SL500 Suspension Setup - Romess

Lowe712131

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Hi guys.
I have now finished (and sold!) the SL55 - loved every minute working on and learning about all of it's problem areas and the associated fixes, including the massive wealth of info and help on here. So much so that I have bought another 'problem' car, as I miss not having a shiny, 2 tonne paperweight on my drive!
Bought an SL500 that has had a hideous amount of water ingress throughout. PSE pump is toast and the car is showing all the symptoms of SAM failures as well (probably all of them, but at least the front two anyway!). ABC is constantly alarming, and very few electrical things are working. Sounds like a nightmare to most people, but it is exactly what I was looking for. Obviously, first job will be to cure the water leak points, but I have started poking around to see the extent of the problem(s).
Hooked the car up to STAR to have a first look at everything, the ABC is the first issue - the plunger travel sensor on front right is constantly reading 255mm and doesn't change - this looks suspiciously like an open circuit / ecu fault to me, so I'm going to take the ECU out and re-solder the pins (I believe Malcolm (Television) had the same issue a few years back and the re-soldering on the ECU cured it. Hopefully mine is similar.
Going further into the ABC menus on STAR, I was looking to recalibrate the ride height and load settings, but it needs specific setting information from a Romess Inclination gauge, to give the correct suspension angles etc.. This leads on to my question - has anyone had any experience with this type of suspension measurement? Do all MB dealers have it? Any info greatly appreciated. Cheers
 

television

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The standard height from the wheel arch to ground should be 70cm for the UK and 68cm for the USA. I have lowered quite a few cars by 2cm with no problem at all with tyre wear because the camber angle has changed, we are only talking a minute amount here of angle change.
 
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Lowe712131

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Height setting SL500

Hi Malcolm, thanks for reply - I was laying a mental bet you'd be the first! Thanks :)
Going into the STAR menu's it is asking for the actual angle (from the Romess gauge) to be inputted for each corner, within a certain range (-8.4 deg to -7.2deg on the front axle if I recall correctly), if I just go back from the menu it says calibration not complete and if I try to enter just an arbitrary value within those limits, it says angle outside of range. This COULD be down to the potential ECU fault as described earlier, as it is not communicating at all with the front right plunger sensor - if I try to access that sensor, it just says communication error. Is it just a case of getting the car on level ground, making the necessary height adjustments using STAR so it is physically equal all round and setting it to this level? Still gives me the headache of what to enter as values for the Romess settings, but maybe that'll be OK once the ECU problem is sorted?
I may be jumping the gun slightly here though, I lifted the drivers carpet on Friday, only to be confronted with a dripping wet carpet/foam and a completely green-gunged up CANBUS connector! (other side most likely the same!) I probably need to get all this sorted so the communication around the car is somewhere near normal before I worry about individual problems as you just don't know what problem is masking what other problem!
Cheers
Simon
 

television

Always remembered RIP
Joined
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Messages
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2002 SL500, 216 CL500, all fully loaded
If the can bus connectors and wake connectors on the passenger side are all wet, there is no point in testing with STAR as all reading will not make sense, it is the passenger side that gets the worst from a blocked heater box drain.
 


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