ECO Stop

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stu

Active Member
Joined
Aug 27, 2003
Messages
68
Location
West London
Car
C200 Sport Petrol W205
One day last August my wife was driving locally and came to a halt in the traffic. Our car - a W205 C200 Petrol - stopped the engine as it should. Foot off the brake and onto the accelerator and ... nothing. Press the start button , same result. It was locked in park as well, Half an hour later Mercedes sent us an RAC man. After some fiddling he got it started, but confessed he was not sure how. He escorted her to the local independent. There it showed no faults, just one historical one which had no data available with it. Ran lots of checks and drove it round for a while where it behaved perfectly. He replaced the stop/start software which he said was out of date. Four months later we had the car serviced at a dealer who said it was all fine. Yesterday we drove it one mile, left it for an hour and a half and then set off back home. Coming to a junction the engine stopped as it should and then totally failed to restart. After some time and a lot of cross other motorists we got it started with ECO Stop/start disabled (not the first time we tried that)

My options appear to get all the batteries checked/replaced. The one in the key was 4 days old and no messages saying it was low. We have had this in the past so that does (or did) work.

We generally do a lot of short journeys in West London traffic but did 120 miles last Wednesday. Four years old, 27,000 miles.

Paying by the hour for more head scratching is not an option I want to pursue.

Anyone else had this problem?

--
Stuart
 
Personally I would start by giving the battery a good charge with something like a Ctek charger, with short journeys especially in cold weather it can take it's toll on batteries.
 
After some time and a lot of cross other motorists we got it started with ECO Stop/start disabled (not the first time we tried that)
Stuart
After approximately how long? Would it be long enough for the main battery to recover I wonder?

Since your car is out of warranty, you might want to consider buying a cheapo scanner (icarsoft forvexample) to carry in your car so that you can scan the car with the fault in situ. Otherwise suggest you get the carvrecovered to an indie or MB for diagnosis while the car is in its “lock up” mode without restoring it into operational mode.
 
As it understand it, the system checks that batteries have sufficient charge to restart the engine.
If insufficient the stop/start is disabled - you’d be very unlucky that the criteria where met for the engine to stop but then have insufficient charge to restart...
 
Thanks everyone for your advice. Tried to turn off the stop/start permanently, but that seems impossible. Turning off ECO in the menu does not do this (I wonder what it does do)

Clearly the parameters built into the system to decide when to use stop/start are too optimistic. 4 year old main battery, one year old secondary (or voltage regulator as Mercedes call it) and cold mornings, heated seats and short journeys lead to a stalled car with no means of restarting. Not good enough Mercedes, certainly when my wife is using the car.

Found it cannot be permanently disabled as this would lead to worse fuel consumption which must be maintained to ensure compliance with the CO2 figures used for taxation. (not that this seemed to bother VW)

As this is a Petrol I wonder if I can replace the main battery with one for a diesel?

--
 
Clearly there is separate fault with the starting mechanism- it does not sound like the battery.

Assume you have had the batteries properly checked ie when under load with the engine running

When it stopped, did the engine not turnover or did it turnover but not fire up?
 
Found it cannot be permanently disabled as this would lead to worse fuel consumption which must be maintained to ensure compliance with the CO2 figures used for taxation. (not that this seemed to bother VW)
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Given that you can turn off the ECO Start/Stop via the dash (albeit this resets itself to ECO on after a restart using the key), surely the emission/fuel saving is thus compromised via this factory fitted button - hence it must be legally permitted to disable the ECO start/stop by the driver.

If you want to 'permanently' disable ECO start/stop there are several methods suggested on this and other forums.

1. Disable the battery sensor on the negative terminal of the main battery - but this will also disable brake hold function.

2. Remove the Aux Battery (or the capacitor on later models that uses a capacitor instead of an Aux Battery) - this method also disables the brake hold function.

3. Use a CAN Bus device to disable ECO Start/Stop such as Smart Top or other custom made devices that plugs into the OBDC connector under the driver's footwell. This method does not disable the brake hold function.

4. Untested but I have seen ECO parameters using Star Diagnostic in Developer (albeit for a car without ECO start/stop). The parameters I saw was in German, but if I got the gist correct the parameters included enable/disable ECO, number of start/stop before ECO is disabled, etc.

The above is a small list of the potential methods to disable ECO start/stop permanently at a different price point/complexity. Personally I would recommend using something like a Smart Top if you have a convertible as Smart Top simply remembers the last mode set by the driver using the ECO button on the dash. This means that each time the car is started using the key it will revert to the ECO mode it has memorised from the previous session.
 
Thanks. My wife may not have put her foot on the brake. She was not happy at the time. The methods of disabling Stop/Start are not for her really. Putting it in Sport mode also does it. That was vetoed as well. I do feel a fresh main battery is probably the next step. If I can fit a larger one I will. It has a hard life and is 4 years old.

--
Stuart
 
Thanks. My wife may not have put her foot on the brake. She was not happy at the time. The methods of disabling Stop/Start are not for her really. Putting it in Sport mode also does it. That was vetoed as well. I do feel a fresh main battery is probably the next step. If I can fit a larger one I will. It has a hard life and is 4 years old.

--
Stuart


Pushing a button to disable stop / start is beyond her????
 
Thanks. My wife may not have put her foot on the brake. She was not happy at the time. The methods of disabling Stop/Start are not for her really. Putting it in Sport mode also does it. That was vetoed as well. I do feel a fresh main battery is probably the next step. If I can fit a larger one I will. It has a hard life and is 4 years old.

--
Stuart
Suggest that you use the Varta battery finder to see what batteries fit your car.

Car battery finder from VARTA® - Find the best and most reliable battery for your car
 
Thanks Wongl. Very useful, Bit confusing as it was US dominated, but at the very end there was a UK code. Seems I could change from 760AH to 800AH. Does not sound much, but sometimes just a feather breaks a camels back.

As to my wife pressing the button she would have to wait until the light came on after warming up...
 
Surely the eco button is illuminated as soon as the ignition is on...
 
Surely the eco button is illuminated as soon as the ignition is on...
Correct, one can disable ECO as soon as the car is first started without waiting for the the icon to turn green.
 
I doubt it's the battery. These systems are pretty robust. It's more likely to be a switch as mentioned above that's not sending the signal properly, or operator error in the heat of the moment not having the brake pushed hard enough.

On other cars you can have the system changed so stop/start always defaults to off. Might be worth investigating if it can be done on this model, however flicking one switch seems the easiest way round it.
 
Thanks everyone. Are you saying pressing the button before the light comes on switches stop/start off?

My wife has now stopped using the heated seat on short journeys and all seems well. Perhaps the stop function is not properly aware of the battery level as last time it happened we sere stopped for only a few seconds.

Think I'll buy a new battery anyway. Car is 4 years old and I change it at 7 so I'd have to but one by then anyway. Don't think there is space for a larger one sadly.
 
Since your car is out of warranty, you might want to consider buying a cheapo scanner (icarsoft forvexample) to carry in your car so that you can scan the car with the fault in situ.

Be careful about the iCarsoft - my eco stop start has never worked - after 10 secs, no light at all - not even on the button.
The dealer nor indie have been able to do anything about it - even when it was still under warranty.
I purchased the iCarsoft to see what was going on - there is no reference to the eco stop start system anywhere on the device..
 
Be careful about the iCarsoft - my eco stop start has never worked - after 10 secs, no light at all - not even on the button.
The dealer nor indie have been able to do anything about it - even when it was still under warranty.
I purchased the iCarsoft to see what was going on - there is no reference to the eco stop start system anywhere on the device..
I wasn't suggesting that iCarsoft will be sophisticated enough to deal with ECO Start/Stop, but it will help to clear some, if not most of the common error codes causing the car to go into limp mode (i.e. engine warning light on).

I hope you will not be offended, but if your dealer/indie cannot restore your ECO Start/Stop function, it is highly unlikely that you will be able to do yourself armed with an iCarsoft scanner.

Out of interest, how old is car? Have you eliminated faults related to the dreaded Aux-Battery/Capacitor or the main battery?
 

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