Any C-Class owners had this sort of breakdown?

[YorksLS18]

This is a new one on me - any ideas about what's wrong much appreciated.

Just set off in my 2011 Mercedes C-Class 250d and something is very wrong.

Engine light is on. It's idling fine. When I rev or accelerate it picks up and drops power sporadically, causing almost a kangaroo effect.

It won't go above 10mph as a result. I can't tell if it's a misfire (it idles ok) indicating an electrical or fuelling problem, but wondered if a blocked DPF would also cause this.

Any ideas before I call a tow truck and get someone to check the fault code...? Thanks

[8bit]

Really need to read the codes to be certain. Does it happen all the time or just randomly on certain starts? Sounds a bit like something we noticed intermittently on our old ML320 - now and then you'd accelerate and the car would lurch quite violently, as if you were stomping on the throttle pedal and lifting off rapidly and repeatedly. Never got to the bottom of that one but there was a suggestion that it was related to the turbo seals.

[YorksLS18]

8bit said:

Really need to read the codes to be certain. Does it happen all the time or just randomly on certain starts? Sounds a bit like something we noticed intermittently on our old ML320 - now and then you'd accelerate and the car would lurch quite violently, as if you were stomping on the throttle pedal and lifting off rapidly and repeatedly. Never got to the bottom of that one but there was a suggestion that it was related to the turbo seals.

That must've been a frustrating issue to live with.
Yeah, it's doing it every time I start it up, to the point where the car is undriveable. The lurch forward sounds familiar, plus it's interspersed with a total drop in power, like a huge misfire.

So normal acceleration feels like someone is repeatedly stamping on the accelerator then lifting off sharply, but unable to pick up any speed. It's a strange one. We'll see what the code reader says!

Edited by YorksLS18 on Thursday 7th September 19:55

[8bit]

YorksLS18 said:

That must've been a frustrating issue to live with.
Yeah, it's doing it every time I start it up, to the point where the car is undriveable. The lurch forward sounds familiar, plus it's interspersed with a total drop in power, like a huge misfire.

So normal acceleration feels like someone is repeatedly stamping on the accelerator then lifting off sharply, but unable to pick up any speed. It's a strange one. We'll see what the code reader says!

Edited by YorksLS18 on Thursday 7th September 19:55

It was but it wasn't frequent enough to motivate me to do anything about it really Generally when it did that, if I lifted off the throttle for a second then reapplied it, it was fine. Yours sounds like a more pathological version of what we had.

I don't recall seeing any fault codes for that on our car but it was some time ago now. I'd hope you'd see some on yours given how repeatable the issue is.

[Old Merc]

Best to find a Mercedes Indy who has the proper Mercedes diag kit.
My bet is the air flow sensor.

[Dog Star]

Got a fuel smell? Merc used to use plastic fuel pipes that went brittle and leaked. That was more of a starting issue though.

[Essarell]

YorksLS18 said:

This is a new one on me - any ideas about what's wrong much appreciated.

Just set off in my 2011 Mercedes C-Class 250d and something is very wrong.

Engine light is on. It's idling fine. When I rev or accelerate it picks up and drops power sporadically, causing almost a kangaroo effect.

It won't go above 10mph as a result. I can't tell if it's a misfire (it idles ok) indicating an electrical or fuelling problem, but wondered if a blocked DPF would also cause this.

Any ideas before I call a tow truck and get someone to check the fault code...? Thanks

Our eclass had an intermittent fault where if you pulled out of a side road / accelerated to join traffic it would do as you describe and bring up a warning. turned out to be the throttle position sensor.