Tempramental W203 280 2006

[Palfrem]

Just drove to a nice Indian restaurant. Dined royally. Yum-Yum

Got into car, orange engine light on. Running very lumpily

Drive the 2 miles home. Tickover very patchy / hunting at lights, etc.

On drive, turned off ignition. Pulled out key. Counted to 10.

Started car.

Alles in ordnung. No lights, ticks over sweetly.

Any ideas please chaps?

 

[markjay]

Yes, pretend it never happened....

If there's a real problem, it will eventually get worse...

But if you are curious get an ODBII code reader and check for stored error codes.

It happened to me once when my car (W203 2006, but 180K) was still under warranty. Even thought the light went off and the car was fine once restarted, I did take it to the dealer, and they gave it back to me and said 'we cleared that for you Sir, nothing to worry about' - no further information was forthcoming, to be honest I don't think the Service Advisor actually new what the mechanics actually did.

 

[Palfrem]

Mines only got 42K (and a MB Tier 1 warranty) so it's into MB next week.

 

[Palfrem]

Drove it today - no problems

Maybe it was miffed we didn't invite it for the meal.

 

[markjay]

Get a cheap ODBII scanner - this way, when you have a warning light coming up, you can have an idea what the car is complaining about before taking it to the garage.

(This is how I knew my Passenger's Seat Occupancy Sensor needed replacing when the SRS light came up... )

 

[markjay]

Personally, I don't understand why cars don't display the error code on the instrument panel... seems like a ploy to make you have to consult a garage. Technically it would not have really involved any cost to implement this feature (perhaps in a hidden menu), as the cluster display is already there. Would have killed off the bottom end of the ODB scanners market though....

 

[Howard]

Because then you'd get people who really shouldn't be tinkering with cars waltzing into garages and insisting they knew what was wrong and how the garage should go about fixing it.

Fair enough with a seat sensor , but as Olly has mentioned before , sometimes you need the live data , the individual fault codes are more or less meaningless.

 

[markjay]

Because then you'd get people who really shouldn't be tinkering with cars waltzing into garages and insisting they knew what was wrong and how the garage should go about fixing it.

Fair enough with a seat sensor , but as Olly has mentioned before , sometimes you need the live data , the individual fault codes are more or less meaningless.

I agree... but I think that someone determined enough will be able to plug the car into a cheap ODB scanner anyway. Therefore, I think that a hidden menu will be as effective... your average motorist won't know about it anyway, while only the enthusiast who would have plugged the car to an code scanner anyway would also be the type of person who will find-out how to access the hidden menu. If that makes sense....

 

[Palfrem]

UPDATE

Engine light on again this morning, lumpy running.

Not far from MB Solihull so left it outside with engine running and (after assuring him it was MB / AUC Tier 1 warranty) summoned service advisor to take a look.

Car disappears into workshop for 20 minutes. Returned with new coil having been fitted.

Job done - runs perfectly now.