keep shoveling
DNF
One of the things that falls into the category of “obviously your professional F1 garage-level fleet maintenance should have caught that and corrected it, thus any failure is your fault and you will be punished but in a cleverly engineered way” is the automatic door locks.
In these vans there are two circuits for door locks. Front and back. Front is either just the driver door (my van) or the driver and passenger door. Rear is the remaining doors. Although on mine, the sliding side door isn’t automatic for some reason. But that’s a problem for another time.
If all your door sensors are working properly and your doors are closed, you can hit the lock button and the doors lock. If, however you are a stupid chucklefuck deserving of German engineering wrath and you have somehow let one of your door circuits stay open, well…. That’s a problem. Then, when you try to lock the doors they all try to lock, then unlock themselves then try to lock again just in case your dumb ass somehow managed to close them in that nanosecond and then they unlock again. On an American car, this might be solved by just, you know locking. You can certainly close the sprinter doors when they’re locked so they’re not trying to protect you from locking yourself out. On the sprinter, however, the solution is to either lock the door and then close it (something that does not work on the passenger door for reasons and only works sometimes on the drivers door for other reasons, both of which I’m dead sure are user error but works fine on the back door), or you can lock the door and hold the key in the lock position. The doors on that circuit will then lock. Then unlock because remember your door circuits are messed up somehow? Then try to lock again. Then unlock. But if you just hold the key in the lock position throughout, it will stay locked. You have to do it drivers side, passengers side, then lock the rear door as usual. No, I don’t know why the same rule doesn’t apply to the rear door.
Pain in the ass to read, right? It’s worse to do every time. Which is why today’s project was replacing some hardware to get this little blinking light to go away. I assure you, it is blinking. That lets you know which door is open. The left arrow pointing forward is for the “front” or drivers circuit. And when you try to lock it from inside, the passenger’s side actually locks so you know it’s the rear door.
Step one, replace the bottom sensor because it was missing. Mmm shiny.
Then, in an abundance of caution, these guys are getting replaced. Mostly because they used to have two prong versions but at some point were superseded by three contact versions.
Of course, the wiring loom wasn’t superseded…
Everything all buttoned up!
Does it work now? No. And I am feeling personally attacked by that question. I’ll have to dig into the electrics to see if something else is wrong. Like a blown fuse.
Also on the menu? Replacing this very effective wrench system for opening the left rear door. Does it work? Yes. Technically. But I can feel the weight of MB engineering judgment looming from across the pond.
Cute as a button.
And interesting. Because, hi mb engineers who I love and respect, of fucking course you made it so there is a proper way to close this door. You see, you don’t just shut it. You shut it and flip that forward.
Just shutting it does this.
Then flip it forward?
And this pops up, locking the door in place. After which you are permitted to shut the other side.
The other rear door problem is that it’s not shutting entirely. It closes and latches but not as much as it’s supposed to. Which I thought was going to be solved by adjusting the strike pin, but apparently not. So that and the electrical issues on the rear door will be a problem for another day. There’s only so much working on the van after work in freezing weather I have in me. Plus, you know, don’t want to miss taco Tuesday.
In these vans there are two circuits for door locks. Front and back. Front is either just the driver door (my van) or the driver and passenger door. Rear is the remaining doors. Although on mine, the sliding side door isn’t automatic for some reason. But that’s a problem for another time.
If all your door sensors are working properly and your doors are closed, you can hit the lock button and the doors lock. If, however you are a stupid chucklefuck deserving of German engineering wrath and you have somehow let one of your door circuits stay open, well…. That’s a problem. Then, when you try to lock the doors they all try to lock, then unlock themselves then try to lock again just in case your dumb ass somehow managed to close them in that nanosecond and then they unlock again. On an American car, this might be solved by just, you know locking. You can certainly close the sprinter doors when they’re locked so they’re not trying to protect you from locking yourself out. On the sprinter, however, the solution is to either lock the door and then close it (something that does not work on the passenger door for reasons and only works sometimes on the drivers door for other reasons, both of which I’m dead sure are user error but works fine on the back door), or you can lock the door and hold the key in the lock position. The doors on that circuit will then lock. Then unlock because remember your door circuits are messed up somehow? Then try to lock again. Then unlock. But if you just hold the key in the lock position throughout, it will stay locked. You have to do it drivers side, passengers side, then lock the rear door as usual. No, I don’t know why the same rule doesn’t apply to the rear door.
Pain in the ass to read, right? It’s worse to do every time. Which is why today’s project was replacing some hardware to get this little blinking light to go away. I assure you, it is blinking. That lets you know which door is open. The left arrow pointing forward is for the “front” or drivers circuit. And when you try to lock it from inside, the passenger’s side actually locks so you know it’s the rear door.
Step one, replace the bottom sensor because it was missing. Mmm shiny.
Then, in an abundance of caution, these guys are getting replaced. Mostly because they used to have two prong versions but at some point were superseded by three contact versions.
Of course, the wiring loom wasn’t superseded…
Everything all buttoned up!
Does it work now? No. And I am feeling personally attacked by that question. I’ll have to dig into the electrics to see if something else is wrong. Like a blown fuse.
Also on the menu? Replacing this very effective wrench system for opening the left rear door. Does it work? Yes. Technically. But I can feel the weight of MB engineering judgment looming from across the pond.
Cute as a button.
And interesting. Because, hi mb engineers who I love and respect, of fucking course you made it so there is a proper way to close this door. You see, you don’t just shut it. You shut it and flip that forward.
Just shutting it does this.
Then flip it forward?
And this pops up, locking the door in place. After which you are permitted to shut the other side.
The other rear door problem is that it’s not shutting entirely. It closes and latches but not as much as it’s supposed to. Which I thought was going to be solved by adjusting the strike pin, but apparently not. So that and the electrical issues on the rear door will be a problem for another day. There’s only so much working on the van after work in freezing weather I have in me. Plus, you know, don’t want to miss taco Tuesday.
