Have you
seen this problem before?
A dear friend
of mine, who trusts me implicitly, brought his 2013 Mercedes Sprinter to the
shop for repairs. It was a weird, weird problem.
After an
extended drive, usually after an hours’ worth of driving, the vehicle would go
into limp-home mode and would only move at a speed of up to 5 mph.
This in not something we see with your typical Asian car problem!
If he sat
there for an hour or so, it may clear itself and would continue to drive okay
for another hour or so of freeway driving. As he was going from Ventura, Ca. to
the southern border with Oregon, this became quite an ordeal. He was also short
on time as he had a deadline to meet. He made it to Oregon, but not on time.
This made the trip completely fruitless as he was there about a day late.
He made it
back to Ventura but had to wait 6 times on the side of the road for the engine,
transmission or whatever to cool and the systems to reset.
This is
where the odyssey begins.
When he
dropped his vehicle at my shop, he mentioned he had been told by a friend that
it might a transmission problem. And that I should consider that.
We scanned
the engine for codes or any data that may prove to be helpful. None! No codes
and no available data that could offer a path to repair. We checked the amount and
quality of the transmission fluid as he thought it may be related to that system.
All okay.
Given the
mileage on his vehicle, I suggested he take it to the dealer as it may be
covered under warranty. Lo and behold,
it was! But not before they had to tear
down the power train management system apart. The owner had to agree to a quote
of $9000 before they decided "miraculously" that it was covered under
warranty.
Let me start
by saying that if I had the vehicle as long as the dealer had it, my friend
would have thought of me as incompetent, ignorant, perhaps even uncaring.
The local
Mercedes dealer had the vehicle 37 days. Yes! 37 long days.
All this
happened at a time when my friend was in the process of buying another $65K
vehicle from the same dealer. They had a huge incentive to do right by this
guy!
Their
service department was blowing all the challenging work the sales team had
worked for.
Mercedes corporate got
involved and they called their super-duper diagnostician. During the diagnostic
process, it appears they took the wrong path at least three separate times as my
friend told me they had called to revise the quote over and over. What started
as a $500 initial diagnostic quote, soon escalated to as much as $9000. And
every time they thought they had it, they had to admit they were "not
correct" once more. Whatever they had replaced had not solved the problem.
The answer
ended up being an electrical glitch inside the torque converter. Whatever the
specific problem was, it would leave no trace. Once they replaced the torque
converter, the vehicle would no longer go into limp-home mode.
I was relieved
it had not been us who kept the vehicle so many days. I know my friend would
have had a tough time accepting a bill for all that labor time and parts he
would have been liable for. In the end, he was happy to have his vehicle back
from the dealer and all the work having been done under warranty.
In
electrical and electronics, there are no cookie cutter problems, especially on
complex European vehicles such as Audi, BMW and Mercedes. No shop or tech is
immune from spending a large amount of time testing only to come up empty
handed. That Mercedes tech learned a lot from its exchange with that vehicle.
My feelings are that, in the end, the dealer decided to eat the repair to
salvage the sale my friend was already in the middle of.
I know of
countless times we invested several hours of diagnostic time only to charge
little or nothing because we didn't want to exceed the initial diagnostic
quote. The knowledge gained from tough diagnostic problems benefits us all -
our tech and the shop - unfortunately at a great cost.
Hopefully we
can make it up in volume!
#diagnostic,#Audi,#BMW,#Mercedes, #Asiancars
