sgeorge

Hello everyone, I figured I'd introduce myself briefly and say thanks for the useful information I've found within these pages thus far. Dec 15th I picked up a 2012 E63 P30 wagon in 792 palladium silver with the almond interior and H73 carbon fiber interior trim package. Mileage is on the high side at 113k, after the 1,400 mile trip home, but it has been well maintained mechanically. Cosmetics are pretty good but there is room for improvement. It will be used primarly as a highway bomber to carry dogs and bikes when weather doesnt require the 4x4 pickup. I've already pulled the oil solenoid connector, which was brittle and a bit of a pain in the butt if I'm honest, and the idle is already more consistent with less valvetrain noise.

I'd love input from some of the members here on 3 things;

1. The passenger seat sliding forward and going upright when the passenger rear seat is down is F******* aggrivating. Anyone know the module and code setting that needs to be changed? Local dealer wants $200 to try and figure it out though they admitted it was the first time for this request. My understanding from a tech friend is MBUSA hourly rate is $219 and software flashes are 3/8th of an hour. I'd appreciate if any other wagon owners know the setting so I can point and shoot with the dealer so to speak
2. 3 of the 4 rear seat release levers(I'm not sure of the part name) are broken, both from the trunk and the passenger side release underneath the seatbelt. Does anyone have good tips on where to locate small interior parts like this? Or is evilbay the only answer?
3. Is there a way to make the Memory buttons one touch instead of press and hold?

Now for what everyone wants, Pictures! 1st picture is wedged into the 2 car garage to keep it out of the rain/sleet/snow while we traveled over the holidays. Definitely a climb out of the hatch job.

san40

Check fcpeuro.com for parts and enjoy the ride! Very curious to see your take on annoyances

Baltistyle

Welcome

The new style grill fits but you may get a malfunction warning ever once in a while.

Truly intoxicating

‘13 palladium p30. Loaded except ceramics.

sgeorge

Thanks. Im use to annoyances from ford, subaru and toyota. Guess I shouldnt ask how bad can this be.

Ive been looking for a set of the 10spoke wheels. An extra slightly bent wheel came with the car and the one on the right front was cracked and poorly/crudely welded. Enough that it feels like a wheel bearing going bad. The P.O. thought so as well and even had the wheel bearing replaced. I like the grille, what is that off of?

san40

periodically check marketplace on this forum, stock wheels are often sold there: https://mbworld.org/forums/market/parts
There is lots of good info on wheels in the forum, ie winter rims/tires combinations, cross MB model fitment, etc. What i learned on my black 10 spoke wheels is that they're not forged, heavy and quite fragile..

sgeorge

I've got a couple friends with some other amg flavors, C63 and a 15 E63S, and both have reported bending or cracking wheels also. From reading here on the forum it seems relatively common unfortunately. I'm not a huge fan of the black wheels or black wheels in general anyways.

cotmfk

Congrats on the car - enjoy it!

And yes, the stock 10 spokes are somehow both fragile and heavy at the same time.

Baltistyle

Not sure what happened yesterday when I tried to respond, but my answer wound up in a different thread. There’s a set of black or silver ten spokes on the forum as well as some forged twin five spoke forged like yours. I’ve had zero bends with my ten spoke wheels in Baltimore, and that all depends on tire pressure….and tires.

The grill is from eBay, cky, not 55tech. I’ve had both. Cky is better. I made mention of possible error codes because it’s not recommended because it can mess with distronic.

as far as seat adjusting for the rear seats…it’s been covered and is not able to be set without coding.

used parts from eBay, or new from a dealer when it comes to trim pieces.

memory buttons are pressing hold, so you don’t get a finger stuck somewhere and have it cut off. sounds silly but it’s a safety issue.

sgeorge

Thanks @ Baltisyle I'll check out the forum for the wheels. I was able to dig through the parts catalog on mbparts center and identify(I believe) the 3 interior parts I need to replace. Ordered through the local dealership as they were shockingly the best price.
Reagrding the rear seat, agreed on the coding part. I've not seen the specific setting called out in the passenger seat module that needs to be changed in any of the posts about it. The local dealer hasnt been asked to make this change before, i'm fine paying for it, but want to make it as point and shoot as possible. Any one know what the specific attribute or parameter is?

My wagon doesnt have distronic as far as I can tell.

sgeorge

FCP Euro was super helpful with part numbers even though they didnt have the parts on hand. I ordered online through mbparts for pickup at the local dealer. Dealer price for the passenger seat release was 123, mbparts was $55. Now if the weather would clear up here in Virginia so the parts could get delivered. The wagon got covered in snow during this storm and it wont be moved until it warms up to the 40s tomorrow.

Also got a deal on a launch creader elite to see if i can modify the passenger seat behavior. Whenever deliveries resume up here.

täglich

@sgeorge , post an update. I am shopping for a wagon and curious to hear your experience as a new owner.

sgeorge

Its elegantly brutal. Rolled 116k over the weekend. Everything works great. My partner is still adjusting to driving it around town. Her work car was a '19 outback and now an '21 equinox, neither with power, making it mildy comical when she pulls out of a parking lot or away from a light. She's so used to stomping the pedal in those gutless wonders. I've got a short 2.5 hr road trip to the nearest office for team building/volunteering tomorrow and will be taking it vs the trusty old toyota tundra. Even with the poor weather forecast.

Couple annoyances;

1. I've still not figured out the right menu via the C-Reader elite launch box to reprogram the passenger front seat to allow for full functionality when the back seats are folded forward.
2. It developed the oil leak around the oil filter housing and goes to a local Independent shop on the 13th. It will get the oil cooler gasket, oil filter housing gasket, cam covers(probably calling it the wrong thing) and new passenger side turbo coolant and oil lines done while they are in there. Local Indy shop quoted me $1100 for it, mostly labor.

sgeorge

Quick update;

1. Passenger front wheel bearing failed quickly during last weeks' 2.5hr trip down to the office. It was howling by the time I got home. Upon disassembly, the outer bearing was in pretty rough shape with a little bit of glitter in it. Total time to swap it out was ~45 minutes.
2. Spent 30 minutes digging through the front passenger seat control module via the launch creader to find the correct settings. There are 2 seat settings, one labelled "Collision avoidance" that leans the seat back forward. And another called "seatback limitations" under the 2nd variant coding sub menu. I deactivated on the seatback limitations option and now the passenger seat has full motion while still avoiding the rear seat when its folded forward.
3. Broke the OE oil cap attempting with a small pik while attempting to replace the gasket. There was some leaking from under the cap. Replaced with a cap from autozone for now, much better resistance and appears to have solved that oil leak. WHYYYYY do the germans gasket everything?!?
4. Dropped the car off at an Indy shop this morning to take care of the oil leak from the oil filter housing gasket, the oil cooler gasket, as well as the cam seals. Hopefully they do not tell me the timing cover is also leaking. Should have it back in a couple days and then its off on a 7 hour road trip to the coast

Am I nuts for taking a 116k mile 12 year old AMG on a trip to the beach? Probably. But it will be loads more comfortable than my old Tundra.

täglich

@sgeorge I am enjoying your updates. Subscribed for more. Beach trip sounds fun. I am shopping for an S212 specifically with some road trips in mind.

sgeorge

Indy shop called today to ask for approval on swapping out the coolant and oil lines on the left side. I knew they were going to be brittle and assumed they would be a problem but I also appreciate the gesture of calling me to confirm even though i'd already given the green light. Then an interesting line of questioning began;
"So we noticed the blue electrical tape down near the crank pulley and on a connector thats been zipped tied out of the way. Car has no check engine lights so we thought it was something you did but are wondering what it is and why? We've worked on many cars with this engine and that connector is always plugged in". What does it do?

This was the service manager, super nice guy. I explained the oil pump solenoid operation and why I choose to disconnect it on my car. He asked why MB did that and that it was a bit of an odd trick for fuel mileage before letting me know I should be able to come pick it up on the 16th. So far it seems like local recommendations from people ive met in an area new to us have been correct and this shop is good and fairly priced.

Now I need the rain to stop so I can clean it up some before our trip to the coast on Saturday.

sgeorge

Picked up the wagon at the end of the day friday the 17th. They were hustling to finish by 5. Concerned they didnt have the coolant system fully bled they handed me a bottle of coolant for the road. The original thermostat housing was warped and they replaced it out of worry that it may leak if they reinstalled it. I bled the coolant system saturday morning before we left and off we went. Car didnt leak a drop of oil or coolant during the trip but oddly the temps were a little higher the entire trip. Before the service it was always 195/195 coolant and oil temp, it was consistently 199/210 coolant and oil temp during the trip. I find that a bit odd.

Roughly an hour into the trip home on the 25th the check engine light popped on. Pulled the scanner out of the convenient under seat storage, plugged it in while cruising down the road and pulled the codes, p013a and p014a. A bit odd both downstream 02 sensors tossed codes. I did a little reading here and a huge thanks to other knowledgable folks on mbworld, quickly identified the issue, Oil in the harness on all 4 Cam position sensors. I had to scramble to put everything back together before a severe storm rolled through this evening. Ordered new sensors. I'll dig further when the weather provides the opportunity, but I expect to find oil in other connectors and will clean everything as much as I can.

täglich

Were you able to make it home or did you have to stop due to the error codes?

sgeorge

Yep we made it home no problem. The car never missed a beat on the trip home even with the check engine light. No hesitations or rough idling.

BDC90

A little disappointing the shop didn't check for oil in harness .

sgeorge

I didnt ask them to check the 4 CPS's as part of the work, so I'm not remotely bothered by it. I am more interesting to learn if they found oil in the cam seal harness as well because those are dry but was included in the work they completed. My plan is to get under the car tomorrow or saturday and check the 02 sensor harnesses and then injector harnesses for oil, clean everything up as best I am able, pop the new CPS's in and just monitor it going forward. Couple small road trips coming up soon that I'd like to take it on(Charlotte, Raleigh, Charleston SC) between now and July 4th. But also may take my other wagon, assuming ive got it back from the builder & tuner in time; '05 subaru legacy gt wagon(not an outback) 400hp sleeper in very uncommon manual trans flavor.

sgeorge

Spent part of my day off checking and cleaning the wiring harness. I checked all connectors in the same loom as the cps wires. Ill chalk this one up yo a bit of luck. None of the injector connectors nor the 02 sensors showed any sign of oil on them. Only the CPS connectors had a lot of oil. The ecu bottom right corner had a very very light sheen. I cleaned everything, replaced the Cam position sensors, added the sacrificial pigtails on the cam covers. Let everything dry out while eating lunch before applying a very light coat of dielectric grease on everything before blasting off on a few hours worth of errands that included a mix of hwy and city driving. CEL hasnt returned yet. Car seems happier, probably 97.43% because i disconnected the battery while working in it.

Now Ive got to figure out why the oil temp is 20-30 degrees (215-230) higher than before the shop replaced some of the gaskets. Wondering if they didnt replace a deflector for the oil cooler or something.

täglich

Your car now qualifies for concours events. (Q-Tip jokes)

sgeorge

Hahaha. Far from it. Has plenty of scars on the nose. Speaking of which, does anyone have the steps to remove the front bumper cover? I need to clean the coolers, condensers and fix some of the lower grill inserts.

I quickly searched and didnt find much. Has anyone installed a grom audio into their e63 to get android auto/apple carplay?

PeterUbers

some videos for 2014+ to remove the bumper covers in the sticky
https://mbworld.org/forums/w212-amg/...2-amg-e63.html

sgeorge

Water pump **** the bed last week while out of town for work 3 hours away. Fortunately a friend let me borrow an F250 work truck and I was able to snag a uhaul car trailer to get it home last friday. Moral of the story, just replace every damn bit of the cooling system plastic that you can at the same time! But ya'll know that already. To add insult to injury the dynamic seat massager also died. Hoping thats just a leaky line at the pump, whenever I get around to it.

On another note, a friend with a 2015 e63s wagon called me yesterday morning with DTC for cat codes and misfires, I told him to pull a passenger side CPS and he quickly confirmed oil in the harness. 92k miles. At least these things are consistent.