[Philamg]

Was driving along today when the amber engine management light came on and stayed on. Managed to get home (slowly) and have phoned Mercedes assist 3 times, each time spent 15 minutes on the phone with message saying due to high volume of incidents there is a delay in answering calls.
Phoned dealer and he said they could book me in for Tuesday and the car will be ok to drive.

I am not happy driving a car with a fault around and will try late tonight to get hold of Mercedes assist, hopefully they will answer the phone.

In my many years of driving have never had an issue getting hold of the manufacturers assistance before, thankful I wasn't in the middle of nowhere.

 

[Mercedes.AMG]

lets hope its not the the failed clock spring warning as you must not drive car.

 

[Toobad]

As it displayed in amber it is a non-critical fault so it is safe to continue driving the car. If anything serious occurs the car will go into limp mode to protect itself from any further damage. What did the warning say? Was an icon displayed along with the message? I once had the amber side outline of a saloon car appear along with the highly informative "Malfunction". That turned out to be the compressor from the air suspension going out of operating tolerance. The car didn't feel any different whatsoever. I pressed the overhead Assistance button (not the red one under the cover) and the operator answered immediately but could only advise me to book in with the Dealer so he could hook Red Ken up to their Star diagnostic machine.

 

[Philamg]

Not the airbag warning and no message is displayed.

 

[Philamg]

Managed to get hold of assistance at 22-45, they said it is alright to drive and to book into dealers. Don't fancy 600 mile trip this weekend to Manchester so will be taking the wifes car.

 

[gb93616]

That's disappointing to hear about MB Assistance. My previous car was an Audi, I had a yellow engine management light came on and rang the Audi dealer. They couldn't see me for about 3 weeks so suggested I rang Audi Assist. They came out the same day and replaced an part on my drive there and then.
I was hoping MB Assistance would be as good :-(

 

[Philamg]

As disappointing to me was that I had called assistance 3 times for 20 minutes and didn't get an answer, wouldn't have been happy if I was by the roadside.

Car booked in for Wednesday, will update with what they find.

 

[Philamg]

Car was in dealers today, they couldn't find anything specifically wrong but did a couple of software updates.

Will have to see how it goes.

 

[gb93616]

With the amount of software in cars, I fail to understand why they cant pin point issues, any "event" would be logged. I watched an Audi technician once and was surprised with the amount of information available to him.

At least they did "something" fingers crossed..
Graham

 

[Philamg]

Agree Graham, when I took car in workshop manager told me the fault would show up on the diagnostics - it didn't.

Funny, hadn't used car since I booked it in on Saturday, engine warning light was on Friday and Saturday but not this morning, fortunately I took a photo of light on with engine running.

 

[Toobad]

Over the holiday period I lost the COMAND screen (no I hadn't accidentally put it into Standby). I later got an amber warning telling me Traffic Sign Recognition was no longer available. I used the car several times that day and the fault persisted. However, Red Ken then stood for a couple of days and on the next start-up everything was back to normal. I know the car does a mild reset if left for 4 hours so I can only assume it does even deeper resets if left standing for longer.

Software updates are cumulative so a reload will incorporate numerous tweaks and refinements. My Dealer explained these are compiled almost nightly in Germany so what is uploaded to the car is always the very latest version which may include fixes for potential faults you are not even aware of yet. This is always the first line of attack for the Dealer. Ken went through a phase of putting his headlights on in the middle of the night. No other lights came on, just the headlights and it was completely random. Nothing showed up when they hooked up the Star diagnostics machine although a fault code threw up for the exterior front passenger door handle LED even though it was still functioning. Anyway the LED was swopped out, the software updated and Ken's headlights haven't misbehaved since.

Talking of updates, it is worth noting that, at the time of your service, the current version of your satnav maps won't be updated unless you specifically request it. Bear this in mind when you are handing over your keys.

Trev.

 

[Philamg]

Toobad, regarding the sat nav, whilst in the dealers I booked my car in for 1st service in March. I asked for the sat nav to be updated and was told that they always updated the sat nav on a service. I agree with what you say in that if you don't ask you don't get, I will be reminding them again on the day of service.