The World Through My Eyes

I don’t like German cars (bar Audi). I don’t like German computers either, and with good reason too.
Having been on holiday for 2 weeks, on our return the C180 wouldn’t start.

The reason was that the battery was flat. So flat in fact, that even the remote central locking wouldn’t work, so we had to open the doors with the stick-key they provide. What’s more is that Mercedes being the bright sparks they are, hadn’t put the battery in the bonnet. They’d put it in the boot. So, what’s the problem with that? Well, the boot switch uses up battery power which our car didn’t have any of. A bit of a problem, don’t you think?

The only other option was to use the key stick to open it but with it being freezing outside after 5 minutes of trying I gave up.

So I thought to myself, what would one of Mercedes Benz’s engineers have done in this position? Frankfurter was the first that came to mind but after giving it a little more thought I realised that back in 1999 cars came with manuals (man·u·al - a small book, esp. one giving information or instructions).

So off I went on my mission to find out how I could get to the battery or open the boot. Absolutely nothing. Well, there were bits about how this engine was ‘maintenance free’ and all that junk but really, this manual was a lot like my English coursework, 1 part content to every 4 parts of pure waffling. (There were no red scribble marks and comments on it though)…

What then could I do?

Screw the whole Mercedes engineer crap, what would I, a guy who relies more on YouTube and Yahoo Answers than his maths teachers for help with maths homework, do in this position? Like my answer to most things people ask me, I googled it!

After a few failed searches, a search for “c180 battery boot jumpstart” I came across a very useful post on a Mercedes Benz User Forum. Some very friendly dude had said: “Patient use of a thin oil and gently working the lock with the key will eventaually free it up.”

I don’t do patience, so I just picked up a can of WD-40 and sprayed away into the key hole and as if by magic, the boot opened. I was in awe. No, I really was…

That was the easy bit, yeah? Now that I could actually get to the cleverly-placed battery, it should all be a doddle, surely. All I needed to do now was to jump start the beast. Except for one little thing, I’d never done a jump start before and I didn’t know where the cables go in and what to do first and how to make the sure the battery didn’t explode and whatnot. Cue, YouTube.

In barely a minute I’d found a pretty high budget tutorial video, heavily endorsed by the Swedish car maker, Saab. I made some quick notes, and just to check that this wasn’t a load of rubbish (a lot of the internet is these days), I just cross checked off another website I found through a Google search, which was telling me to take the same steps.

So with the assurance that as long as I followed the instructions and didn’t mess up; there would be no major explosions of acid, I took a step into the chilly outside air, took a deep breath in, and with my handy notes in hand, proceeded to get the jump leads out of the other car.

Now, crunch time. The question that’s been plaguing your minds, I’m sure…just how well did it go?

I’d love to tell you, but the sad truth is that just then, right after I’d done all the hard work, the AA patrol van turned up.

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