There is a black box just underneath the windshield washer fluid resevoir. There is a plug (with many wires) going into it. This plug connection is causing my car to die. If I wiggle it just right, the car will run fine for a month or so. It has plenty of electrical grease on it and the fitting is tight, so I'm not sure why the connection doesn't stay solid.

What is this black box and how do i solve this problem?


1985 240DL 180K

Like was mentioned, it is the ignition control unit. The wires going into this are vitally important to the engine running at all. The wires tend to break, and the connector goes bad too. You could try hacking the connector off a car at a junkyard and rewiring your car's harness right there to see if that works. I plan to do that with my '83 245dl as the wires have gone bad, and the plug probably has too. It shuts off once every couple of weeks because of it. Good luck with the fix.
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Isaac Babcock - '83 245DL 'Borkie' and '83 244 turbo project

The black box is the ignition control unit, ICU, the computer that manages the distributor spark advance system.

The connector has a well-posted history of problems. It seems that the female part gets a little too opened up to grip the pins properly. There is a fix, I think you can find it in the 700/900 FAQ section. There is a lot of overlap with the 200 series with those others series. Have a look.

Good Luck,

Bob

:>)

I don't have any idea what connector this is, but the plug doesn't have to be bad for a connection to fail. My window switch, for example, stopped working but the connector itself was fine. It was the wire running into the connector that was at fault. Re-connecting the wire took care of the problem. Just a little experience I thought I should pass on.

Tim
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Tim Smith '85 745GLE M46 w/84k