V6 engine and harmonic damper failure

[steve-p]

My E320 had an 'issue' on Friday with an alarming noise coming from the engine bay. When it first started I thought it was a noisy scooter near me in traffic, but actually it turned out to be me Luckily I was only a mile from the dealer so I drove straight there. What had happened was the rubber on the crankshaft pulley had delaminated and was attempting to knock a hole in the front of the engine.

Anyway, I know that this has been the subject of a belated (last year I think) recall in the US involving nearly 400,000 vehicles. I was wondering if there had been a recall in the UK or not. I haven't heard of one, but if not, what are the chances of getting Mercedes to pay for the repairs, since they have already acknowledged there is a problem with it? The car has a full dealer history and I don't think there's much damage since it was caught quickly.

Surprisingly, there are no replacement pulleys in stock at the warehouse in Milton Keynes, nor in Germany. There are a couple at UK dealers and that's it.

Friday was actually a bad car day in general, since in the morning the SLK had been in for a minor warranty repair on the high level brakelight which had started to come apart from the boot, and the speedometer in the Mustang went nuts and started indicating random speeds, including 120mph when stationary. They do say bad things come in threes

[pentoman]

It's common, and it took a long time for the US recall thing to happen. Not aware of any recall in the UK.

Happens on V8s too.

[benzo]

nasty.

Do you know if the 2.4 v6 is affected by balancer failure? If so, should i pre-empt and replace soon?

thanks

Edited by benzo on Tuesday 14th November 18:19

[steve-p]

I'm not sure about that but it's worth checking because the damage could be considerable. I was aware that before the recall in the US there were a lot of people with very large repair bills and some were recommending pre-emptive replacement. Apparently the replacement parts are manufactured differently to prevent a reoccurrence. Mercedes-Benz declined to make any contribution towards my repair, but luckily it was just the pulley that needed replacing, and some liquid metal patching to light scoring of the engine. That's mainly because I got it to the dealer within a mile of it starting to fail, and was only doing urban speeds at the time, or it could have been worse I guess.

[pentoman]

benzo said:

nasty.

Do you know if the 2.4 v6 is affected by balancer failure? If so, should i pre-empt and replace soon?

thanks

Edited by benzo on Tuesday 14th November 18:19

Yes the 2.4 is affected. Seen it with my own eyes. As opposed to somebody elses presumably?

Pre-emptive replacement might be worth doing if it's not too expensive. When it fails it doesn't usually cause too much damage itself, although it can apparently damage the sump tray thing (?). But I think it takes out the water pump etc so the car will be undriveable (or overheat) when it goes.

[benzo]

Can i tell if the balancer is worn or damaged with a visual inspection, or does a defective balancer look normal? Also what kind of money should i reckon on paying for a balancer swap?