[W124] Wiring harness

[Stadter, Jim]

Declan wrote:
  

>  The problems with the early failure of the wiring harness 

> are well documented.

>   

>   What is not often realised is that the wiring which 

> connects the throttle body to the main harness can also fail 

> causing all sorts of running problems. Perhaps you might have 

> this looked at.

>   

>  I do beleive, however, that this short section of wiring can 

> be replaced by someone with some skill with a soldering iron 

> - you do not want to have to replace the complete throttle body !

>   


My experience with this issue has been on my E500, so I'll plead
ignorance
as to whether the 6 cylinder CE has a similar arrangement.  On the E500,
the 
throttle body (a.k.a. Electronic Throttle Actuator (ETA)) has internal
wiring that
also degrades due to the typical biodegradable issues with this era of
MB.
There's a good website run by Jim Forgione that talks about a lot of the
issues
with the early '90s cars, and I remember seeing a picture on the
site that shows the internals of an ETA and what the wiring looks like
on a bad one.
Based on that, I wonder whether replacing just the leads to the throttle
body would
be sufficient.  A new ETA ran me $1200 from Caliber Motors a couple of
years ago.

When I replaced the upper and lower harness on my car, I wrapped both in
Firebraid
with the hope of providing additional heat insulation to slow down the
degradation.
http://www.500ecstasy.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3969&highlight=firebra
id

Jim
--
Jim Stadter
'89 190DE 2.6  241Kmi
'94 E500
Austin, TX