My car had/has a resonance at about 2000 rpm. Meaning when you apply throttle, at 2000 rpm the sound deepens and gets throaty. This is very annoying when you drive at a constant 85 km/h on country roads (as I do), as this is exactly 2000 rpm!
My dealer (Meray Motors in Oakville, ON) has very kindly replaced most of the exhaust system free of charge (see another post), and it is now maybe 30% better. But it's still there!
Now here's the crunch. My mechanic, a very senior and talented guy, drove three other ML500's: same! He eventually called his counterparts Germany and they told him that this is normal: to meet emission regulations in the US, they had to tune the system a bit, and this causes this noise resonance due to the V8's backpressure.
Do you agree? Are the others here with a V8 who do (or do not) hear resonance (annoying or otherwise) around 1900-2100 rpm?
After your post, I checked to make sure I had a V8 under the hood, it's there, but no resonance!
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I have '02 ML500, the truck doe not have the resonance around 2000 rpm or at 2000 rpm. I don't think this normal, but you have '03 model, maybe MB changed something in the exhaust system. Can you try some other ML500 in the lot to hear if the resonance exists? Regardless, good luck.
yeah that sounds horrible for a mercedes to be making sounds like an old muscle car, good if you like that sound but to me it sounds like the engine is about to cut off at any moment
Truth is they don't know, period. There are plenty of gremlins creeping up in my ML these days
Of course, most are subtle things that you can explain to an SA all day long with no success so I ignore them. For instance, a few months ago, I started to get a whine when the engine in under load (ever so slight, the load) that only disappears when road noise covers it (around 85 mph). I have just asked my dealer to check vital stuff (harmonic balancer is one) when I bring the ML in, mentioned the whine but did not ask them to fix, since they won't hear it. I did tell them that I'd just as well wait for the darn thing, whatever it is, to break and then they'd save themselves some troubleshooting. In the meantime, the Bose covers the whine most of the time.
Don't know what to tell you except that it seems to me that the emissions thing is BS. Remember that your M113 E50 is used not just in the ML and the other classes must pass emissions just the same. Granted, the exaust is not the same design, but then again, how different is it really...
So: by the lack of reactions I infer that either this is not happening to others, or no-one else minds. Fine either way - would love to hear which one of the above it is, though! Anyone, doe you have the same, a clerly noticeable deepening of the engine sound around 2000 rpm, and then back to normal above that?
Sorry to hear you are experiencing this annoyance Michael...
I have driven V8's before and under throttle it is normal that V8's growle and vibrate more than V6' (this is obvious).
The only thing I can guess is check to see if maybe it is part of your exhaust system (ie: catalytic converters ). I've read only a few BW members post about this problem. Long shot but may be worth taking a look.
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