how is your mileage on your trip computer?
 

I get about 16.9-17 miles/gallon on city streets and maybe 40 miles/gallon on highway... what do you guys get? anyone know if I can change the miles to kilometers at the dealer? (using their computer) will they charge me money to do this change? cuz i'm in canada.. and we use kilometers here...

how do you do that?
 

do you adjust it with your trip computer? my trip computer and instrument cluster is two totally different things as well... there are two buttons only, "reset" and "mode" also you can't compare a ml to a g500 that costs $30,000 more =P

You can change to miles/KM's yourself!
 

Tabo:
I believe you stated you have a 98 ML. You can change this yourself through the menu on the trip computer. If you scroll through the functions, it runs in this order:
Date
Stop watch
present fuel comsumption (instantaneous)
average fuel consumption
Distance remaining (range)
*Select display in miles or kilometers*
Off

What you do is scroll through these using the mode button. When you get to the display that says I believe either MI or MILES, push the reset side of the button and it will say "KM", you are then shown KM per Liter, and range is displayed in KM.
Also the date will show the day before the month as is usually used in Europe, instead of the month before the day, ie here we would say the fourth of July is 07 04 2002, in Europe they would display it a 04 07 2002.

Gilly
ps this info is in your owners manual, i believe you'll see it on or about page 64.

For some reason I don't understand, the trip computer flashes "FUEL...FUEL...FUEL" when the remaining range is about 77 miles, but when I set it for kilometers it will show the remaining range right down to zero.

During the last 52 months, since the truck was new, I have averaged 20.67 MPG over 47,000 miles. I now mostly use 89 octain fuel and have noticed no decrease in milage. A M-B factory rep told me there would be no harm done since I don't put a heavy sustained load on the engine, like pulling a trailer over mountain roads. In fact he said many ML-320 trucks assigned to M-B company people in the Chicago area have always been run on 87 octain fuel. This saves me about $50/year, just enough to take my wife out for dinner, or to treat the truck to an extra Mobil 1 oil change.

regular gas?
 

Thanks gilly for your detailed response, i'll try it out and let you know.. Mercedes recommend using octane 92, I use it since its only a couple dollars more than 89 octane.. I notice the car does drive a bit faster with supreme gas (more power when accelerating)... and I believe it is a cleaner fuel so it doesn't clog up your fuel lines, filters, and stuff.. just my opinion... but I still use 89 octane on all my other 4 cars.. hehe hondas and acuras.. the honda manual states on all of them, use 89 octane, no need to use higher octane gas.. thats what I love about my hondas =P

20 mpg over 47,000 miles, wow, thats great economy. My wife's 99 ML320 does 15 mpg (US gallons) around town and around 22 on the highway. It isn't driven hard but I can't get the economy you guys are getting. What are we doing wrong???

99 ML 320
98 RR 4.0

Tom,

My ML does the same thing on the trip computer. I’m pretty sure it is by design. I don’t know what mine gets around town but on the hiway it is 21.5 to 23.5 if I’m real easy on it.

Tom,

That's great info about the KM mode letting the trip computer count down to zero, very useful! I'm going to ty it out! My CLK computer let's me know how much fuel is left and the miles I can go on the remaining fuel....love that info!

I know the ML is just a truck and shouldn't be expected to need such niceties, but if you're going to do something, do it well! Ach du liebe...

Tabo, if you get 40mpg on the highway, do not change anything on your truck, nothing, not even the trip computer setting. Do you get that mileage on both sides of the mountain or just going down? I average about 20mpg in mixed driving just like Tom is getting, I'm at 53,000 miles. It'll go down to 18 in town and as high as 24 on the highway (level ground). For Timh, there is nothing wrong with your truck. To get 20mpg, you simply need to switch wives. My mileage goes right down to 15 too everytime my wife drives my truck. I guess they really are all from Venus.:rolleyes:

40 mpg on the highway?! Who is towing you? :)

I got 21.5 from Atlanta to Dallas doing about 70 the whole trip at around 5k - 6k miles on the odometer. Might be better now that everything is more broken it, but I haven't checked it.

I suspect that occasionally he will be seeing 40 mpg as an instantaneous reading, not an accumulative 40 mpg, not unless he hits reset on the accumulative mpg while under favorable circumstances. Kind of fun to play around with the reset button on the accumulative mpg setting.

Gilly

Is the trip computer accurate?
 

Honestly i never used my trip computer before.. just lately.. it happened to show me 17 gallons / mile (than i got interested).. when i got to the highway it was at 40, but i only drove on the highway for like 10 mins heheh.. it goes up and down like stocks =P but it was annoying.. cuz when the yellow light blinks (onthe empty fuel gauge) the trip will flash "fuel fuel" why doesn't it keep showing the amount of fuel in your tank still? is it down to reserve?

The trip computer never shows you the amount of fuel remaining, just the range calculation. From my experiences the trip computer will stop showing range and start flashing "FUEL" at about less than 60 miles of range. I assume it's because it can't accurately calculate a range with that small amount left. Pretty hard to calculate right down to the last drop of available fuel. The gauge will show the amount of fuel left, even though the low fuel light on the gauge is on.

Low Fuel Alert
 

I did a retrofit of the trip computer on my 01ML320 - it was plug 'n play. Got everything but the compass to dispay (unnecessary due to installed nav system).

I've been watching the computer closely regarding how many miles to empty there are when the FUEL display kicks in and have experienced anywhere from 52 miles to 67 miles indicated. I believe that the trip computer takes an input from whatever activates the low fuel light - because IMMEDIATELY when the low fuel light on the gas gauge comes on, the trip computer shifts over from miles to go to the blinking FUEL alert.

I can confirm that when the trip computer is switched over to any of the metric based readouts (select a metric country), the miles to empty continues to count down to zero - but the readout flashes the km's to go. It's helpful if you like to drive into the last 50 miles worth of gas. Simply take the KM readout and multiply the number time .6 to get miles remaining. 60KMs x .6 = 36 miles to go, and so on.

I did a little test while coming down the hill: there is about a 30 mile stretch of road that is all freeway and all downhill. Over this stretch the loss of elevation is about 2000 feet. Once heading down, and with the ML up to speed, I reset the average fuel consumption and got an impressive 38 MPG during this stretch! I was going about 60 with the cruise control on. Next trip down I’ll retest at 55 mph and see if there is a difference