Long time, no post. We had a bad winter here - by that, I mean it snowed 3 or 4 times, poured rain on the days it didn't snow, and the wind blew down thousands of trees. So I parked the SEC for a few months waiting for the roads to dry up, and spring to arrive.
So I decided to drive it to work today, and had a funny thing happen. I went to put my driver's side window down, and it wouldn't go. I tried all the window switches in the console, and none of the windows moved. I happened to have someone in the back seat, and they clicked the rear window down, and it went down! Then, I tried my console switches and they all worked.
I'm concerned that I have some sort of short circuit happening here - anyone else come across this one before?
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Rich
'67 250SL
'87 560SEC Euro
http://qube.myvnc.com/mercedes/560SEC/page4.html
Hey Rich, sounds like you've been getting the same winter we have down here in Seattle. No fun :-(
The only thing that makes sense to me is that perhaps the fuse was slightly corroded, and when your passenger in the rear seat used the switch it somehow drew enough current that it arced through the corrosion, making a good contact. I'm not sure if that's what really happened or not, but it *COULD* be a possibility. Check all your fuses to make sure none are corroded. Clean all the terminals with a soft wire brush and alcohol, and put a light coating of dielectric grease on to prevent further corrosion.
Good luck!
It sure has been a while. I am not sure what exactly it is, but like Andrew said, I would suspect the fuse. If you haven't upgraded your fuse to copper ones yet, maybe start with that and see how it goes.
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Mike
1990 Euro 560SEL
German Spec., Japanese Import
904 Midnight Blue, 262 Blue Leather,
68000 KM
Thanks guys. I checked the fuses, and the look fine. Also, there isn't a single fuse for all the window lifts, so I think I have to look elsewhere. On the way home, they stopped working again, but by the time I got home (15 mins) they were working again. I was incorrect in assuming the back switches worked while the console ones didn't... when it wasn't working, all of the switches weren't working. It's more likely that the feed circuit for the system is having an issue.
The previous owner of the car had butchered the wiring putting in a stereo. It could be that there's something amiss under the console panel.
Well I finally had some more time to do some digging into this problem. I decided to do a full replacement of all my fuses (well, almost all of them). I pulled them all, used my dremel to clean up the contacts, sprayed some contact cleaner on them, and put new blue and red fuses in. Only had 5 new white ones, so I used my dremel to clean up the ends of some of the old ones, and re-installed them.
The windows work consistently - with the doors open. So I depressed each of the three door switches, and the middle one causes some sort of break in the circuit. i.e. when the door closes, the switch interrupts the window lift circuit (and the motorized seat controls). This happens with both doors - the switch behaviour is identical.
Can anyone offer some thoughts here? What does the middle switch do? I know the top switch activates/deactivates the overhead dome light. The bottom switch controls the seat belt extenders. But when I depress the middle switch, no other state change seems to occur other than the deactivation of my power window/seat operation.
All I can think of is that there is some short or cross-connection somewhere, but I have no idea where to start looking.
As a follow-up, I brought my SEC into the shop today to get my electrical issue above fixed. It turns out that it was a faulty diode - a half hour's work and $60 later, I have fully functioning windows (and motorized seats).
Linear Mode
