FlyingBear

Greetings,

I joined your community today and hope to be helpful to others, as y'all have already been to me as I learn the ins and outs of the W213 AMGs.This post is to say hi, introduce myself, and ask an annoying question.

I bought a 2020 E63S sedan today with delivery tomorrow. It's a comfort-optioned and no exterior carbon Lunar Blue with all badges deleted, with the intent of it being a stealth low-profile car optimized for comfort. My high-profile gut-wrenching needs are served by a '66 Shelby Cobra (hot, dangerous, uncomfortable, loud, wonderful, unusable), McLaren (vicious, pure sports car with a great soundtrack), Raptor (a truck quicker than an 80s Ferrari and most current cars), and Taycan (remarkable vehicle) and the attention is sometimes annoying, although most people are very pleasant and ask to take photos and share their automotive passion.

A debadged no-carbon E63S is, to me the ultimate stealth car. I decided not to wait for the 2021 partly because the changes aren't important to me, especially the touch screen which drives me nuts in the McLaren and Taycan, and a prior Tesla. But mostly because I'm old and impatient.

But, to the point: I have a few CTEK battery maintainers disguised by Porsche, McLaren and others, and love that I haven't had to replace a battery in any vehicle for 20 years by using maintainers. I've searched the forums but am not certain what battery the E63S has, and how best to connect to it. I THINK that it's an AGM, so almost any CTEK will be nice to it. But, as far as I can tell, the only way to connect it is under the hood, as the 12V outlets aren't "always on". Any and all tips welcomed.

Many thanks!

6G Schnell

Congrats and welcome aboard!
Our cars have AGM battery, many owners have CTEK chargers. I prefer using terminals in engine bay to charge/maintain.

whoover

Mine is debadged too. Love surprising people.

Yes, you need to use the terminal under the hood. If all of your CTEKs are more than a couple of years old, I'd strongly recommend this model. It has a much more sophisticated program for AGM maintenance as well as separate temperature compensation. Well worth it.

6G Schnell

Are you sure this is the right CTEK charger for AMG E63s?

pls se below

6G Schnell

This one works with AGM battery...

FlyingBear

Many thanks for the charger recommendation. Per the query above, the CTEK web site says both the chargers shown above support AGM batteries, but Amazon's data system doesn't seem to recognize that. It says that the 40-206 doesn't fit any of my other cars either. Likely a bug.

I actually ordered the 7002 because it's slightly more versatile, but, again, @whoover thanks for the help. I'm very sensitive to battery maintenance because McLaren wants around $2800 plus $850 to install a replacement battery and it's a unique size Lithium Ion one and the car comes with a rebadged CTEK Lithium Ion maintainer. Mercedes parts prices will, I suspect, be more reasonable.

6G Schnell

Ditto...
Could be error on Amazon's part.
I have MULTI US 7002 and works great....higher current=charging faster....

whoover

Yes, it's a glitch in the site. The model check works pretty well for car parts but gets confused with accessories. It's the latest charger and is recommended for our cars by CTEK. Mine's on it as we speak. I'm not doing a lot of long-distance driving now and the alternator does a lousy job of keeping the battery topped up. You generally find the auto start quits after a few days and after a few weeks you might get alerts through Mercedes Me that the battery is low. All of that is fixed by leaving the car on the CTEK for a couple days once a week or so.

whoover

The S63 has a $2,500 lithium battery. Luckily, we "only" get an AGM. I find it very humorous that Mercedes uses lithium to save 20 pounds in a 4,800-pound car.

Quadrobenz

The W213 E63S has two semi independent electrical systems with two batteries. The 12V battery is an AGM, the 48V battery is a liquid cooled Li-ion battery under the trunk floor. I know more about this than I really cared to know because the 48V control unit, which is inside the high voltage battery case, failed last week on our 2018. Replacement required removal of all three pieces of the rear seat, the trunk floor covering, draining the Glysantin antifreeze coolant from the battery, detaching the coolant hoses from the battery, separate the parts of the high voltage electrical system, removal of the battery frame, attachment of a lifting device to the battery, then removal. Reverse the process plus bleed the coolant to remove air to install the new battery. Then drive, retest and finally correct the coolant system level at the reservoir. The 12V system ground cable also was disconnected for this repair. I shudder to think what this would have cost w/o the factory warranty coverage.
My point is a standard trickle charger connected to the under hood terminal will not charge the high voltage battery. Here is a quote from the service record. "Re-check function and operation of the high voltage battery systems. Check charging system, charging socket with cable. Found working fine after repair." I have no idea what charging socket this refers to, but plan to ask the next time I am at the service bay.

whoover

There is no 48V system in an E63S. Maybe you mean E53?

FlyingBear

While it's very unlikely that you don't know if you have an E63S or E53, I'm very puzzled: when I researched this new purchase, I compared E53 and E63S specs (and checked it again on the MBUSA site just now), and the 2020 E53 has the EQ BOOST with 48V battery, but the E63S does not. Are you mistaken by any chance?

FlyingBear

Indeed. McLaren is obsessive about weight: the original F1 even had drilled knobs for the radio, to save about a tenth of an ounce. The current models are super-light, which is partly what gives them their performance numbers, and I understand why they'd want to save weight on the battery. I thought that the weight of an S-Class was considered a feature, especially when specifying bulletproof glass and sheet metal :-).

Quadrobenz

Ok, like you I thought the E63S only had a 12V system but unfortunately I took the MB repair invoice at face value after looking at it multiple times. When I saw whoover's post I looked at it again, this time more thoroughly at all 3 pages. To my shock, I noticed the invoice was not for our car, it was for a 2019 GLC350!!!
My apologies for not catching this prior to the above post.
I just called the service advisor and got an email of the correct invoice for our E63S. Indeed the invoice reflects there is only a 12V system and it was the underhood AGM battery that was replaced. A quick in and out, no other complications.
In all the years of auto service this was the first time a service advisor gave me an invoice for someone else's car. They were both under warranty with zero cost.

FlyingBear

It's nice to have a solved mystery!

Quadrobenz

I just wish I had seen the the incorrect vehicle on the invoice earlier. Seeing the incorrect invoice was very educational about the potential cost of owning the newer electrically assisted vehicles out of warranty. The total labor hours were 11.1 for all that work on the GLC350, plus parts of course. At retail that replacement would cost over $2,000.
Regarding the S63, I believe my W222 S65 has that same battery, saving 20 pounds on a 4,950 pound car. The S65 has a second battery in the trunk area for some of the accessories. Mine failed last year just before the 4 years were up on the warranty so it was replaced at no cost. I have the 7 year warranty but the service advisor said that accessory battery is excluded from coverage in the final 3 years. I think the S63 also has the aux battery as well. When the accessory battery fails things like Distronic quit working as the battery dies over about a one week period from the initial warning in the instrument cluster.

corkshoppe

Glass is double lined for sound not bullets!

FlyingBear

Indeed. But I’ve ridden in a bulletprooofed glass and metal S600 in Asia; it was the chauffeured daily driver of a big company CEO. There are quite a few of those armored Mercedes and there’s an industry that makes those modifications.

6G Schnell

Armored MB is different from car with acoustic glass.
https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/inn...ound-security/