I recently bought my 03 SL500 and it consistantly shows "1 malfunction" in the dash display. When I purchased the car I was told this was because of either the teleaide or phone being disabled. Does this sound ligit? Can Mercedes flash the computer or do something to make this go away?

1 MALFUNCTION means there is a stored malfunction, I don't believe TELEAID or NO PHONE causes a MALFUNCTION reading unless they are broken as opposed to disabled due to no subscription.

Yes, the dealer should easily be able to go into the cars data and find the culprit. I've gone to the dealer with a 1 MALFUNCTION and they told me they couldn't retrieve the fault, but a tech on this forum said this wasn't so and they can find the issue under these circumstances.

Check your owners manual because I think when your 1 MALFUNCTION shows ( as opposed to being stored, not certain ) you can flip through the menu with the thumb control buttons and find the fault explained.

With the engine running, scroll through the menu using the button(s) on the lower left side of the steering wheel. When you get to the page that says "1 Malfunction" use the arrow buttons to identify the cause. If it says something like "Tele-Aid/Please Activate", it simply means that there is no current subscription in effect for Tele-Aid service. This can be easily coded out using SDS. If it says "Tele-Aid Malfunction/Visit Workshop", that's another story. Some MB's will throw the warning in the event of a malfunction, even if Tele-Aid has been coded out. Legal reasons, or so I'm told.

The presence of a factory C-Tel system will have no effect, one way or another, on the malfunction display as far as warning messages are concerned.

Thanks for the replys, a MB tech on another forum informed me of a recent change in MB policy in the last couple of weeks. Prior to that MB would not make a change in coding to make the message go away saying it was a safety issue.

The vehicle now reads: "no malfunctions in memory"

I visited the MB dealer where I had purchased the car, at first he said MB would not allow them to change the coding. I told the service writer I had read on the internet MB had changed that policy in the last couple of weeks. He had no knowledge of it but did take the effort to verify with MB. After a charge of $62. I was on my merry way. And I do mean merry, it's a pleasure to have such a beautiful car that tells me "no malfunctions".