A Friend's Experience With a Mercedes

[LeeNetworX]

The other night on FB I replied to a friend's post about something he was messing with on his car and asked him what was up. Minutes later I received this long e-mail which had me cracking up. Thought I'd share...


Driving along a month or two ago.. suddenly I'm going around a turn and this high-low-hi-low tone starts screeching inside the car... I'm swerving all over the road screaming WTF it sounded like a car alarm going off INSIDE the car... the radio says "MUTED" this alarm is going off, I'm freaking out... there are no lights or anything on the dash... I don't know what is happening. I pull over, dig through everything, read the manual, can't find any reason or logic behind what's happening.. if I turn off the car the alarm stops... so I figure ok must have been some crazy fluke since they have like tow away alarms and all sorts of other weirdness... 10 mins later I'm driving down the road and it does it again.. and again..and again.. Do you know what it's like driving with a car alarm going off inside the car? It's fucking unpleasant, that's what it is.

So finally with the help of the retards in the mercedes forums (dumbest bunch of car enthusiasts on the planet) I am able to piece together that what I am hearing is the alarm for the mercedes version of onstar. Apparently, what is happening is that the system is being activated, and since I am not paying for the service, this godawful alarm goes off after 3 minutes to tell me that it couldn't connect (gee, I bet that is really reassuring if you have an accident).

Anyway, so I figure ok maybe one of the switches has shorted out or something.. so I disconnect the switches.. nothing... so I guess the control unit must have gone wacky.. that's really not surprsiing since rumor has it that it's under the driver's seat. Probably not the best place to put sensitive electronics if you also can't make a convertible top that doesn't leak. But I figure I'll just disable the system... nope.. only the dealer can do that... ok fine so I'll pull the fuse for it, that'll fix it right?

No. Pulling the fuse for the onstar system also disables the FUCKING AIR BAGS and lights up the SRS light on the dash. Really? really??? FUCK YOU MERCEDES YOU FUCKING KRAUT FUCKS.

That's right, so I have no way to turn off the alarm short of going to the ahole dealer and paying them what I can only assume will be a small fortune to try to disable the system using their $50,000 computer hookup, assuming of course that the brain for the onstar system isn't so fucked that it won't just keep doing it anyway. And every time I go into that fucking place I have to hold myself back from hitting someone in the face with a tire iron, so that really isn't much of an option. I mean, really, I didn't know it was possible to be condescending while selling someone an oil filter, but it is.

So I am scratching my head, and I realize that the radio showing MUTED was significant. So apparently the system has it's own seperate mic and speaker inside the car, and it mutes the stereo whenever you use onstar (like to call the operator) and turns on its own speaker...

So what do I have to do to "solve" this? Well I find the fucking onstar speaker, and smash the living shit out of it. That solves the alarm noise pretty well. Now the stereo just goes silent every 15 minutes or so. With it's little "MUTED" message taunting me. So I had to take out the stereo, find the mute trigger wire, and cut it. You'd think someone on this 50,000 member mercedes forum would know which one the motherfucking mute trigger wire is, but no, they are still trying to figure out what brand of car wax is the shiniest or if they should pay the dealer to change the oil or not. So I go at it with a multimeter one night and find what looks like the mute trigger, cross my fingers, and cut it.

Voila. Now I have a mercedes onstar system that has lost its freakin mind, but at least it doesn't bother me any more.

Of course, until I let the car sit for a week and the goddamn battery (you know the one in the trunk under the carpet wedged next to the spare tire) is dead. Yes, that's right - apparently the onstar system can be triggered even with the ignition key removed. Of course it can, makes sense. So apparently the FUCKING SYSTEM is trying to FUCKING DIAL OUT 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

And still, nobody has any idea how to disconnect it. Did I mention that when the battery goes dead the stereo stops working? Yeah, because I have to call mercedes and get a 6 digit code to turn it back on. Are you fucking kididng me? Really? In 2001 was there actually a rash of THEFTS OF FACTORY MOTHERFUCKING CASSETTE DECKS that caused mercedes to go to this level of stupidity? Oh and other things like the auto up/down windows also stop working. It has to be "retrained". That's funny because I'm pretty sure my Dodge will be rolling down the road on fire and the auto-down window switch would probably still work ok.

So yeah I'm really not very amused at how the car is put together. This is actually the incident I've gotten over, it was like a month ago, you should have heard me then. What I was pissed off at today were the burnt out pixels in the instrument cluster which are equally impossible to fix because if you screw it up, the rest of the instrument cluster freaks out and displays a huge warning message. Yes, like you need a huge goddamn warning message to tell you oh my god your fucking on dash clock might not be working right. So I tried the easy fix and that didn't work. Then I tried the somewhat more complex fix and that didn't work. So what did I do? I got a piece of black plastic, took apart the cluster, and carefully slid the black plastic over the worthless displays. Voila. Fixed.

But... yeah I still kind of like it. Just that it's junk, that's all. Complete fucking garbage. The sad thing is I find myself eyeing the slightly newer versions of the same car... I probably would have bought one by now except I don't want to go through all this shit again with another one.