bluekeys
New Member
Hey, new member here.
I bought a lovely e350 cdi blueefficiency convertible from a private seller. It had 100k ish on the clock and drove like a charm.
Owner seemed to have taken care of it, but had done all their own servicing etc, so the records were a little thin on the ground.
The car was well kept and I was a bit smitten, just before the summer, I took the plunge. Never owned anything I paid more than 1k for and always ran cars till they just wouldn't any more, or in the case of my recent car, until I was sick of replacing the cat, which was regularly (3x before I stopped counting) stolen.
All was well for the first 2k miles, got a suntan on my arms and was getting random strangers complementing me on the car, lol.
Just one day, the car refused to change gear, got stuck in 4th and so I dropped it at my local friendly garage.
I got hit with a 1k bill for a new turbo and swirl flap actuator and that is where the fun started.
Having read around the forum for a bit, I'm pretty sure I have a little chuffing injector, causing black crystals to form, I found a nice coal sized lump near the oil dipstick.
It was never the same after the actuator changes and jumping around like a kangaroo, refusing to go over about 2k rpm.
It has thrown all number of codes, overboost, underboost, egr too much, too little, various shorts, xenon not working, I forget them all, but bought an autel scanner to get a little detail. I'll collate them all and put them here later.
I took it to MSL, but sods law, the day I took it, the codes just weren't being thrown. They gave me some time to take the car for a spin, so I ran it for an hour, slow, fast, still jumping like a kangaroo, but at the end of the hour, no codes still. I was told it was possibly a bad map, I didn't have the car mapped, but maybe the previous owner did?
The turbo has begun to sound like an aeroplane and when I take my foot off the accelerator there is a sound like a whistl / dump valve. It had never made that noise prior to the actuator change, so I took it back to the garage that did the original work and they tested for leaks using a smoke machine. They didn't find any, then they blocked the EGR as a test and let me drive the car. The car was running smoothly again, although, not back at it's former glory and is of course throwing egr and the occasional dpf code.
For now, I'm using another vehicle, I've got the little beauty booked into mercedes for the passenger airbag recall, but am at a loss as to how to progress without throwing bad money after good.
On some level, I've enjoyed the experience as I always wanted to learn more about cars as I'm in computers and it was a welcome break. I'm not really keen to get rid, would rather attempt to fix things myself as I'm in the lucky position of working from home most days and having access to another car whenever I need it.
Any thoughts on directions to proceed in, once it's back from Mercedes?
Any way I could back up a tune etc before they get their hands on her and inevitably give the ECU an "update" (even though I've explicitly told them I don't want the emissions update)?
If you've made it this far, thanks for reading.
I bought a lovely e350 cdi blueefficiency convertible from a private seller. It had 100k ish on the clock and drove like a charm.
Owner seemed to have taken care of it, but had done all their own servicing etc, so the records were a little thin on the ground.
The car was well kept and I was a bit smitten, just before the summer, I took the plunge. Never owned anything I paid more than 1k for and always ran cars till they just wouldn't any more, or in the case of my recent car, until I was sick of replacing the cat, which was regularly (3x before I stopped counting) stolen.
All was well for the first 2k miles, got a suntan on my arms and was getting random strangers complementing me on the car, lol.
Just one day, the car refused to change gear, got stuck in 4th and so I dropped it at my local friendly garage.
I got hit with a 1k bill for a new turbo and swirl flap actuator and that is where the fun started.
Having read around the forum for a bit, I'm pretty sure I have a little chuffing injector, causing black crystals to form, I found a nice coal sized lump near the oil dipstick.
It was never the same after the actuator changes and jumping around like a kangaroo, refusing to go over about 2k rpm.
It has thrown all number of codes, overboost, underboost, egr too much, too little, various shorts, xenon not working, I forget them all, but bought an autel scanner to get a little detail. I'll collate them all and put them here later.
I took it to MSL, but sods law, the day I took it, the codes just weren't being thrown. They gave me some time to take the car for a spin, so I ran it for an hour, slow, fast, still jumping like a kangaroo, but at the end of the hour, no codes still. I was told it was possibly a bad map, I didn't have the car mapped, but maybe the previous owner did?
The turbo has begun to sound like an aeroplane and when I take my foot off the accelerator there is a sound like a whistl / dump valve. It had never made that noise prior to the actuator change, so I took it back to the garage that did the original work and they tested for leaks using a smoke machine. They didn't find any, then they blocked the EGR as a test and let me drive the car. The car was running smoothly again, although, not back at it's former glory and is of course throwing egr and the occasional dpf code.
For now, I'm using another vehicle, I've got the little beauty booked into mercedes for the passenger airbag recall, but am at a loss as to how to progress without throwing bad money after good.
On some level, I've enjoyed the experience as I always wanted to learn more about cars as I'm in computers and it was a welcome break. I'm not really keen to get rid, would rather attempt to fix things myself as I'm in the lucky position of working from home most days and having access to another car whenever I need it.
Any thoughts on directions to proceed in, once it's back from Mercedes?
Any way I could back up a tune etc before they get their hands on her and inevitably give the ECU an "update" (even though I've explicitly told them I don't want the emissions update)?
If you've made it this far, thanks for reading.
