legacycentral bbs

My dad has a 1997 E320 with about 170k on the clock. He gets raped everytime he takes it to the stealership. He inocently washed the engine bay area the other day and ot threw a cel and starting running on less cylinders with a nasty engine shake.

I picked up a obdII scanner for 100 bucks and figured I'd at least check the codes and get less screwed by the dealer if it had to go in.

So I get the cylinder 2 and 6 are misfiring. I'm headed over there to go check it out this afternoon. Sounds like it could be alot of things but not sure how water getting in something 3 days ago his hasn't dried up yet.

I'm picking up some plugs just because i dont remember the last time he took it in for a tune up.

Any thoughts on what I should look at other than the obvious, fuel, injectors, coils?

Thanks

That thing have an igniter? I fried mine by getting a drop of water in it... caused a short when powered up and the arc broke the tiny wires. Something similar could have happened to another sensitive electronic thing.... Just a thought.

I'm sure it's related to the water, but those cars are notorious for their electrical gremlins. Not much help, I know.

They are notorious for grimlins. In fact in these years they started using a chained system with fiber optics to try and limit the amount of wire that went into them, and yeah, that didnt last too long. BMW did it to.

I dont know the gasser motors, but I'd assume in 97 its coil on plug and theres probably water down in the holes. Theres also the fuse center up in the cowling which I would highly avoid getting wet.

Update:

I found the problem. I took the top cover off the motor revieling the 3 coil packs. Basically it uses a wasted spark system like subies with an output on each coilpack to run 2 cylinders. Pretty cool. When I pulled the coilpack off the #2 cylinder half of its leg was soaking wet. I look into the hole and the plug was submerged in water. Found the same thing at the #6 coil pack.

New NGK plugs since the old bosch ones were worn to shit and fired it up.

Cleared the codes and shes all good!

I've got to say, my dad hasn't looked at me in a proud mannor in a long time so that felt nice.

My mom stuck 200 cash in my pocket on the way out and said thanks for fixing it lol.

I'm sure the stealership would have started replacing sensors just to fuck us like they always do.

Sweet!

good job

Never take a Mercedes to the dealership unless it's under warranty, haha. There's a lot of good independent shops out there that specialize in German cars that will charge a lot less. Of course I'm more of a DIY guy anyway.

I owned BMWs for 5 years, so I know how expensive they can be if you take them to shops, especially if its for every little thing.