I noticed that closing the rear doors on my 2006 B200 required more “slamming” force than the front doors. This was addressed by the dealer who replaced a hinge which they say was defective. There is still a slight difference between the front and the rear doors.
A check of a 2008 model exhibits the same issue. Anyone else notice this ?
Yes I agree with you the rear door seems stiffer to open & harder to close (possibly because the front doors are used more in my case) but the 'thunk' you get on closing seems a deeper more bassy sound and you do need to slam harder, if you dont they don't latch properly. Is it possibly to do with the fact that the front doors close virtually straight onto the rubber whereas the shaped rear doors have to close into the contours of the wheel arch section perhaps with some air pressure build up (rather like a damper action).
This was addressed by the dealer who replaced a hinge which they say was defective.
Can you be more specific about what exactly was defective (the hinge itself, upper, or lower, or both?)? So was the hinge super-stiff, binding or....??
Re: "Can you be more specific about what exactly was defective"
It all starts with the front doors; they open and close exactly as one would expect from Mercedes, or Toyota for that matter. But the rear doors have a different feel. They require a slightly greater push-off in order to get them to close. This is both un-Mercedes-like and dissimilar to the door action of the fronts.
There is no appreciable stiffness and zero binding. The dealer changed one of the lower hinges, but the improvement is marginal and does not result in the same closing action as the front doors.
The post by kdbcom above describes the situation very well, and also provides some possible reasons related to the door design and gasket arrangement.
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