Hi I'm new here!! My C320 broke down and nned serious help or Advice!!!
 

Hey everyone..Well i have a 2001 C320,and the problems is that the colling fan die out on me so i took it to mercedes andthey put a new electric fan in there, so i drove it home and less than 20 mins. it die on me again, so i went back, they told me that its probably the module..two days later i took it to another shop and they fixed the fan. BUt somewhat it seem very strong(spinning). and i drove it for like two weeks and it die again,so i took it back to that same shop and they told me to go get a module like mercedes had told me to..So I went and got a used module for the fan , let them work on it..three days later i went to pick the car up since they said they couldnt fix it, and while i drove the car home not even 1/2 a mile, smokes started coming out from the vent and under the panels from my foot..i took it back to the shop and they said the wires are fried up. I didnt knoe what to do or to say(I know , its very stupid of me). Plus the car wont run no more probably f**K up the ECU too..But its been almost 2 months since i left it there that day. Do u guy have any idea what wrong or what kinda of wire harness should i get and how much will it cost?

PLEASE I need help and advice!!!

THANK YOU

I am not sure too many people will take you seriously sice this seems to fall under the category of "crazy story". Here are the issues I see with your story:

You say that the cooling fan "died out". What does this mean? What happened?

You say the dealer diagnosed a bad fan and replaced it but it "died again" in 20 min. What happened exactly?

Then you make it sound like the dealer is just guessing at the problem. ??

Then a shop fixes something. The new fan? What did they do?

Then there is spinning and smoke... It doesn't all seem to make sense.

It appears the issue is the nut behind the wheel

seems to me the post is genuine

I'm curious if he is the original owner and how many miles are on the car?

Bring to MB tell them to fix it, and write a check. Don't get involved.

Or trade on a new car with a warranty.

well what i mean is that.

-cooling fan die out; stop spinning, dont know why.

-new fan; while i was driving home the "Check Cooling"'Visit workshop' so i stop to look at it and the fan wasnt running no more, it probably got shock by the module or something, but thats what i want to know too. cause if they dianose it and say only the fan is bad in the first place, why after fixing/replacing new fan, the module would be the bad one?

-The dealer seems like they didnt knoe ****, cause they're just saying "oh guess you'll have to fix the module for the fan and see whats next".

-Took the car to a common shop and they made the fan running again, but a bit too fast and strong then normal speed. also after 1 1/2 week the power from the fan went out again, so this time i got a new module for the fan and took it there, dont knoe what they did to it, but when i went to pick up the car, something was smelling like burnt, and so smokes started coming out from every vent to the panels.

- Took it back to that stupid shop, they told me they can do nothing else.

so what i want is HELP,ADVICE, or should I SUE them.

-reply to HATTERASGUY

what u mean, not get involve?

and can u really trade this car when its not running and is in this hell condition?

:rolleyes::rolleyes:

Now there is a great solution.

:rolleyes::rolleyes:

Because your making it worse getting involved. The shop probably hard wired the fan to get it to work, and shorted something out. Stop messing around bring it to the dealer, fix what's broke and move on.

you can always try for some more help at www.mbca.org
or www.benzworld.org
and maybe a different Mercedes dealer or maybe try to make an appointment at a dealer with the regional rep.

After the dealer worked on the car and it went bad in no time you should have gone back to that dealer instead of taking it to another shop.

If you attempt to sue that independent shop the cost and time may not be worth it, have you tried to get your money back from the independent shop?

Also if you go back to a Mercedes dealer try to talk to the shop foreman before any work is done. Explain to the foreman everything that happened so hopefully he'll oversee any repairs.

Ethan and Hattarasguy both make good points. I agree that the "common shop" probably "hardwired" the fan so it would run all the time. That is the sign of a common shop alright. You need a UNcommon shop - that does correct work! Those are hard to find. On this site there is a forum for finding a good shop in your area. It is called "Good MB Shops". Anyway, whatever they did probably did fry something, if you were smelling something like that (or seeing actual smoke!).

However, as far as your original complaint that the fan died, I have a different car so maybe its not the same, but on my car I am unaware that my fan has ever run. It should only run if the radiator gets too hot. Mine generally does not get too hot. Maybe the radiator also has some problem? It is pretty bad that the dealer would replace a fan that was good, without doing any diagnostics at all (like testing the fan).

Good luck.

Dont know if you have a MB dealer in Stockton or not but I do know that there are a couple in Sacto and in the Dublin/Pleasanton areas that are no more than 50 miles from your location.

The fan control systems in some of the later cars are just nightmares. When I bought my 2000 C230 the cooling fans were running 100% of the time at high speed and I naively thought the problem was a stuck relay or maybe a bad temp sensor. I figured I could fix the problem cheaply and quickly.

Wrong.

The aux engine cooling fans in my car are actually controlled by the CLIMATE CONTROL panel. The speed of the fans can be infinitely adjusted based on the engine temp, refrigerant temperature or pressure. The climate control module exchanges information with the INSTRUMENT CLUSTER via a separate computer can (called the K1 serial interface) to obtain engine temperature information and the climate control panel passes information back to the instrument cluster (via of course the K2 serial interface) and the instrument cluster then puts this information into the CAN "B" network so that it is available for other networked modules.

In my car there was something wrong with the K1 serial interface - and since climate control module panel could not obtain the engine temperature data it just defaulted the engine cooling fans "ON" at 100% speed all the time.

To fix my problem I had to replace the instrument cluster, the climate control panel and the auxiliary fan control module. Total cost to put the system back in operating condition was around $1.5K dollars - and I bought a used climate control panel and I got the instrument cluster at wholesale cost. I'm guessing it would have been a 3-4K retail repair.

As far as I can tell the only advantage to a system designed like this is that you only need 1 engine temperature sensor instead of seperate sensors for the climate control system, the fuel injection system and the temperature gauge.

The fan control system in my car seems like something Rube Goldberg would be very interested in studying....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rube_Goldberg_machine

Best of luck.

Wow! I wonder what % of dealer techs understand this stuff?

mpolli,

To expound on your thoughts about - % of techs who understand - There was an excellent article/gallery on the Mercedes Classic Center in Orange Co. Calif. in this weekends L.A. Times online. They installed a worldclass painting facility but had to wait and interview until they found a painter up to MB Classic standards, which wasn't widely available.