AMG GT R - Der Tag

Soldato
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Bryn Celyn Wales
So a little bit of an update for anyone interested.

I took the car for its annual service to Macclesfield Mercedes on the 12th which ended up taking until late morning of the 13th to complete. It seems the plug replacement was a bigger job than planned so they asked for some more time to "make sure it's 100% right as a car like this we want to be right!", which I of course concurred with. Smidge annoyingly I was half way to them when they called (30 minutes in, but if they needed time I was happy to turn around and give them more).

I decided to let them wash the car after initially telling them not to and was promised "I have told them to be extra careful" and to be fair for a garage wash it was.....average. No marks I could see and better than when I dropped it off filthy so all in all fair enough I suppose. I spend and hour drying my car, all doors, boot and bonnet open, you all know the drill, but unreasonable to expect that level of attention.

One annoying thing that I only picked up to his PM was they had charged me £30 for the loan car! I have never paid for a loan car in my history of cars but now, £30 it is. I was about to make the call to the dealer but looking at my bill the sum off the parts is significantly less than I paid, so I will leave it. The bill is over 3 pages of utter confusion and all I can conclude is it's around £150 less than I was told it was going to be, so I'll move on.

So I leave the dealership (to thumbs up and nice comments from a few people....ah the joy of a special car) to head home when....5 minutes down the road....

:mad:

Soooo back I head and they take out a smidge of oil. My conclusion is they put the right amount in, but didn't let all the old stuff finish emptying and it was a smidge over. The sensors on this car have a mind of their own too....more and that in a minute. The AMG specialist came out and explained what he had done, the extra checks etc, so happy to put this down to one of those things. Next time, 1/2 litre less and a 1 litre bottle for me to top it would be ideal.

So sensors....

On 3 different occasions now, twice pulling off a drive way and today, under hard acceleration coming onto a duel carriageway around a long sweeping bend I have had the electronics crap themselves! Previous 2 times was traction control related telling me I have none, fixed by turning it off and on again and nothing logged. Today was a bit more worrying, engine management light, engine cutting, then going to fixed yellow.....fixed by turning it off and on again with no messages left in the service list.

It is proving a touch temperamental, not least when you add the fact it had £4K of warranty bits swapped on a fundamentally new car. Again those were sensor and engine mounts, from reading a really common issue.

The weather in this country, not least heavy rain makes the tyres a real compromise. I have been out today, a nice warm day and when the tyres have heat they are magnificently grippy. Move to heavy rain and they give you death feelings. So exploring options to move to a PS4S. The current tyres, after 7K miles have 3-4mm on them so probably past their best, not least when it comes to rain but they are a shallower tread anyhow.

I love the car, it is proper special, but I hope it stops farting its brain when I push it.
Interesting read this and just shows, that tbh, with these top end cars, they do have electrical gremlins... hopefully all under warranty if they do need work. However, it is one of the reasons I won't by the Jeep SRT after mine, as mine is the last of the non-tech ones i.e. old fashioned suspension, won't turn off half the cylinders etc... all that stuff is just a nigthmare waiting to happen like the suspension on RR's.

However in your case, it's not really adaily driver car as such is it (maybe I'm wrong), but at the end your at there, it's going to fail in areas and have gremlins (rightly or wrongly), but yeah I feel your pain that it's like come on... it's barely got mileage on it, it shouldn't be having these issues. However, it's still one awesome car fella... and sometimes (especially coming from an RX8), you have to go through that pain to enjoy the thrills :) Keep updating the thread though with findings as I love reading from actual owners rather than people whio "heard" or "read" something somwhere.
 
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So a little bit of an update for anyone interested.

I took the car for its annual service to Macclesfield Mercedes on the 12th which ended up taking until late morning of the 13th to complete. It seems the plug replacement was a bigger job than planned so they asked for some more time to "make sure it's 100% right as a car like this we want to be right!", which I of course concurred with. Smidge annoyingly I was half way to them when they called (30 minutes in, but if they needed time I was happy to turn around and give them more).

I decided to let them wash the car after initially telling them not to and was promised "I have told them to be extra careful" and to be fair for a garage wash it was.....average. No marks I could see and better than when I dropped it off filthy so all in all fair enough I suppose. I spend and hour drying my car, all doors, boot and bonnet open, you all know the drill, but unreasonable to expect that level of attention.

One annoying thing that I only picked up to his PM was they had charged me £30 for the loan car! I have never paid for a loan car in my history of cars but now, £30 it is. I was about to make the call to the dealer but looking at my bill the sum off the parts is significantly less than I paid, so I will leave it. The bill is over 3 pages of utter confusion and all I can conclude is it's around £150 less than I was told it was going to be, so I'll move on.

So I leave the dealership (to thumbs up and nice comments from a few people....ah the joy of a special car) to head home when....5 minutes down the road....
iFlzi6G.jpg
:mad:

Soooo back I head and they take out a smidge of oil. My conclusion is they put the right amount in, but didn't let all the old stuff finish emptying and it was a smidge over. The sensors on this car have a mind of their own too....more and that in a minute. The AMG specialist came out and explained what he had done, the extra checks etc, so happy to put this down to one of those things. Next time, 1/2 litre less and a 1 litre bottle for me to top it would be ideal.

So sensors....

On 3 different occasions now, twice pulling off a drive way and today, under hard acceleration coming onto a duel carriageway around a long sweeping bend I have had the electronics crap themselves! Previous 2 times was traction control related telling me I have none, fixed by turning it off and on again and nothing logged. Today was a bit more worrying, engine management light, engine cutting, then going to fixed yellow.....fixed by turning it off and on again with no messages left in the service list.

It is proving a touch temperamental, not least when you add the fact it had £4K of warranty bits swapped on a fundamentally new car. Again those were sensor and engine mounts, from reading a really common issue.

The weather in this country, not least heavy rain makes the tyres a real compromise. I have been out today, a nice warm day and when the tyres have heat they are magnificently grippy. Move to heavy rain and they give you death feelings. So exploring options to move to a PS4S. The current tyres, after 7K miles have 3-4mm on them so probably past their best, not least when it comes to rain but they are a shallower tread anyhow.

I love the car, it is proper special, but I hope it stops farting its brain when I push it.


i would be in there about this, how many times have we heard about over filling an engine with oil.
get it all in writing incase any engine problems come around.
 
Man of Honour
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I took it back, they removed the excess, it is now spot on. To be fair when I did an oil check (it is digital annoyingly) it said OK even though I got the message you see. It was a small amount of excess....but I wanted it right. I recall getting BMW to take oil out of my M3's back in the early 2000's as they had a habit of overfilling by over 1/2 litre!
 
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I took it back, they removed the excess, it is now spot on. To be fair when I did an oil check (it is digital annoyingly) it said OK even though I got the message you see. It was a small amount of excess....but I wanted it right. I recall getting BMW to take oil out of my M3's back in the early 2000's as they had a habit of overfilling by over 1/2 litre!

but still you have some leverage, its not your usual budget motor its a massive amount of money those mistakes should not be made.
 
Soldato
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In some senses though, this is where the manufacturers make life difficult for their service staff.

With no physical dip measure, only a digital one (which was seemingly saying 'OK'), they're a bit stuck if such a warning message only pops up after driving away for 5 minutes. It puts the dealership in a bit of an awkward spot because it sounds like unless they took it out for a spin, there was no way for them to actually know it was overfilled and you can bet they'd typically get more abuse from most customers if they were seen to be taking GT-Rs out for a spin to 'make sure the oil isn't overfilled' :p
 
Man of Honour
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but still you have some leverage, its not your usual budget motor its a massive amount of money those mistakes should not be made.
It is a judgement call. Do I want immediate satisfaction for little real benefit to me, or do I want to build trust with a dealer who gut feels tell me are trying their best. It is not black and white with these things and these types of cars, trust me.
 
Man of Honour
OP
Joined
21 Feb 2006
Posts
29,300
In some senses though, this is where the manufacturers make life difficult for their service staff.

With no physical dip measure, only a digital one (which was seemingly saying 'OK'), they're a bit stuck if such a warning message only pops up after driving away for 5 minutes. It puts the dealership in a bit of an awkward spot because it sounds like unless they took it out for a spin, there was no way for them to actually know it was overfilled and you can bet they'd typically get more abuse from most customers if they were seen to be taking GT-Rs out for a spin to 'make sure the oil isn't overfilled' :p
That was my call too, we are not talking 1/2 litre or more, we are at egg cup levels here.
 
Soldato
Joined
11 Dec 2005
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11,364
Location
Cheshire
I took it back, they removed the excess, it is now spot on. To be fair when I did an oil check (it is digital annoyingly) it said OK even though I got the message you see. It was a small amount of excess....but I wanted it right. I recall getting BMW to take oil out of my M3's back in the early 2000's as they had a habit of overfilling by over 1/2 litre!

Interesting that they are digital on the GTR, the C63 has a normal dip stick, much preffered IMO.
 
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