it all of the sudden and for good? Thanks.

Only thing we know for sure right now is it is always after we are horsing it. Have not heard of someone starting er up and heading out the neighborhood and having it happen. That just screams some type of heat related issue which is common on our cars....especially modded ones.

Other than that, someone said that the ECU sometimes can sense when the car is being jerked around horizontally and will shut down blower for safety, although I think that is stretching it a little. Why wouldn't it shut down in city traffic then...we all know we hammer down a lot to get in and out....makes no sense. Heat I bet is doing something. Perhaps a quick spike in temp that is not perceived by gauges that causes quick shutdown of blower.

This morning I headed out to goto work. ONLY 70 degrees on Long Island. Got 1/2 WOT throttle into it from 20 to 50mph in S drive and noticed that the car seemed ok.

5 minutes later on an open stretch I went 100% WOT at 25mph in S mode and the car had nothing. I was very disappointed. The car was definitely having the same issue and my drive to work is on back roads at 30-45mph for 10 minutes.

Spoke to Cory...he said this problem seems to happen to 1 in 10 E55s. Seems high.

I would need to have a mechanic check the voltage coming off the electronic clutch on the supercharger or have a MBenz dealer diagonisis it with a DAS machine to see how the clutch is engaging.

Tell take sign other than loss of power is the loss of the chip sound which occurs when the clutch engages.

Cory said more than likely if it is an electronic clutch issue then MBenz will have to replace both that and the Supercharger. Uggggggggg.

No wonder the E63 N/A is coming out.....

Everytime I hear a story like this, I can't stop thinking about heat. Maybe it really is the heat that is doing this. I had this happen to me about 2-3 times in the past. Coming home from a friend's house on an absolutely empty freeway, I would give a couple quick burst from maybe 70-110ish. I would do this about 3-4 times. Then on the 5th, I went WOT, the car downshifted and I saw the rpm's soar, yet no pull in the car. It was like the supercharger shut off. I drove the rest of the way home at 65 not pushing it at all. Then maybe about 15 minutes later, it was back to normal. I think it's heat...

I would agree that the root cause seems to be heat.

However with my cooling kit I would have expected the liklihood of this happening would have been much lower.

Actually when I think of it when I had the speed tuning chip in I did NOT have the cooling kit.

The cooling kit went in at the time of the Kleeman flash 5 days later. My run yesterday was at 85 degrees outside with the A/C on. But today no A/C was on and it was 70 degrees.

Perhaps heat caused something to go wrong with the electronic clutch?

The only other things I can think of would be to heat wrap the instake tubes which feel damn hit after spirited runs. And perhaps a cryo kit, maybe even 50 dry shot of NOS...that would definitely cool things down but could open up another can of worms.

I would hate and would never put a hood scoop or vents in the hood but can't think of any other way to release the heat. An electric fan?

Last thing....I forgot to add that out of the hundreds of times I have "gotten on it" since....hasn't happened again.

It is now summer HOT here and temps are running around 100 each day.....still nothing.

That puts it all back in the "go figure" category. Will keep an eye on it and see if it happens again.

Last thing that just popped in...perhaps on the "blower belt" issue...perhaps it is just a slip. Maybe heat related or something....but maybe it is slipping for something. Ahhhh, who knows.

Nothing but total brake failure can make me dislike this car. If I gotta lose to Maxima once to beat 95 others....so be it. Just trying to keep positive.

Let me know if you find out anything. Hard to go to dealer with mods eh?? Like we are friggin criminals.

I hear ya however given my situation I think I would lose to a Maxima about 75 out of 100 times...not at all fun. Plus its dangerous...can you pass someone on the highway...can you pass someone on a dotted yellow line?

Do I have 600hp or 302 hp? It makes a big difference. And if our N/A motor puts out 302hp it for some reason feels like about 200 perhaps its N/A in limp mode with no blower. UGGG.

I will have to find a dealer to that is mod friendly...this blows!

You're right baller....lemme know how you make out.

My E55 did this a lot. I would punch it hard once and then I would have no SC for the next couple mins. Pissed me off royally and I only had 5K miles on it when I traded it in. My CLS55 hasnt done it so far. I will keep my fingers crossed. Sorry to hear that others are having this issue as well. :wall:

I ran the car about 5-6 times this evening on the way home from work in 70 degree weather. it pulled strong 4 out of 6 times. I even had the heat blasting out the passenger vent out the passenger window...probably does nothing but use to prevent my college days '79 Olds 350 V8 from overheating.

I am going to have a voltage test done this weekend on the electronic clutch...if this keeps up I will try to goto a mod friendly dealer and pray.

If all fails I do not want to have to sell this beast :(

I think the only thing speed wise that could suffice would be the new C6 Z06 but i want my E fixed.

By the way has anyone heat wrapped the downpipes coming off the headers...seems to be one of the big heat sources under our hood. I am amazed the air tubes don't melt.

VelocitE55,

Did you trade your E55 because of this? I know what you mean...it sucks that bad!

Did you have any mods? I think the biggest culprit has to be the pulley as it raises the boost and hence the heat and EGTs.

I should hook upa boost gauge and EGT gauge like in my old Supra for diagnostics.

Kick down switch? Mine was acting up for a while, but now is fine.

I think you need to figure out the problem before you add more stuff to the car. You may have to bite the bullet and take it to a dealer. You might even have to try to get it back to as close to stock as possible.

E55 baller: Get a hold of OBDII scanner. If you have a laptop or PDA you can by a cable to link up into your DME. You can also buy a stand alone scanner, they are fairly cheap. Just do a search on google under "OBDII Scanner".

Data log every run and look at timing, intake charge temperature (ICT), rpm, coolant temperature and intake pressure. Since you already have a bigger pump from our cooling package, your intake temperatures under full boost should be no more than 50F above ambient and going down close to ambient as soon as you back of the gas.

DME will shut down compressor if it sees ICT go above 255F, as soon as it cools down to 155F it will turn compressor back on. This is what's happening when stock Bosch pump intermittently shuts off.

If everything looks good, than my next guess would be BAS/ESP malfunction. We had one case where ESP pump failed and caused DME to shut-off compressor permanently.

P.S. Check and make sure that you do not have an air bubble in intercooler cooling circuit.

Good Luck!

Power Loss
 

I have experienced the same exact problem..........I'll be driving along, enjoying the sensation of 500 ponies pinning me back to my seat, and then, out of the blue........the fun comes to an abrupt end. I punch it, but no massive power, rather, the sensation that some power-nazi has taken my beautiful $40K motor, and swaped it with that of BMW 3 series.

It continues to "bog" for a few moments, and then the power comes back. It does not seem to be an intercooler issue, as my car was not hot. Besides, if it were, then why would it work like a champ 1 minute later. It couldn't possibly go from overheating and back to cool within 1 minute, right? Feels like it is being starved of fuel.

Any ideas?

Vadim,

Thank you for your comments. Will this suffice? http://www.autotap.com/autotap_windows_products.html

Its kinda pricy at ~$180. Can you point me to one that will work with a laptop on Ebay? There seem to be hundreds at $20-50. Not sure if there is one that is better than others.

Also last night I looked at the Evo cooling system pump up near the passenger snorkle tube and it was bone dry. I opened it up because I peered down and saw what looked to be coolant liquid spotted all over the tubes and other parts of the bay area. The cap was loose so I peered in and it was bone dry. I assume that it should be filled with coolant when the car is cold, warm?

Thanks Vadim!

I agree, when I tested it out yesterday 4 out of 6 times it worked...there was no theme to it. This morning in 64 degree weather I punched it at 35mph and NADA.

http://www.nology.com/pdadyno.html

Someone experienced suggested it to me. I trust him. :)

Do any of you guys with power loss problems have any problems starting your cars when cold? I haven't had your horrible power loss problems (touch wood), but I did have a fuel pressure problem on cold start a little while ago. And the deal tried a number of things (fuel pressure sensor, some other temperature sensor, and something else MB techs told them to try). They had the car for a week so clearly they couldn't really figure it out, which usually means the workings are damn complex. So maybe you guys are suffering some kind of failure in the fuel pressure system. It's obviously not what I had, as my car literally wouldn't start, but since the system appears complex, possibly you have a different manifestation of a fuel pressure problem...

Hi Mrannkovic- No, I have not experienced any problems relating to starting my vehicle (either cold or hot).

Many, many years ago I had a car with a fuel vapourisation problem. After long, hot running if you turned the engine off (and the under hood temperature rose) the car wouldn't re-start, till it cooled down. That doesn't sound like this problem.
It also doesnt sound electrical if the car still runs and revs smoothly, but under powered. Similarly if fuel supply to some cylinders/injectors was a problem it shouldn't rev smoothly.
Does sound like a supercharger problem or a "safety" mechanism cutting in to shutdown the supercharger because of heat or something....my 2 cents worth.

I have not had any problems starting my car but what I have noticed on several ocassions is at around 30 mph or so when I am partially throttle (normal acceleration) the car jerks for a split second sort of like the fuel has been cut abruptly, then everything is normal.

It sort of feels like the chirp sound at around 10-20 mph I get when the supercharger clutch engages at ~2K rpms but with a force enough to make me shift forward a few inches in my seat...its very strange.

Potential Root Cause Found
 

RPM confirmed what I had suspected -- something wrong with the Evo cooling system piping installation -- not the EVO system. Apparently a hose was too short and a clamp cut through a hose.

I am hoping this is it, if not I am back to the drawing board :-(

Who did your install? I am lucky that I live close enough to have Evosport do the install. It seems like that would be the culprit.

So if I go the evosport to do some installin of my own, will you lend me your car while they do the install for me?

The one weird thing that still may not make sense is that I saw this spray the DAY I drove home the car 6 weeks ago and it was a beast for 5 weeks.

If this does not fix it I think I found a cool dealer that will look the car over. Will keep you all posted.

i have my intake tubes wrapped and mine still stammered but for only 45 seconds. im having to take my car to the mechanic to put some stuff on and am going to have my evo pump with a piggy back toggle switch so i can turn it on when i want then leave it off for the ecu to turn it on or off. the sc just puts off sooooooo much heat i think a hood vent is the only cure. my departed sl 7.4 renntech had a nice hood vent done but renn doesnt do that anymore and you could see the heat streaming out of that thing.


ps. has anyone seen the coolant icon flash on the display when the car bogs like mine did?

Mike,

Brad told me that the EVO pump runs whenever the engine is on. Its not like the stock pump that gets turned on by the ECU. Did you maybe wire it wrong? It should be wired to a constant +12V source so it runs as soon as the ignition is on.

I have never seen a coolant flash on my speedometer area ever.

Also the Evo pump does run independant from the ECU, after I turn off the car the pump runs for another 5-10 seconds. Its loud as hell...maybe because the damn think had a leak. It buzzes as loud or louder than my old fuel pump which supported 850 and then 1000 cc injectors on my Supra.

What can we do about a hood vent? I am about ready to have someone fabricate something, this car Intake charge temps run 20-30C higher than my RX7 heat bomb in daily driving.

Btw, RPM just replaced the faulty EVO piping and ran the car and it experience similar issues but then noticed there were bubbles in the cooling system.

Has anybody figured out what is causing the powerloss? I have a stock 04 E55 with 20k miles that just started having this problem. The dealer thought it might be the transmission control unit, but changing it has not made a difference. Like others it seems as if the supercharger is not engaging. So far this has only occured with the car warmed up, and after 2-3 hard runs through first gear. Anyone get this problem resolved yet? Thanks.

It happened on mine due to a faulty EVO Cooling kit install...it was bad...I was down 100rwhp and my A/F at the time was under 10.0 (off the dyno plot). If you don't hear the chirp or feel the supercharger engage it is because it isn't...the IATs are too high...mine were as high as like 185 C...ridiculous. I had a leaking Evo hose. Check your stock bosch pump, its likely bad.

I had the same problem last night running with a 04 Cobra......after i ,ran and beat the cobra twice the car just lost power on top end.About 15 minutes later the car felt fine again.The car had never done this before,until after i had done a ecu/filter/pully mod..............dont know what to say about heat,it was about mid twenties

believe it or not.. even my c32 has felt the loss of the kompressor. However, it would come on if I NAIL the pedal to floor or if I downshift through the manu-matic selection.

I took the car for my final inspection and everything was ok per the dealer. The car is running strong and no more kompressor loss.

It happened during a summer month and when driving aggressively.

It makes sense that a mod pulley and chip will make the car run hotter.. but for those who have the cooling kit and still loosing power... it does not add up.

slug
 

I've experienced a similar problem with bone stock 2003 E55. May sound goofy, but I believe problem my problem was that car simply did not downshift after I got rolling. As a result it feels like a slug. If I keep it in first, power comes on like gangbusters.

Has anyone tried resetting the vehicle driver's "adapation" feature? It has something that goes along these lines:

1) Turn key all the way until all lights come on (right before turning fully to turn the engine on)
2) Step on the gas pedal for 5 seconds
3) Release and turn key to off position (don't take it out)
4) Wait 2 minutes (for all the parts to reset)
5) Turn on engine finally and go on driving

The above steps actually felt like acceleration has improved for me each time I did it, which was every other time.

I have no idea if my gathered intelligence ( :p ) has anything to do with this topic, but it helped me for sure.

Yeah, I've done that with Audi's for clearing out the learning features ("adaptation"). With Audi's, the common thought is that it helps tranny shifting, but this is actually due to the relationship of the system re-calculating where full throttle, part throttle, and no throttle is set relative to the pedal input.

But haven't tried it on the MB yet, thanks for the info that it works.

If you listen closely, you can hear the throttle controller cycling to find min and maxes.

... and it makes sense to me that the Motronic systems on the Audi and MB would be using the similar adaptation channels.

What would really be cool is if Lemmiwinks works on our systems (yes! believe it or not that is the name of the software). But, I don't think anyone has used this software on anything but VAG cars. It would be nice if I could change the idle torque additive offset and ignition timing on my CL55 to trick DME to engage the supercharger sooner. I've done a lot of this stuff with 4.2 Audi's, but I don't have the guts to be the first one to try it on our uber-expensive 55K's. Oh, and with Lemmiwinks you can also effectively eliminate the speed limiter.

http://forums.audiworld.com/s4/msgs/2041675.phtml

Heat /hood louvers
 

Hood louvers are easly and I've experienced the same heat soak in traffic here in S.FLA . Blower belts lifting off at high rpm / Feet per second. Alignment and pulley angle must be Dead nuts on. With in Thousands of an inch.
I know this one might be hard to believe , but a high rpm you can compress some air under the poly vee belt ribs and between the pulley grooves. This can lift the belt and you can lose belt grip?? on the blower pully . My fix was to drill little .o25 holes in the bottom of the pulley grooves . you got to stagger them as so not to weaken them . Deburr & clean up the pulley . This may let the air exit the groove. Don't know if this will work on a MB Kompressor . But it worked on drag mtrs built for other car application. This may seem a little out of place , But it is food for thought

It is the intercooler pump. Have dealer scan the car with STAR. There should be codes stored for intake temp reaching a limit.

See above...

Also do a search on "intercooler pump" we have talked about their failure on numerous threads over the last several years.

Good Luck at the dealer!

Thanks for the input guys, I think Vadim is right, car is at the dealer now and it looks like it may be an intercooler pump failure. I'll find out more tomorrow.

What fuel are you guys running ... ? The car will also pull timing with respect to IAT AND the Octane fuel being used.

I would expect timing would be pulled on low octane fuel ... having said this when I had an E55 for w/e test took a friend for a quick blast. WOT in 1st from rolling start and most of second ... then made our way onto freeway within 2-3 mins and nada ... car felt like a 220 diesel (non-turbo). ~2000 miles on car at the time. I reckon heat issues.

BTW when we talk heat issues ... are we not talking about onset of pre-ignition ... if u running 100 octane or so IAT's can be much higher no ?

What IAT's can the oil and motor cope with ? From a power persepctive the hotter the combustion temp the more power you will get as the greater the heat differential bewteen IAT's and EAT's will be. Air would have expanded more ...

Problem you run into is with higher IAT's, EAT's will need to be higher again to get same power... and then you run into breathing efficiency...

Rgds Steve.