75ZT Community

The 'Overdrive' tell tale has decided to stay illuminated for the past 48 hours. I have an automatic so apart from being surplus to requirements it's become a nuisance, especially at night, where it glares away distractingly bright.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJCa4QP2WSU&NR=1

Shows it glowing away at the end of this short video directly above the milometer

I seem to remember a post somewhere, about an IPK (Instrument pack (IPK from the German)) re-set. I thought leaving the battery off may help?

Can I 're-set' the message centre to 'turn off' this errant icon?

Thanks,

Martin

Cruise control light Martin, disconnect the battery for 30mins should cure it. As you have the hiline set up no radio codes needed

PS when did you buy a left hand drive car??

Yes, as Dave says, that's your cruise lamp.

Though why it's on is a mystery if you don't have cruise control. Without the cruise interface, it should be impossible for it to be on at all.

With that and your ocassional check engine lamp, we need to get your motor on a T4 (Testbook version 4.Computer Diagnostic System).

Hello Duncan, you may remember Martin checked out the EPG, via his iphone sender on Sunday It showed no problems, even though the EMG light had been showing spasmodically (solid).

After his check the overdrive lamp has remained on. Just to keep it company in it's lonely vigil, the EMG decided to re-appear for about an hour on the way home too. I stopped for a coffee around Northampton and upon restart it left the party, and has not been seen since!

I expect the 30 minute battery off re-boot should clear it up and then perhaps we can look at it via the T4 in July?

If I didn't know better I'd be worried that the plenums were flooded?

Martin

takestock wrote:Cruise control light Martin, disconnect the battery for 30mins should cure it. As you have the hiline set up no radio codes needed

PS when did you buy a left hand drive car??

Dave, I have a DAB (faceplate removable) radio which I'm sure doesn't need a code after disconnection as it worked OK when I changed the battery last September?

Should I disconnect the leads in any particular way do you know? When I had the 230SL, I recall the negative terminal came off first then the positive and reconnect in reverse? I know that because the AA did it the wrong way and 'fried' the EPG. Fortunately Merc replaced it (£1600) on Warranty, as their handbook didn't detail this rather important necessity!

A hurried printing change took place, together with a new handbook being circulated etc, as I was but one of many who carried out this 'post sale' product research for them!

The left hooker is at my holiday home in Florida by the way!

The battery negative should always be disconnected first, reconnected last. This has been true for every car since the sixties, and is to do with which terminal is earthed. Years ago they were positive earth, but now everything is negative earth.

You disconnect the earthed side first for a very important reason: if the spanner (or other tool) touches the car body or any other metalwork, if it's the earthed side it's not a problem. However if the earth is connected and it's the other side, the spanner creates a short circuit across the battery. This is a very bad thing. In fact, a bad thing that has been made bad by a worse thing being bad. The best outcome is a warm spanner.......

As for the AA not knowing this, well what do they teach them? It also should not fry anything, but would be a convenient excuse for a dealer trying to explain a problem away.

When positive earth cars were rather more common, it did cause problems, as a jump start between positive and negative earth cars could cause them to weld together if the bodies were touching!

Thanks Duncan,

Fortunately because of my earlier experience I would have disconnected the negative (earth) first.

The Merc brain, whilst it was still functional after the AA incident, depreciated steadily, with function tell tales going down, mpg and service interval read outs vanishing etc. A sort of Stuttgart plenum paradigm!

I think your very right about the dealership angle. The car is now owned by a friends parent, who has recently had a right hum-dinger with a Merc owned service centre in London, who shamedly didn't seem to have much knowledge of the EPG at all.

He spent £540 for what was little more (in my parlance) than a blown fuse.

Mercedes Benz UK refunded him eventually after a year or so of aggravated correspondence. My pal's parent is a leading criminal law silk, and only after writing from his partnership with a Lincoln Inn's Field address did they become directly involved.

What a cynic I've become in old age, I'm sure they'd have refunded him anyway ...

Chartermark wrote:Hello Duncan, you may remember Martin checked out the EPG, via his iphone sender on Sunday It showed no problems, even though the EMG light had been showing spasmodically (solid).

After his check the overdrive lamp has remained on. Just to keep it company in it's lonely vigil, the EMG decided to re-appear for about an hour on the way home too. I stopped for a coffee around Northampton and upon restart it left the party, and has not been seen since!

I expect the 30 minute battery off re-boot should clear it up and then perhaps we can look at it via the T4 in July?

If I didn't know better I'd be worried that the plenums were flooded?

Martin

I was wondering if this had gone off yet the other day... was quite puzzling as others have said with not having cruise control it should not be on... There were no codes via the OBDII and we decided not to try and clear the codes (even non were showing) as we were going to try and put the T4 on it...

Has the battery reset now cured it?

Hello Martin,

Firstly thanks for your time on Sunday, I wasn't too worried to drive away after your device revealed no faults, which was my principal interest. I could also see Duncan was as usual snowed under still at 6 o'clock.

I think the IPK has been erratic from when I first had the car (new). Also when a replacement battery was put on late last year, there was no 30 minute wait period allowed prefacing re-connection.

It has spasmodically lit up the EMG and Cruise lights over the years (with no faults present).

All through It has refused to accept the 2nd keys bar-coding, resulting in me having a spare key, that's the next best thing to useless.

I've not been back from the Nano very long, having had other duties to perform and have decided to wait until a friend can help me on Monday with the battery job.

If it still won't extinguish I think I'll have it disconnected until July, when I can trust Duncan to T4 it, as all technicians to date with the exception of 'Monk' didn't exactly fill me with confidence and usually charge to leave me in the same position, but £40 lighter.

I'll update this post after I've done the re-set.

Martin

Chartermark wrote:I think I'll have it disconnected until July, when I can trust Duncan to T4 it, as all technicians to date with the exception of 'Monk'

Might even be another operator there at the nano-meet

I will keep fingers crossed for you Martin that the Battery reset works!!

It was the least I could do as it was I that was keeping Duncan tied up...

raistlin wrote:

Chartermark wrote:I think I'll have it disconnected until July, when I can trust Duncan to T4 it, as all technicians to date with the exception of 'Monk'

Might even be another operator there at the nano-meet

Always been good with computers and if it is something I could be trained up on then I would love to volunteer to help and be trained as an operator as I'm not great with the manual labour stuff...

Tried the battery re-set today. Off for an hour, then reconnected (the right way). Everything works fine ... BUT

Blasted things still stubbornly shining away. It's irritating, and very distracting at night, even with black tape over it. But I suppose it is a six year old car? Is there anything can be done (removing bulb, replacement IPK?). As I don't have 'Cruise' it doesn't really matter it being there/not really anyway!

I'm going to retrieve my late father's Smart Car convertible meanwhile, which is stored in London and use that for a bit (68mpg, nil road tax) and maybe 'rest' the Rover for a stretch I think?

The annual misery of 'huckstering' around with the 18 year olds (innit), of the Insurance industry is also about to 'kick off' as well, which I find increasingly wearying to go through! So perhaps a summer of SORN in the garage at EC2, with the battery off, will convince the car it's had better behave itself if it gets another chance.

I suspect it's now a T4 job, etc and to re-iterate previous content, the technicians who now understand that instrument around here, are as prevalent as Leatherback Turtles ...

“Apathy - If we don't take care of the customer, maybe they'll stop bugging us.” - should be their motto!

Might it not be a good idea to leave SORNing the Rover until after the next nano-meet Martin? You're going to be there anyway and you'll have a selection of T4 setups to choose from.

I did think of that Paul, but it's out of tax next month (May) and the insurance is up at the same time? From what I read the renewal is expected to be double bubble, and there's all the hassle that entails as well

Dad's little car only has 8,000 on the clock, it's a soft top with auto, PAS and fortunately all the controls are left handed, so it'll do as a summer shuffle I hope.

On top top of that the news on my fast depreciating mobility is not good, and the fear (however small) that the 75 may let me down 'is a back of the mind concern' too?

For longer trips, the rail stations only 5 mins away so it's not so bad, and apart from coming to the Midlands, I can restrict my motoring now to 'county only' journeys.

I would like to thank you all for keeping me on the road this long and who knows I might find new energy with which to confront the tormentors and contemporaneously re-kindle the qualities of the '75. If only modern cars could be simple, all those bleeps and lights!

Hi Martin,

Just a thought, but if your IPK has a fault that illuminates the CC light, does anyone know if the internals of an IPK can be interchanged? By that I mean just the simple things like the lights?

If so I will donate my redundant IPK to you, it only had 3138 miles on the clock when replaced so it should be fault free.

Cheers

Mike

A recent post next door has highlighted the fact that you can cut the pcb track to any warning light on the ipk, this is something that could be done as a last resort.

takestock wrote:A recent post next door has highlighted the fact that you can cut the PCB (Printed Circuit Board) track to any warning light on the IPK, this is something that could be done as a last resort.

At a push, the LED (Light Emitting Diode) could be desoldered. I would try to avoid this as it would mean recalibrating the speedo to be sure the needle has gone back in the right place.

I can't think what could cause the light to come on, on a car that doesn't have cruise, unless it has somehow decided that it does but the cruise ECU (Engine Control Unit) is missing.

I reckon a T4 session should reveal some clues, and probably resolve the issue too.

Rover418275 wrote:Hi Martin,

Just a thought, but if your IPK has a fault that illuminates the CC light, does anyone know if the internals of an IPK can be interchanged? By that I mean just the simple things like the lights?

If so I will donate my redundant IPK to you, it only had 3138 miles on the clock when replaced so it should be fault free.

Cheers

Mike

Mike, thanks so much for the kind offer. I'm seeing Duncan and Paul on the 20th of May to see what can be done with a T4 and all their experience?

If the wretched thing still stays on I'd like to take you up on the offer.

Meanwhile to make things easier for night-driving, whilst the 'Cruise' shines away, I collected the Smart, I referred to earlier from EC2 this afternoon and took it in for a service and MOT, while I waited. It's 4 years old and has only covered 8,000 miles from new. My dad used it when he and my mother lived at the Barbican. He had 2 of them, (there's a Direct Smart Dealer near Canary Wharf I think). This was his last one and had PAS, heated leather memory seats etc (the Ghia version) he called it!

It hasn't moved a wheel in 16 months, (garaged) so I put the battery on charge, for 24 hours and returned today. It fired up second time of asking and ran back here faultlessly.

No road tax, No congestion charges, nearly 70mpg and I parked it end on, across the back of the 75 tonight in my parking space! It really made me laugh today as well, they truly are a fun car.

I was going to sell it, but think I'll use it as a shuttle, as 80% of my trips are very short (under 10 miles return) and particularly in the winter it'll be very economic on fuel, when the 75 even with the new Thermo fitted still takes 7-8 miles to warm up. The rust can't strike much (Fibreglass panels) and a colour change can be effected in under an hour - there's a Nano meet challenge!

No big deal with the blasted Insurance hucksters either - £168 fully comp and even they can't load it that much (he said hopefully).

That's nice colour. It's amazing just how big the feel when inside. Very Tardis like.