Hi,

I have bought an 1996 E300 diesel w210 2 month ago. The car is 298 000km and run just fine....until it decided to shut down suddenly by itself at a few occasions.

That situation always happened when the engine was still cold (next minutes from start). The engine decided to shut down without any preliminary symptoms, it just turn off as if I would turn the key back to 0. Just after the car shut down, I have a red message in cluster that tells me to "charge the battery". Sometimes, I've also have the yellow "ELS (engine electronics fault)" message when I try a restart.

After the shutdown, it is generaly not possible to restart the engine. I often leave the car to off for a few minutes and then I try to start it again. It crank very well and after around 30 sec of steady cranking, the engine begin to live gradually and it finally start again. (if the battery has sufficient power for all the duration of this procedure).

After the occurence, I do a full charge of the battery and I can use the car flawlessly for around a week. After that period, the bad situation usually come back. For information, the battery is 1-1/2 year old.

I have scanned the car with my obdII for the cause of ELS message and the code is P0380 (preglow monitoring).

I have inspected the K40 relay and I have made new solders on each joint. I've checked the operation of the fuel relay and found it strong with lot of magnetic force.It is difficult to open the contacts with my nail. (for me, my k40 relay appear to be good).

During the week which the car run great between two unwanted shut down, the car start easily and instantly near 32 deg F. I assume this means that the glow plug works well (also no check engine message). The car runs very well without any issue.

Does anyone have an idea of what can be the primary source of the unwanted shut down.

- K40 relay
- Pre glow time relay
- Shut off valve
- Fuel quantity actuator
- IFI computer (N3/7)
- Battery
- Bad harness

I Wait for your suggestion and hope to find the real component responsible of this. It seems to happen to a lot of people who are owning those cars and on the forums I've never seen what is the solution. Maybe folks are so happy that their car is so great again that they forget to post the solution.

This week, I should be able to have the car scanned. Hope the car will reveal its secrets.

I will let you know.

Thanks in advance.