Filter day

 "People are often unreasonable and self-centered.  Forgive them anyway."

"If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives.  Be kind anyway."

"If you are honest, people may cheat you.  Be honest anyway."

"If you find happiness, people may be jealous.  Be happy anyway."

"The good you do today may be forgotten.  Be good anyway."

"Give the world your best, and it may never be enough.  Give your best anyway."

"For you see, in the end it was between you and God.  It was never about them anyway." - Mother Teresa

I have a complete fluid service scheduled for the S600 soon.  I probably should not have driven it this many miles (about 2500) without giving it a complete service - but here we are.   It has let me know a couple of times that it needed a quart of oil, which I of course added.  

I wasn't aware of this, but there's no dipstick on this engine - that's a bit weird.  The transmission is sealed, so nothing can be done there.   Kinda weird from a fluid maintenance standpoint.  I would change the engine oil on my own, but removing the filter requires a special tool, and the engine holds a lot more than I want to deal with.

However I figured that even though it's a fancy German car, I ought to be able to change the air filter - so I bought one.  Then I figured out that it requires two :)  So I bought another one.   

This being a fancy German car, you need to figure out how to get to what needs serviced.  The engine cover pops up where the Mercedes star is, then you pull it forward off a couple of pegs.

 ... and set it on the floor where you might step on it.

Once you've popped the cover off, you have access to the air filter housings (red arrows).  Six torx screws per side, and you are in!

They looked reasonably clean, so I threw the new filters in the trunk.  That aluminum box at the top is the passenger side air-to-water intercooler.  It cools the hot boost air coming out of the turbocharger to increase density and power.  Remember that compressing air heats it up a lot, so cooling it off again before it enters the engine improves performance a lot.  Also water has much greater density and specific heat capacity than air, so water can remove more heat from the boost air with far less heat exchanger surface area than an air-to-air intercooler.

I've been experiencing a loss of boost from time to time, and haven't had an opportunity to troubleshoot the issue.  Sometimes the car is pulling like mad, and then power just drops off to blah - it's definitely a loss of boost.  Question is, why?  There is no "check engine", so nothing is triggering a fault. That leaves just a couple of possibilities, one of which is a cheap part to replace - the MAP sensor.  

"MAP" stands for Manifold Absolute Pressure - this tells the Engine Control Unit how much boost pressure is in the intake manifold.  If it's getting sketchy and reading too high - as might happen with a 17 year old pressure sensor - it could be telling the engine to cut the boost.  I've ordered a new one, and we shall see if this corrects the issue.  Underneath the MAP sensor is a small rubber hose that connects to the large rubber pipe to the right of it.  I'll check the condition of the rubber hose when the MAP sensor is removed for replacement.  The other two sensors are for cam position.

It's pretty old, and may be a bit janky.  The date seems to be 15 December 2006.

There were a couple of other air filters that needed to be checked, and those were the cabin air filters.  These filter the air coming into the car from outside, and on most cars they are pretty easy to replace - but not on this car!  The filters are buried in a compartment behind the glove box.

Remove two caps from the bottom of the glove box to expose the bottom screws.

Remove the two bottom and two top screws, then pull the glove box out.  It's slid out partway below.

At the back of the dash is a little white tab that gets slid upwards, and then the access door to the filters pops loose.

Unlike the engine filters, it looks like these were due for replacement.

Happy day!  Everything went back together properly without damage - which for me is a rare event.  I'm pretty sure the twisted wire pair is CANBUS wiring to the passenger side door, for moving the seat around.

Still need to get the replacement wheel installed, and look into some other minor issues - tire pressure monitor and rear glass sun shade.  Maybe see about getting that Android stereo unit if I can get the Chief Financial Officer to sign off on a big purchase :)  It's coming along.  Just need time off ;P