Be Excellent To Each Other

Yep

Merc is in again today to get the Parktronic prodded at again.

Again again again.

Maybe it will get fixed. Maybe it won't. Either way the world will continue to turn.

Here is a haiku I have written about it.

Oh Merc You No Park.
Parktronic German trauma.
We sense with our eyes.

Parktronic is ace
when it works. Except Hearthly
Always gets red lights.

Heh, the guy in the bits and bobs thread who reversed into someone's car was driving a Merc. Maybe his parktronic was broken too.

Parktronic problems
Affect all Mercs. Maybe his
Worked but he was dumb.

Merc with Parktronic,
Occasionally worked,
But mostly chronic.

A haiku should reference the season.

Season one of this
saga was almost funny
but now it is dull

There once was a man with a Merc
Whose new gizmo refused to work.
So he bought a three-wheeler
Drove to his dealer
And his language was unusually curt.

Rather than a Merc
A gentleman relies on
A Rover this fall

Manx Man,
Merc plan.
Broke, damn!
Bread Van?

No need to gloat more
It seemed a good buy back then
Let's keep this civic

maybe in the snow
parktronic will work better
that is unlikely

parktronic system
broken in winter, autumn,
Summer and the spring.

Bobby bobby bob
By bobby bobby bobby
Bobby bobby bob

Type R needs new summer things
ABS sensor
And lambda sensor also

Every time I see "lambda sensor" I think of Half Life.

There's probably a reason.

Me, too.

I always read it as lambada sensor, which I imagine isn't a feature of too many cars.

Maybe this one.

That has la bamba sensors.

I thought a group of youths had gotten their hands on a load of Cayennes and had made them look right chav using bodykits but it seems Porsche havr released a new thing called a Macan which is very similar silhoutte to a Rover 25.

Best sell your Rover then, you wouldn't want to be mistaken for a Porsche driver.

They said they'd fixed the Parktronic. (A misaligned sensor which was causing bad readings, or something.)

It lasted about an hour's driving before the double red LEDs started randomly appearing again.

I shall return to the dealer on Tuesday.

I'm almost wondering whether or not to just say 'fuck it' at this point and leave it as it is. Its overall state now is as per my description in a previous post, which is to say, 'mostly working' - viewtopic.php?p=918586#p918586

It'd pass the 'trade in' test if a salesman were looking it over and deciding what to offer me, or I could just keep the car longer term, I suppose.

Meh, no, come to think about it I'll return it again, they can keep trying until they manage to actually get it fixed. I'm also wondering if the dealer is ever going to turn around and say 'Six months warranty is up, no more fixey fixey'. (This is the warranty that I never saw any evidence of actually existing, remember.)

I'd be tempted to tell them that if they can't fix it before the six months is up then they can keep it.

Knowing nothing much about cars I googled Parktronic ( I had some idea it was parking sensors:))

I found a Youtube video where the Merc just parks for you, do you have that??

If he has, it doesn't work

If it does, he's a brave man if he pushes the button.

It's not that kind of Parktronic.

Parktronic is what Mercedes called 'parking sensors' for a while, but 'cause they had the little LED bars inside the car it made them not parking sensors, but Parktronic instead.

There is some kind of self-parking Parktronic system on the go as well in later cars I believe, although based on my experiences with embryonic Parktronic technology I'd never activate the latest iteration of it for fear of being launched into the Irish Sea as some kind of pre-emptive strike on the UK as an unwilling pawn in a nightmarish replay of the Battle of Britain, whereby the terrifying forces of German bombardment are replaced by middle-aged geeks in malfunctioning submersible oversized Mercedes equipped with temperamental gadgets.

!

(Laughing at your post, not situation).

I don't understand much about cars, but if it's like the proximity sensors that other brands of car are having and you are having this much trouble getting that sorted (especially factoring the amount of your time thus is eating up), I really think that the customer service here should be going all out to sort this for you, and throwing in some extras on the top. Personally, I would not settle for it as it is. How long and for how many repeated visits, calls and reports has thus been going on?

The thing is Mimi I'm not sure what more I could reasonably ask for, at the end of the day it's a ten year old car that has had two 'car' issues since I bought it and one 'other' issue. (I know it sounds like a catalogue of disasters from this thread, but you can actually distil it down to three distinct issues.)

The main 'car' issue was it going into limp mode and admittedly this was a pretty serious one, but it was diagnosed and fixed at the dealer's expense (under 'warranty'), and he gave me a courtesy car for a couple of weeks whilst waiting for the required part to come from Germany. I'd say he didn't have any change out of £1000 overall for that.

The 'other' issue was the Dension aftermarket audio/bluetooth kit being fitted incorrectly, (so it would never remember where it was up to on the hard drive after having been turned off), which was corrected by the guy who installed it at no expense to me, and since then it's been fine.

The remaining 'car' issue is the Parktronic, and yes I've lost count of how many times it's been back for diagnostics and supposed fixes, but at the same time there's never been any quibbling about it being taken back for a further effort to be made. I suppose I could try to insist that he stop sending it to the local specialist place, and instead send it to the main Mercedes dealership and tell them to fix the Parktronic. I imagine the labour bills alone for that could get pretty eye-watering which is perhaps why it's not been done already. (They have replaced three sensors, which cost £100 each, and there's all the time that they've spent on it as well.)

On balance I'm genuinely not that bothered by the whole affair, the dealer I drop the Merc off at is very close to where I work, and they take care of getting it to wherever it needs to go and then back to the dealer for me to collect after work, and they always give it a wash too, which is nice.

The people at the dealership are all very pleasant, we're on first name terms with each other and always have a friendly natter.

I dunno, it's one of those situations that doesn't seem worth getting arsey over, I've had a verbal assurance that they'll continue to work on the Parktronic once the 'warranty' expires (which is now actually, come to think about it, as I got the car on 23rd February), so as long as they honour that I'm content enough to continue as is.

As it stands I have a car that's fully operational apart from a temperamental Parktronic system, when you buy a ten year old car for £10.5K that cost £50K when new, I think it's important to have realistic expectations about things not being entirely perfect - which is where I'm at with it.

That surprises me, dude. I'd be the same if it was a £3K car, but if I'd spent £10K on a car, regardless of how much it was new, I'd expect it to work properly. Parkign sensors are probably quite useful on a car that size, so it's not as if they're a luxury IMO.

Well they are making ongoing efforts to fix the Parktronic so it's not like I can accuse them of trying to wash their hands of it or ignoring the problem, if they refused to make any further efforts to remedy the issue then I suppose things would become rather less friendly.

The Parktronic was an option on the CLS, which is pretty shit considering that the 'cheapest' one was about £45K and it's the size of a small planet, so definitely useful but not standard as you'd expect! Typical German car manufacturer tightarse shenanigans with the extras.

EDIT - Oh yes, the passenger side heated wing mirror stopped heating, they replaced that. So that's four things overall.

Merc is in again today for another Parktronic attempt.

Maybe the three millionth try is the charm!

Rather annoyingly though it means I'll be collecting the car from the centre of Douglas on a roads-closed day as it's a Classic TT race day today, which then means I'll have to crawl down the prom for about 40 minutes as that's the only road that's open up to the north of the island.

Ordinarily I'd be parked at the far end of the prom which is ideal as I can walk quicker than the traffic will be moving.

My DIY door seal replacement appears to be successful.

Next job: Rear wash wiper jet.

Upon collecting the car yesterday after work I was informed that the chap had spent nearly all day on it and the final conclusion is that there's a little rubber seal inset on one of the sensors that's deteriorated and is allowing the sensor to move a bit in its mounting, causing false readings, the system thinks it's errored, and then it intermittently and randomly shuts itself down.

They have ordered one of these seals and when it arrives they'll get it fitted, it'll be a front bumper-off job.

Also, I was told that if this doesn't fix it, the guy is completely out of ideas. Apparently my car is proving to be one of the most troublesome Parktronic issues he's ever worked on - mostly because the car doesn't think there's anything wrong at all, it isn't logging any actual failures or faults for him to pull out of the system with the STAR diagnostics, which is odd because ordinarily I am told that that they have error and fault codes for absolutely everything and thus would always log a fault of some description.

Maybe the fault logging system is broken. Get him to replace that while he's there.

The Parktronic control module says it is feeling fine, but then again, how would it know? Who polices the police?

Was your reply " "?

Well I'll wait until this seal is fitted, and then if the Parktronic is still not working properly, there will be a further conversation to have.

I guess at that point we'd be into the territory of me saying they'll have to just send it to the main Mercedes dealer with an instruction to fix the Parktronic.

I'm willing to put money on the fact that this won't fix it.

Frankly, if after all this time, your mechanic is only now looking at the mechanical holding mechanism for this, I would be very concerned about the ability of him to perform any safety critical work.

Computer says no

You should buy a Rover. It'll have a not broken exhaust tomorrow. £1,100.

I'll take that bet.

crikey. Police impound £250k Lamborghiniylowpolkadotbikini. That's a Rover 25 for every day of the year, £250k.

"He is not believed to be the owner of the car."

Ouch.

I had my car dump all of its coolant the other day. Dropped it off at the garage expecting big money problems and was told it was the temp gauge that was fitted incorrectly at another garage last year and had worked loose.

£28 to diagnose and refit (Phew)

Oh, that's interesting. There's a guy that lives on my road that has a car that looks identical to that, plus two other supercar things, and they make such a roar as they drive up and down. He seems to go in loops so goes riaring up the road, then comes up the same road in the same direction. The thing is, thus road has speed bumps, so he has to pull up tight before the next loud stretch. I can't stand that guy. I would like to just imagine it is him, for a while.

Him at number 15, or further down at 69?

The guy at 15 sounds mean