M272 Balance Shaft issues exist outside the published range

Premature failure of the Balance shaft on the Mercedes M272 engine is a known problem. Apparently the balance shafts were too soft and so they wear out quickly. This was the subject of a class action lawsuit in the United States. Over there, the shafts in affected cars were replaced by the dealer out of warranty. This wasn’t the case here in Australia, although it is possible that a handful were done for good customers. There is a service bulletin published by Mercedes-Benz that outlines the repair and the engines numbers affected by the soft M272 balance shaft. Generally those […]

M272 Camshaft position sensors

When you own a modern Mercedes-Benz, you seem to be playing constant whack-a-mole with the check engine light. I’ve written before how silly I think the check engine light is, but we’re stuck with it. Personally, I would just drive older cars, but this is not for everyone and my wife has a 2007 E350 Wagon. There were two codes this time.

The first set of codes were complaining about the correlation of the camshaft and the crankshaft on one bank. I had previously changed the magnetic actuators, which temporarily fixed the problem. If the car didn’t sit outside the […]

S211 Tail light bulbs

My wife’s E350 Wagon recently started throwing up error messages about burned out tail light bulbs in the dash. Turns out, this is not nearly as easy a fix as you would expect. First, I consulted the owners manual. The manual tells you that these bulbs are not user serviceable and do take the car to your Mercedes-Benz dealership. I wasn’t really interested in a visit there, so I started trying to work out how to change the S211 tail light bulbs myself.

In the end I purchased a whole new rear light assembly from the USA. From the USA […]

M272 Camshaft adjuster replacement

I really dislike the check engine light. To me its an altogether silly concept given the digital dashboards cars are equipped with. It can mean anything from a loose fuel cap to a destroyed engine, so consequently people just ignore it. Modern cars know a whole lot more about what is wrong with them. Instead of posting a reasonable error message on the dash read out, like they do for a blown bulb, you get the check engine light. My wife’s E350 had the light come on a few weeks ago. You could also tell that the engine wasn’t as […]

S211 Tail light replacement

The Mercedes-Benz E Class wagon is not particularly common. It would appear that most buyers opted for the ML/GLE model. Their loss as I believe the S211 is the far better car, unless you want to tow. This makes spare parts a bit more tricky, when those parts are not shared with the sedan. In this case, the tail light lens was broken and needed replacement. Even a used unit was hundreds of dollars. Dealer parts here in Australia from Mercedes-Benz are eye wateringly expensive. Luckily the part is the same on US cars, and i was able to source […]

M272 Crankshaft Position Sensor

Recently the E350 wagon has been playing up. It started out by occasionally losing power, then progressed to stalling. At the times this would happen, the check engine light would be illuminated. After a while the check engine light would be on around half the times the car would be driven. In order to diagnose this, I plugged in my scanner to the OBD2 port. There were a few saved codes. The first one was P0335 Crankshaft Position Sensor A circuit. There were also a couple of misfire codes, and a code about the tumble flaps in the intake manifold. […]

S211 Rear Suspension

I don’t feature the E350 Wagon on this site much. It is the main family car, mostly driven by my wife. The S211 is (in my view) a much better option than the plethora of SUV’s on the road. The lower ride height makes loading babies and prams easy and it drives and handles like a proper car.

Just after Christmas, the rear of the car would drop down on one side after the car was not used for a couple of days. It quickly escalated to dropping down after only a few minutes. At that time I didn’t understand […]