low power on acceleration
 

I have a 1984 190e 2.3 manual gas model and it seems to hesitate while accelerating and not have the power it should. It idles fine, doesn't overheat, what are some possibilities that I should look out for?

Thanks,

bugskitty

I would say everything from a clogged fuel filter to a clogged air filter and many other things in between. Can you give a better description of perhaps when it doesn't accelerate well? Like when it's hot or cold, does outside air temp. play a role, etc. etc. Have you checked the timing? Tune-up recently? On and on........

Maybe if you can fill us in on what you have checked, replaced, and conditions when the acceleration is low we can help.

I see your a new member........Welcome to the best Mercedes help site on the net. The knowledge from the members on this site is staggering so good luck and hopefully we can help you!

Dale

reply to jetf on low power 190e
 

Hey thanks for responding. I've been given this old 190 but it's in great physical shape. Has about 180000miles don't know much about it's mechanical history. As I said before, it starts right up, idles smoothly, no misses, passed a california smog test, I did change the plugs with new Bosch, think platinum plugs, but when I want to pass or accelerate, I need to floor it to move, and it really doesn't move that fast, think 60 in fourth gear max. Uphill, I really have to downshift it to make it up the hill, Clutch seems fine, no slippage. Outside temp doesn't appear to make a difference. Rotor, cap and wires look good, no build up or detonation.

Wadda u think? Love the car otherwise...

bugskitty

My 190 has a similar problem, regardless of the temp if have delayed and very hard shifts until the car warms up and even then the tranny shift hard, with a thud going into 3rd. Also it seems as if i have very serious throttle lag when accelerating however when in park or neutral the engine seems to have no lag but thats with no load on it. This past summer I changed the ATF fluid and filter and that seemed to improve things but only for about 2 weeks tops. Either in the next month or next summer I will be having the transmission looked and and worked on if need be by the dealer. I described the symptoms to a friend of mine and he suggested a broken torque converter could be causing this. Im not sure if this fits your problem but a torque converter is alot cheaper than a new tranny

Hello

check for vacc leaks

I had a problem with my 380se loosing power. It was a bad catalytic converter. A new one made the car seem like it was new!!

PJ

I have an '87 190E that had very similiar problems. Ran very poorly, no power, idled like it would stall, low power, slam-shifted every gear!

I changed the plugs, cap and wires. I bled the injection lines at the fuel distributor (be careful of raw fuel spilling over a hot engine) and then I did my favorite:

The super tonic remedy: Add two bottles of Techron Injector Cleaner, ideally on less than a full tank, and drive it. Drive it hot and hard.

It could be your injectors are just plain dirty. Start with this and see how it goes.

A link about this:

http://www.peachparts.com/shopfor...&threadid=43868

Haasman

2 bottles in the same less than full tank??? is that safe for the engine?

Yes. Not good to do regulary, but if you think you have severely clogged injectors, OK to do. Best to change oil & filter after running through.

Haasman

As noted above could be a wide variety of things. first replace the platinum spark plugs with Bosch supers part no. H8DC. The platinums have resisters which are not needed due to resister ends on your ignition wires. Bosch supers H8DC's are withoout resiters. Second it's probably a long shot but it fixed mine and wasn't thought of as the "usual". The coolant temperature sensor, located on the drivers side rear of the valve cover. Mine had simply vibrated loose upon reconnection she ran like a charm. Good luck and keep us posted ! :)

Change the fuel filter and check the air filter before you throw any real money at it, although the platinum plugs really should be changed too.

my car has a brand new fuel filter as of june 2002 and a KN airfilter installed in march 2002 both have about 3000 miles on them, also new dist cap, rotor, standard bosch plugs, oil and oil filter with 250 miles on it. car now has 97,400 miles on it i became the owner of it at 94,000 and its gotten 3 oil and filter changes since i got it because gasoline got into the oil and because i used fuel borne injector/engine cleaner which made the oil real dirty

I have same problem! Help!
 

Guys,

My 1986 190E 2.3 automatic wont go over 60 and has no power to accelerate either. Did the 2 bottles of Techron fix this car? Or something else. Things I tried on mine are: New catalytic converter, new fuel pump, adjusting little hidden screw in eha valve both directions, running vacuum hose from known good vacuum source to distributor vacuum advance, replacing computer with used one from junkyard (though my computer has a shorted out oxygen sensor input I think, but the new one did not fix it), manually adjusting current through eha from 0 to 20mA (center is 8mA for <=1986 and 0mA for >=1987), adjusted timing, checked compression (125 psi on all 4 cylinders), checked for a burnt or tuliped intake valve, checked valve timing, ran without air filter, checked fuel filter and fuel pressure, and probably more I forgot about. I am applying for a mechanis position (ha ha)...

Please, Please let me know what the solution was for this car. I have paid my dues here.

steipau@iit.edu
NW suburbs of Chicago
Paul D. Stienke

I do know that the O2 sensor has alot to do with fuel metering and engine preformance not to mention prevnting an over-rich fuel charge condition that will destroy your catalytic converter

dirty injectors?
 

I put a double shot of injector cleaner into this tank and I gained 4mph on the top end. From 58mph or so to 62 or more. I will keep monitoring this as time goes by to see if it keeps improving.

Paul

psteinke

A MBZ dealer tech told me to bleed the injection lines at the fuel distributor (be careful of raw fuel spilling over a hot engine!) and a lot of crap came out. I actually did this twice. It seemed to help quite a bit.

You said you "checked the fuel filter and fuel pressure" .... a clogged filter will definately slow you down.

On a long shot- you could pull the fuel tank sending unit and take a look into the the fuel tank.

Whats the history on the car?

Haasman

I had a C200 that wouldn't kick down or accelerate hard. Turned out the throttle cable was loose and so I wasn't opening the throttle fully, even with the pedal pressed right down.

fuel pressure checked...
 

I checked fuel pressure by putting a gague on one of the output of the fuel distributor and fourn 78psi there. This is really not a good test, though because there is no flow there. All that this tells me is that the fuel pump is good and the fuel pressure regurlator is not letting all the pressure go right back into the tank. THese are valuable things to know, but it does not mean that there is enough pressure when the injectors are allowing fuel to flow through them.

This is a great idea to bleed the outputs of the fuel distributor. Also, I suppose I could have the injectors cleaned professionally. Do they use back pressure?

Paul

getting new injectors might be both simpler and cheaper than having them cleaned, the materisl that the injectore are mde from does actually eropde after years of usage from the gasonile flowing thru them, nothing can be done to avoid this. a great place ive found to buy autoparts for our mercedes cars is www.expressautoparts.com they are cheap, deliver fast and if you spend over $50 in parts(not hard on a mercedes) you get free shipping.

new injector
 

I put a new injector in cylinder #4. #1 and #4 had a black spark plugs, and #4's spray pattern looked poor compared to #3, so I replaced #4, but this did not help at all. I still get low power on acceleration and top speed of 64mph.

Have you tried a compression and leakdown test? I'd start there, and then if it's okay, isolate fuel and spark components.

Your black plugs are not a good sign...

...are they oil fouled?

Try a flow test before and behind the converter, to see that its not stopping up.

You'll have to bring it to an experienced exhaust shop for this. Its fairly cheap to rule out exhaust issue as power problem.

K

compression is 125 on all 4 cylinders
 

The plugs are not oil fouled. They are fuel fouled. Also, compression is 125psi on all four clyinders. I think spec is 130 - 150 for this car, so I am a little low, but absolute min is 109, so I am in there.

I tried manually setting the eha current with a potentiometer while I drove, but this didn't give me extra power either. STill top speed 60mph.

Paul

when you get to 60 what does the car do? is it like the engine hits a "wall" and just wont rev any higher? is the engine revving really high and has reached its rpm limit?

drag limited at 60mph, not rev limited
 

My car has low power at all speeds (rpms). In first gear when wind resistance is not big yet, the engine will go up to over 4000 rpm, but in top gear, it wont rev that high, because I am up to 60mph and the wind limits the speed.

Pretty sure the car is in mechanical mode and computer control is not working.

Though I manually adjusted the eha current while driving. between 0-6mA, there was not difference, and then between 6-12mA the performance got worse and worse. I never got better proformance, only worse by doing this.

Paul

Have you tried blanking the computer?, on my car it is located on the firewall about 6 inches inboard of the battery. disconnect the ground cable on the battery and carefully remove the ECU from the harness. leave the ECU disconnected for about an hour, this will allow the capacitors in the ECU to completely discharge and thereby erase any memory that may be stored onboard the ECU it wont however erase the hard-coded engine profile and operating data that the computer uses for engine managment. as a result of losing the volatile memory that the computer stored from data received from various engine sensors you may have poor drivability until the computer can rebuild its custom engine operating profile.