Enable Tempomat without BB9

electronick

New member
Hello,

I would like to get your advice. My Campervan is based on a Sprinter 416cdi.

I just placed the tempomat switch and when I called the mercedes dealer in other to do the activation, he looked in the system based on my VIN number and say that it's maybe not possible.

The mercedes system says that, to allow a tempomat the vehicle must have options BB3 and BB9 (ABS and ESP). My vehicle has the ABS but apparently not the ESP.

Do you have any experience with that? Do you think it will work or do I have to cancel my appointment because it will not work?

Thanks in advance for your advises.

Samuel
 

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owner

Oz '03 316CDI LWB ex-Ambo Patient Transport
I know for a fact that on my clone Star diag system (the same system your dealer will use) I doesn't allow tempomat if you also have high-idle. So I would tend to believe that there would be other weird limitations that would prevent the dealer from doing it. I can get around that by using the developer mode of my clone Star diag, which the dealer cannot do. I haven't done it on a 416, but do you have a ESP lamp come on on your dashboard at key-on? Seems odd that you would have ABS but not ESP, since they are both done by the ABS pump electronics. PM me your VIN or post it here and I can do a lookup for you for a second opinion.
 

electronick

New member
Thanks for the response.

I don't have the vehicle at home today so I cannot check for the ESP lamp.

I just sent you the vin as private message.
 

owner

Oz '03 316CDI LWB ex-Ambo Patient Transport
Ok he has BB0 from the VIN lookup. So I'd say hes good to go. Also if the dealer can't do, you would just need to find someone with clone star diag (basically anyone with star diag who isn't a dealer) and they can do it using developer mode.
 

220629

Well-known member
... Seems odd that you would have ABS but not ESP, since they are both done by the ABS pump electronics. ...
The two are not necessarily included together.

NAS aka NAFTA Sprinter model Information/Fact

MY 2001 - 2003 Sprinters all had ABS. ESP was an option. Many of those NAS Sprinters didn't come with ESP. The (still optional in other countries) ESP was included in all NAS aka NAFTA Sprinters as standard equipment MY 2004 and up.

:2cents: vic
 

electronick

New member
I'm happy to read that! It seems to be in a good direction.

With the stardiag clone tools, it not necessarily to contact Mercedes with a special code in order to get the tempomat activated?

I'all let you know. My appointment is on the 18th of May. I eventually can cancel if I find somebody with the clone tool before. :)

I'm excited about the tempomat as my father bought this motorhome in 2000 and 17 years later, it will finally get this very confortable option
 

talkinghorse43

Well-known member
I'm excited about the tempomat as my father bought this motorhome in 2000 and 17 years later, it will finally get this very confortable option
I hope it goes w/o problems. I have never driven a vehicle with a better speed control than the Tempomat. For me, the control logic and man/machine interface are both perfect. And, although it probably has been implemented in different ways, the control logic and man/machine interface have been unchanged over many years. My son's 1987 MB 190's Tempomat seems the same.
 

owner

Oz '03 316CDI LWB ex-Ambo Patient Transport
I find the cruise to be very aggressive in the sprinter when going up hills. I'd prefer if it had some kind of limit to the requested load because its annoying having it basically floor the throttle 100% (and kick down the trans) when all you want to do is cruise up the hill and allow speed to drop naturally.

And yes, a clone star diag doesn't need to be online with MB HQ to be able to enable tempomat. An independent MB mechanic would most probably have clone star diag.
 

talkinghorse43

Well-known member
I find the cruise to be very aggressive in the sprinter when going up hills. I'd prefer if it had some kind of limit to the requested load because its annoying having it basically floor the throttle 100% (and kick down the trans) when all you want to do is cruise up the hill and allow speed to drop naturally.
Strange, I find mine to be not very aggressive at all. It will tolerate a ~5+/- mph offset between the setpoint and the actual speed w/o a downshift/upshift. I happily tolerate the offset, but my wife doesn't, so, when she drives it, she continually bumps the speed up and down - drives me nuts.
Watching LOD on the Scanguage, mine downshifts only after it reaches 99% and after it has unlocked the torque converter clutch looking for that bit of extra power that comes with increased engine rpm. (If that bit of extra power is sufficient to reverse the slide in speed, it won't downshift and will re-lock again.)
Now on my Golf, the reverse is true. It's so aggressive, I have to throw it into manual mode whenever I approach even a moderate hill as it will continually down, and then upshift on the way up the hill.
 

owner

Oz '03 316CDI LWB ex-Ambo Patient Transport
Mine does have the tolerance of about +/-5kph, but it doesn't seem to unlock the TC like yours. Mine will happily go to 100% load on the OBD. It will sit there at 100% for as long as the speed stops dropping. It will keep the boot fully in until the speed recovers to set point, which isnt what you want up hill. If speed does keep dropping below the 5kph mark, it will immediately downshift to 4th and will try to get back up to speed that way, 100% again.

Its really annoying when all you want it to do is allow the speed to drop a bit more and hold. I basically have to drop to manual control when hills are around, even mild undulations/hills. I just hate the way it so aggressively tries to keep to the set speed up hills.

Your one sounds much better than mine. I know there is an incline sensor in the trans, I might check to make sure that is enabled. I know I disabled it in our ml270 because it was annoying me in a different way lol - I hate the way the ml holds lower gears when going downhill, its a feature of the 4wd system program in the TCU.

So maybe the cruise control in the sprinter uses that inclinometer to help when going up hills? Could explain the difference. Your seems a much better algorithm than mine.
 

talkinghorse43

Well-known member
The difference may be in the TCM. Sailquik and I have gone round and round about it several times (I think the NAG1's great, he thinks it sucks) and his experience sounds like yours. Probably the TCM has its oar in there somewhere and I do know that mine was replaced shortly after I bough the van because it kept going into LHM for no apparent reason. The dealer tech replaced it because he said there were problems with some early TCMs. It's been trouble free since. Mine will also downshift to maintain speed control when coasting downhill, but I'm OK with that. On the downhill it will try to maintain control to a point, but will drop out of cruise if the hill is too steep and engine braking is not sufficient (speed continues to increase despite its best efforts). So, you have to be prepared for that.

PS - Curious that yours "needs" to get back to setpoint - mine is happy to sit below setpoint by up to that ~ 5 MPH. If the offset is increased, though, it will act to get back into that "comfortable" offset.
 

Midwestdrifter

Engineer In Residence
There has been some variation in how people report the NAG1 behaves in T1N sprinters. I believe it mostly has to due with what type of driving regime the TCM thinks your are in. The TCM re-calibrates its drive parameters ever 10 minutes. When it does this, it determines how heavy the vehicle is, your current drive style/type, etc.

My sprinter is always heavily loaded, so it will downshift earlier, and hold gears longer. I can force an upshift by tapping the shift selector to the right (+). When in cruise the TCM will downshift into 4th once I hit about 80% load. The cruise will continue to add throttle all the way until 100%. However, the cruise (unlike the throttle pedal) does not have a physical kick down switch (the pedal does). This means downshifts are exclusively at the mercy of the TCM/ECU.

The cruise probably uses a sliding rate scale for adding/removing throttle. To prevent rapid hysteresis, there is also a delay in the algorithm. unfortunately, this means there is no anticipation of load need, and a decent change in speed required. I would guess the algorithm uses absolute change in speed from setpoint, as opposed to a rate of change.
 

owner

Oz '03 316CDI LWB ex-Ambo Patient Transport
Don't get me wrong I'm very happy with the sprinter TCU shift patterns, its just the uphill cruise control I hate. I am usually running pretty heavy in these hilly-cruise situations.

I feel that if the cruise could only request up to say 85-90% load max, it would be perfect for a heavy vehicle like this.

This is what I do when I come to a hill... disengage cruise, keep at 85-90% load (which is easy you just hold the same pedal pos once you reach that %load), let the speed drop gradually naturally, downshift to 4th if rpm drops below about 2200, re-engage cruise when I've summited and am confident it won't jam the throttle open to 100%, which in my case basically means waiting until I've reached the set speed again manually.

If I let the "cruise" do it... load goes to 100% pretty quickly, if speed drops around 5kph, it causes the TCU to downshift to 4th, and the cruise will still hammer down at 100% to try to get back up to set speed. Usually this results in a bit of an overshoot at the summit.
 

talkinghorse43

Well-known member
There has been some variation in how people report the NAG1 behaves in T1N sprinters. I believe it mostly has to due with what type of driving regime the TCM thinks your are in. The TCM re-calibrates its drive parameters ever 10 minutes. When it does this, it determines how heavy the vehicle is, your current drive style/type, etc.
For mine, it seems that the response of the combination of TCM/ECM/Tempomat is controlled by the rate of change of road speed. For example, when going up a hill with gradually increasing slope, they will respond conservatively and tolerate a gradually increasing offset between setpoint and road speed - until that offset gets to be too great and then respond with a torque converter clutch unlock first and, finally, a downshift. However, if the rate of change in road speed is great (immediate change in slope), all that will happen over a much compressed time scale.
 
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owner

Oz '03 316CDI LWB ex-Ambo Patient Transport
Thinking about this some more... Yours is NAFTA. Yours has Bosch CDI2.5 (EGR/MAF) so is a later revision of our ROW CDI2 ECU. So it is conceivable that Bosch could have tweaked the tempomat algorithms between these major revisions.
 

talkinghorse43

Well-known member
I thought "tempomat" was Daimler's own special type of cruise control system, but looking around on the web, I found it's now just the German word for cruise control. So, although it was originally coined and trademarked by Daimler, the term tempomat doesn't now imply any particular type or brand of cruise control.
 
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