Piston Slap: The Mercedes ML320 From Down Under Edition
Bob from The Land Down Under writes:
G’day Sajeev, here is a question for you. In my ML320 (2001) the accelerator pedal has broken and for the life of me I cannot remove the pedal assembly from the bulkhead of the car. I have undone the two bolts I can see but it refuses to budge. No one in the Mercedes Benz forums can/will answer my question. Plus the actual workshop manual is held by Mercedes Benz, who will not part with it unless an inordinate amount of money crosses their palms. (The last time I checked they wanted about $400 Australian for the manual on DVD and I thought movie DVD’s were expensive!)
Thanks for the help, oh master of the wrenches, mystic diviner of the oil sludge.
Bob (from Oz)
Sajeev answers:
You’d think that a little sweet talk and a case of Foster’s would loosen the dealer’s grip on the service manual, right? Why I’d go straight back there and say, “Don’t come to the raw prawn with me, mate!”
Or not. I think $30 USD and a little time on eBay gets you exactly what you need. I’ve seen several compact discs with ML-specific Mercedes shop manuals on eBay, and many USA sellers ship internationally. Out of sheer journalistic independence, I won’t link to a specific auction. But if you Google “ebay+mercedes+shop+manual+ML” I trust you’ll be mighty happy with the results.
Or perhaps one of our Best and Brightest can find you a (legal?) torrent file of said shop manuals, which aren’t super easy to decode, but the price is quite nice.
[Send your technical queries to mehta@ttac.com]
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I got a copy of the WIS (covers all Mercedes from the late '80s to 2004) on eBay for $90 a few years back. Otherwise you can go to www.startekinfo.com and get the info online. I believe they have subscriptions for as short as 24 hours so the outlay shouldn't be too much. Don't sell the Benz. Though it's not trouble free, it's very durable. We have 193,000+ miles on our 1998.
Jeeze, the subaru manual is something like $600 USD which is like a million aussie bucks. They offer a 24 hour subscription for something like $30 where you can just individually download all the chapters. I'm sure if you just posted on the benz forums asking about the service manual someone would just email it to you.
WIS says detach the cable, remove two screws and it will come right off...