im having this weired problem with my 2000 s430 (w220), when i take the car for a long drive in hot weather, if i have the a/c on for about 1.5 hours or more the radio/cd starts playing static only, then if i turn off the A/C for 5 minutes and turn the radio back on it plays music normally.
its not a major problem but its just annoying on long drives (not often) that i either have to go with no A/C or no music.

any suggestion on what the possible causes could be?

 

Does your cd changer work?

 

yeah cd changer and everything works perfectly normal.
it only have problems after the a/c is on for a long time, and after that if i turn the a/c off for like 2 minutes the stereo will start working fine for a little bit.
in a 45 minute trip ill have no problem, its only in long couple hours trip.

 

This might sound sort of far fetched, but it could be your A/C is freezing up and then drawing too much current.

Try turning down the thermostat on your A/C and see if that makes a difference. All I am going by is that when an A/C freezes up it takes only about two minutes to thaw out. It will take about two hours to frost over.

If your raido is getting less than 10 volts it will start to static out, so it sounds like a lack of volts or amps somewhere.

Also...go to an auto electrical shop and get an electrical system check run. It might cost you $30 but it can save you hours of trying to troubleshoot this at home. You might have just a diode going in your altenrnator.

Sam

 

thanks for the reply sam, i didnt know electric shop can test a system for only about 30 $ that will sure save me alot of work and time, ill probebly do that first and see. your idea about it freezing makes sense, what i was thinking (i no mechanic) was that maybe ther is some wire touching the a/c thats freezing up or something but your suggestion makes more sense.
i'm gona take it to the electric shop first and go from there.

 

Be sure to let us know what you find out. Someone else is bound to have this problem someday, too.

Look in the Yellow Pages under Auto, Electrical and call them up. Most of these guys will tell you if they think they can help or not. They can also tell you if there is someone in the area that might be better at Mercedes than they are.

I had a Porsche 914 that drove me nuts from an electrical perspective until I took it to a shop that delt with German car electrical problems. They went ahead and repaired it as well since it was only going to be about $20 more and he was already in there.

Hopefully this is it.

Sam

 

ill let you know, but im probably not gonna do it for a while since its a minor thing (i don't usually drive the car for over 1.5 hour)
ill post what i find as soon as i get it tested

 

I talked this over with another Mercedes nut and he said he had a problem like this and it was his antenna. It would get hot and break down inside somehow. He never was sure what the problem was but he said it went away when he replace his antenna with another one.

You might just get a cheap manual antenna and screw it in in place of your power one and see if it makes any difference. Just make sure the plug on the end is the same as the one coming out of your antenna. Most Mercedes have a screw-on ttype of connector as opposed to a plug-in type.

Sam