A bonehead VALET put my 05 SL 500 in "Limp mode" - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

disbo100 · #1 04-27-2014, 08:51 AM

Hey folks,

I was out to dinner last night the car drove great to dinner. When the valet brought it up... the ESP fault was up on the dash and the RPMs were surging. 500-1500 and back to 500. I pulled it out of the valet area with no accelerator functions (I didnt put it to the floor) and pulled in to a parking spot.

I saw that the ESP button was turned on (perhaps by the valet's elbow??) so I turned it off. Then I turned off the car.

I waited a min and started it back up.. ALL IS 100% FINE?.. no malfunction in memory.. nothing.

Drove it home.. gently... 100% just fine. Within a 1/2 mile of the house I testing the response and the car scooted just fine.. As if nothing happened.

1. Has this happened to anyone before.. just by an accidental button push?

2. If it was a big issue why is there nothing in memory? and no faults to check?

3. Should I be concerned? Ill take it out again today and see if all is well.

Wish me luck...

thanks for any insight...

97 SL320 · #2 04-27-2014, 11:25 AM

I'd hardly blame the valet. Pressing the ESP should not cause the car to go in to limp or idle to surge. The ESP button is there to shut off stability control.

Read the owners manual to see if pushing the ESP button causes limp / idle surge.

disbo100 · #3 04-27-2014, 12:33 PM

I'm just trying to figure out what happened and why?

Why would ESP fault come on and why the limp mode in moving the car 50 yards?

97 SL320 · #4 04-27-2014, 09:26 PM

The only sure way to tell why the light came on is to have the car scanned for trouble codes. Even then, you won't know for sure if and codes are recent or have been sitting in memory for a long time.

On my 97 SL there are various systems that get scanned through the under hood socket. I'm not sure if 05 had this or everything was accessible through the OBD 2 socked under the driver side dash.