Help Needed with 2004 Sprinter

Tango17963

New member
Hello All! I've been reading the wealth of knowledge on this forum for months and finally am making my first post. In the spring, I picked up my first Sprinter with the goal of making it it a summer project for me and my 75 year old dad to convert it into an adventure van for future exploring. We bought the van from an HVAC contractor for $400, the price the scrap yard was going to give him and I'm at the point of wondering if I should have just left it go there. The van has good bones and surprisingly has very little rust. We new the motor had an issue with a piston and we pulled the motor and replaced a piston and ring. The cylinder obviously had a problem and there was a hole burned through the piston. The injector was replaced, but apparently not before the damage was done. The next issue was to address noise coming from the rear. We expected replacing the pinion bearing, but upon digging in, we discovered that the rear was running with almost no gear oil which broke two teeth off the ring gear and wiped out the rest of the bearings. That has now all been squared away and we have the van able to move again, however we are having some electrical issues that I need some direction with.

The dash is lit up like a Christmas tree. The following lights are on, Brake Pads Worn, ABS Malfunction, ESP Malfunction (yellow), Engine Control Unit Malfunction, and ASR Malfunction. The resulting symptom is that the transmission will not always shift out of first gear. The other odd symptom is that the radio seems to turn on and off with moving the gear shifter and/or hitting the brakes or accelerator. The dash is torn apart from the previous owner because it was locked in park at some point and they didn't know to push a pen into the unlock hole. So I'm not sure if they did damage in there.

Thoughts or advice?
 

Dougflas

DAD OWNER
First thing is remove the grounds at the battery and renew them. Ground the engine. Check the Fuse panel 1 under the steering column. Make a list of all codes that are set. The brake pads light can be gone around by removing all four sensor plugs at the calipers.
 

Patrick of M

2005 T1N 2500 (NA spec)
Also I know from experience that a van that has been sitting around for awhile with a dead battery etc will "light up like a Christmas tree when you start it". Disconnecting the battery and reconnecting a known good battery, and taking it fro a drive will clear a bunch of thos lights(all in my case). Low system voltage also lights up the dash the vans do not like low voltage. The ESP function clears if you drive it a bit and nothing is wrong. However driving a van you don't know with all the dash lights lit up is not safe.... and specially if the handbrake is not working.
 

sikwan

06 Tin Can
I would disconnect the radio and concentrate on the important things one at a time.

Do you have a generic code reader or access to a DAD unit? I think you can get by with a generic one first and then get some clues with a more fancy one like a DAD unit.

Some of the lights that you mentioned are inter-related, so if you can eliminate one, another one will disappear... essentially work on the easy ones first, like the brake sensors and ABS.
 

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