Hi all, you may recall my prior thread on this subject here.
To summarise my situation I had bought a new china clone MB C3 Star setup with laptop from a UK specialist company. It was around 800 USD at the time in 2016. I only used it for a few times on my personal cars and when it was approx 1 – 1.5 years old it stopped working putting up some errors on the screen - refusing to connect. Bugger!
The UK vendor who sold it to me agreed to take it in for repair at my cost. Long story short some 4 months passed by and despite many promises it became clear he was unable to repair it and was stringing me along. So I had my system collected from this UK shop by my brother. That is a very long and boring story cut short!
So now I had a Star C3 system that was broken and could find no-one in the UK to repair it. I had seen some posts on 500E board from member E500Star and I am very glad I did! He logged in remotely via Team viewer and was able to resolve many of the software issues that were in my Star system. But the Mux was indeed not working. So I sent it to him for repair. What I will share with the board now is what I think it some essential information on these China Clones VS Original. These videos and photos belong to E500Star and he sent them to me during our Whatsapp discussions:
[video=youtube_share;puMc0NFttyw]
[video=youtube_share;DlMqB_hRFzI]
[video=youtube_share;N0CUTAw-CP0]
[video=youtube_share;GMc5tDmY72w]
You will see that it is quite easy to identify a Clone Mux just by looking at the labels. But that these differences also much are deeper inside the unit in terms of quality and longevity – which is to be expected with a china clone!! After Yuri confirmed it was a hardware / mux issue he asked me to send him pictures of my broken mux inside. This is how it looked:
What he offered next was for me to post my C3 Mux to him for repair / rebuilding. So I did that and a month or so later he received my mux and got to work right away. What he did was totally rebuild the unit and turn it into an original Mux with all new original quality relays etc. This picture below shows an original relay to be installed:
Yuri also changes the processors to original Samsung items. This work even extended to the outer casing! He also tested my repaired mux and confirmed it is now passing all of the Caesar tests with flying colours and is fully functional again – also sending me a picture of how the circuits look inside and a video of my assembled rebuilt Mux:
[video=youtube_share;mDiSDyW5DUA]
I REALLY cannot thank Yuri enough for his work.
Where else will we find this level of detail on mux repairs?? His english is perfect and we conversed easily throughout these repairs – he kept me well informed and it is clear to see the work he has done here. It is my opinion that a China Mux is a total gamble and waste of money – Yuri does have Original Mux’s available or may even rebuild yours too like he did mine, ask him and see. We have a great resource here people and this thread is to thank him for his work and let members know what he can do! He also can supply laptops etc with the latest Star software.
[video]Mercedes Benz star diagnosis mux part d3 original to a FS thread Yuri has you can PM him there.
To summarise my situation I had bought a new china clone MB C3 Star setup with laptop from a UK specialist company. It was around 800 USD at the time in 2016. I only used it for a few times on my personal cars and when it was approx 1 – 1.5 years old it stopped working putting up some errors on the screen - refusing to connect. Bugger!
The UK vendor who sold it to me agreed to take it in for repair at my cost. Long story short some 4 months passed by and despite many promises it became clear he was unable to repair it and was stringing me along. So I had my system collected from this UK shop by my brother. That is a very long and boring story cut short!
So now I had a Star C3 system that was broken and could find no-one in the UK to repair it. I had seen some posts on 500E board from member E500Star and I am very glad I did! He logged in remotely via Team viewer and was able to resolve many of the software issues that were in my Star system. But the Mux was indeed not working. So I sent it to him for repair. What I will share with the board now is what I think it some essential information on these China Clones VS Original. These videos and photos belong to E500Star and he sent them to me during our Whatsapp discussions:
[video=youtube_share;puMc0NFttyw]
[video=youtube_share;DlMqB_hRFzI]
[video=youtube_share;N0CUTAw-CP0]
[video=youtube_share;GMc5tDmY72w]
You will see that it is quite easy to identify a Clone Mux just by looking at the labels. But that these differences also much are deeper inside the unit in terms of quality and longevity – which is to be expected with a china clone!! After Yuri confirmed it was a hardware / mux issue he asked me to send him pictures of my broken mux inside. This is how it looked:
What he offered next was for me to post my C3 Mux to him for repair / rebuilding. So I did that and a month or so later he received my mux and got to work right away. What he did was totally rebuild the unit and turn it into an original Mux with all new original quality relays etc. This picture below shows an original relay to be installed:
Yuri also changes the processors to original Samsung items. This work even extended to the outer casing! He also tested my repaired mux and confirmed it is now passing all of the Caesar tests with flying colours and is fully functional again – also sending me a picture of how the circuits look inside and a video of my assembled rebuilt Mux:
[video=youtube_share;mDiSDyW5DUA]
I REALLY cannot thank Yuri enough for his work.
Where else will we find this level of detail on mux repairs?? His english is perfect and we conversed easily throughout these repairs – he kept me well informed and it is clear to see the work he has done here. It is my opinion that a China Mux is a total gamble and waste of money – Yuri does have Original Mux’s available or may even rebuild yours too like he did mine, ask him and see. We have a great resource here people and this thread is to thank him for his work and let members know what he can do! He also can supply laptops etc with the latest Star software.
[video]Mercedes Benz star diagnosis mux part d3 original to a FS thread Yuri has you can PM him there.
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