That is rotten.
I take you have already talked to the dealer about some sort of goodwill.

At this point I would contact MB corporate and tell them what is going on. How many KMs did you get
between failures?

 

Was it because of oil leak from the air intake pipes? Did they change the turbo seals when the motors was previously changed?

 

Yep, it's a known feature of these V6 engines to drool oil over the flap motor.

 

the intake port motor may have gone bad in the past but with the millage you have on this motor it is likely that the intake itself has carboned up beyond repair.. it will require the replacement of the entire intake assembly (which i believe comes with a new motor BTW) the intake flaps become clogged with carbon and connot be cleaned. its a design flaw with that shitty engine. if you made it this far with out any major repairs i would consider yourself lucky.. any fuel besides the ultra low sulfer diesel and the proper low sulfer engine oil will cause MAJOR problems with the engine. the problem is that the fuel stations will say its the correct fuel but its is in fact not ultra low sulfer fuel.. or you were cheap and did not buy the correct fuel.. your call.. job takes approx 12-18 flat rate hours and is not possible for a DIY selfer.. contact dealer or indy repair shop . or just deal with that check engine light

 

Thanks for your comments. It turns out that the flappers are stuck in the intake maifold, so it needs to be replaced. Luckily my third part warranty will cover this. I'm told there is a TSB out on the manifold. It is a problem more prevalent in the Mercedes Sprinter because they do a lot more idling than most E class users would do.

I guess it's possible I used fuel labled ultra low sulpher that was not, but I've not heard of that complaint in our area. Although I don't always use the same fuel station, they are all part of the big chains.

 

AFAIK, the manifold can be removed along with removing the electrical parts and the manifold can then be steam cleaned or dipped to remove all the carbon build up.

 

Thanks 1997E300D. My indie and I posed that question to the dealer mechanics. They said they tried that with the first Sprinters who had the problem and it returned within the next year in a couple of them. With the amount of labor involved it just makes more sense to replace the mainfold.

It's interesting. My mechanic says the motor is strong enough move the flappers, but when the computer senses the resistance it does not allow the motor to move them. When he did some testing, if he disconnected the right side of the manifold the motor worked flawlessly. He then switched sides and again it worked fine. It was when he had both sides hooked up that it failed 20% of the time. He said he could feel very little resistance when moving the flappers manually, but there was enough for the computer to shut things down.

So...new manifold being installed.

 

I had to have mine replaced around 72K at a cost of $1200 at the dealership. I have been adding Diesel Kleen most every tank since, and don't know if is going to help, but it surely can't hurt.

 

My indie insisted I look at the carbon build up in the manifold. It was unbelievable. Each of the flappers, normally very thin, had about a 1/4 inch of carbon on them. Some of the ports leading to the cylinders were almost plugged. He spoke to the dealer mechanics and was told this was known flaw in the engine and it's why they moved to the blue injection in newer models.

I'm religious in my maintenance and my indie says there is little that can be done to stop this from happening. The additives may help clean the injectors but will not improve the carbon build up in this area. He says that using full acceleration on a daily basis may have some modest impact, but beyond that there is nothing that can be done.

The dealer mechanics are now encouraging owners to change the manifolds whenever the intake port shutoff motor is replaced as it's impossible to know if it is the motor or resistance in the flappers from carbon buildup.

A costly peice of business!

 

From the diagrams I saw, the flaps are attached to motor and when you remove motor the flaps come out. Is this correct? If so, then you would need to replace the motor also, as the flap does not appear to be available separately.

 

1997E300D,

The motor can be replaced separately. It can be disengaged from the linkage to the flappers. The flappers cannot be replaced. They are part of the intake manifold.

 

I have an 08 E320 Bluetec, 77,000 miles. My car has the gummed up/carbon buildup on the intake manifolds as well. Here is the history:

1) Oil leaked from a deffective EGR membrane on the swirl motor, and fried it. I had it changed at the dealer ($1200) at about 70,000. Car had gotten a check engine light and the boost was restricted with poor acceleration (semi limp home mode). It was drivable, but not fun (0-60 would take forever and had to shift gears manually to get toyota prius acceleration).

2) Now, 7,000 miles later, the car has gone into limp home mode a few times very intermittently, without triggering the check engine light. Restarting the car clears the problem. Dealer quoted me $4300 to replace both intake manifolds. They do not want to clean them. They will replace the swirl motor under parts warranty, but will not cover any labor.

By the way, I use mostly speedway gasoline from NW Indiana, which does not have any biodiesel. Sometimes I put BP. The mechanic told me to stop putting speedway diesel and to put BP or Shell, as they are higher quality. Sounds like BS to me. In retrospect, I should have insisted that they check for carbon buildup when they had the car apart and clean the intake manifolds if they find problems. I doubt this carbon buildup is from the last 7000 miles. Why did the mechanic not see the gummed up manifolds the first time. Supposedly now my motor is fried again because the valves do not move easily because of the carbon buildup. But when I took the car to the dealer there was not check engine light.

What do you guys suggest? Any hope that MB will step up and cover this repair, on a car with almost 80K miles. I bought this car (MB and diesel) for longevity, not to replace 4 yrs later. Just bought a 2012 Passat TDI, 6 speed manual. I wonder if it will have the same problems.

-Mike-
08 E320 Bluetec

 

I tend to agree about Speedway diesel. I use a lot of diesel in farm stuff and my pickup
runs a lot better and with less smoke on the Shell diesel than the Speedway.

The VWs have had carbon issues in the past also. I know some changes to induction have
been made, but go to back of a VW dealer or call an indy VW shop and ask them about
cleaning carbon out of TDIs. The V-10 Touareg diesel was pulled from the US due to
carbon issues. The US diesel is very dirty compared to EU standards.

 

It is not only EGR gasses that contribute to the carbon build up; big part is result of PCV gasses saturated w/some oil. Oil and carbon form very sticky mixture that covers the flaps. It will continue to form unless you vent your PCV out or shut off your EGR valve.

 

What a piece of crap... this is bad design. this is outrageous..I just diagnosed this problem on my R350 BT 2010 that had only 70 000 miles on it

I also had the bad heat exchanger seal, turbo inlet and CV seals (bad silicon rubber) that leaked oïl MB fixed it on good will

Bad heating element in adblue tank


Does anybody know if they fixed the problem? Otherwise this means that we shoudl not buy these cars as they will continuously break down during their life...

I am outraged...

Do not buy this

 

So they did a costly good will repair and you still think the brand should not be supported?

At least they helped you out.

We had an Acura that was 4,000 miles out of warranty and the oil pump failed causing the engine to blow up. The dealer wanted almost $7000 and Honda/Acura offered no assistance.

I know of lots of Blue Tecs that are past 200k miles. It is not like all of them are doing it.

 

The costly repair is due to incorrect design and manufacturing. The silicon rubber provided on both the turbo and heat exchanger seals was incompatible with the oil and degraded to the point where I could easily rip it by hand.

The port motor failure is likely due to oil (from the leaking turbo inlet seal) leaking on the motor.

Damn right I expect Mercedes to take responsibility. The same for the heating element that fails in the adblue system.

There is another component to the motor failure, it is that I am told that the intake is very dirty caused by PCV and EGR being mixed. This also is the root cause and is caused by bad design. I am absolutely sure that BT engines can make 200 K miles but at what cost? No problem just replace the intake.. what replace the intake right side? what about the left and what about in 50 000 km. The root cause is not even solved.

Crankshaft seal failure? what ? I have rebuilt many engines and never seen that... This science was developed and understood 50 years ago.

Also, speaking of design, at the bottom of the front fenders they left 2 in. of exposed steel from the fender, and within a year the fender is to the bare metal and completely rusted from road debris. They could have brought the plastic molding 2 inches up and never have this situation BAD DESIGN. Are you telling me that they never saw that during the multiple tests they made; COME ON!

Mercedes is a flagship of a brand whereas the Acura's are only luxury Hondas (sorry for the insult). It cost me over 75 000 $ to pull out this piece of s... from the garage.

 

This may sound back-handed but I really mean it:
I applaud you for trying to make this a perfect world. I hope something comes of your observations in a positive way.

You're really going to hate a new, direct-injected gasoline Audi, BMW, or Mini because they have a lot of carbon build-up issues on their intakes... even at only 15k miles!

Top that off with a 15% ethanol fuel mandate (thanks EPA) or even some piss-poor mpgs from E85 fuel and you'll be left with diesel as your only performance option.

When I open the hood of the W211 bluetec and pry off the engine cover, I am shocked at how packed-in everything is when compared to something like a VW TDI. VW TDI's are not without their faults either (timing belt instead of timing chain, turbo failures, etc).

The problems with the om642 are minimal. It's something we can live with to an extent, or maybe a custom performance tuner house can make a better intake...

 

You are right in2dwww. This is my point exactly. A friend of mine has this exact problem on his Q5s and is facing close to 3000$ repairs including leaking fuel injectors...

Is this technology really viable? I think not

What is disturbing about this, it's that the problem is not solved at all by changing the intake or the servo motor. The ports will keep getting dirty even faster as the car will age. Also I cannot attribute it to a freak occurrence or normal wear. So this is it? Get rid of it at the end of the warrantee?.. This is unacceptable

 

What is disturbing about this, it's that the problem is not solved at all by changing the intake or the servo motor. The ports will keep getting dirty even faster as the car will age. Also I cannot attribute it to a freak occurrence or normal wear. So this is it? Get rid of it at the end of the warrantee?.. This is unacceptable

Research EGR DELETE KIT. I have one for my 06. No smoke/tad better mileage.

Unfortunately, as has been said before, Mercedes is not a perfect world, but others can be as bad or even worse. They all have shortcomings.

Cheers

 

I would also most likely be a bit upset about some of these issues that crop up. While not ubercommon gumming up is a real drag for sure, and I know how it is to be the one who gets the short stick on the deal. If I were you and I wanted to keep the vehicle I would make friends with a Mercedes technician and get a few intake manifolds and swirl flap assemblies. After you thoroughly clean them up take a look at them and try to figure out a way to make modifications to them to allow them to last longer and to be more resilient to gumming up. Not sure what this would involve since I don't have one in my hands right now. Perhaps the addition of Teflon deflectors near the swirl flap shafts will keep carbon from building up there and allowing them to move more freely.

Your rubber intake hoses may be able to be replaced with Silicone as some of the guys who own Jeep Liberty Diesels do. It makes the intake hoses last longer and handles the heat fairly well. The Silicone won't last forever though since the oil still eats it over time. Even some thin sheet Teflon there could keep oil from directly contacting the rubber interconnecting hoses and allow them to last longer.

Also as mentioned the turbo is contributing to oil accumulation which can be hard to deal with unless there is a low accumulation point perhaps in the intercooler. Most of the oil is coming from the PCV system and it's poorly functioning oil mist separators. Intake oil is coming from those two places so you need to figure out how to eliminate the oil injection. See if you can come up with a better way to filter the PCV gasses before they enter the turbo inlet-some add a Provent type filter setup and have decent luck. Also, like I mentioned if you have a low point in your intake tract where liquid oil accumulates you can construct a passive liquid oil bleed system that will remove accumulated oil there. Obviously the EGR quantity needs to be either reduced considerably or removed all together which will finalize the deal. Best of luck, and post some photos if you attempt to come up with a workaround

 

The Audi boys with their A4 turbos have been adding oil catch cans to help deal with carbon build-up. Separate issue from what the om642 intake has, but would an oil catch can help?

 

I would think so since from my experimentation I find the greatest oil contribution(80% or so) is from the oil coming from my PCV vent going into the intake of the turbo and pooling in my lower intercooler. Here is what I have constructed for my TDI-it's a passive lower intercooler oil bleed system coupled to a cyclonic air/oil separator. Anytime the car boosts a very small amount or air/liquid accumulated oil is moved from the lower intercooler to my cyclonic separator:

Not sure if this type setup could be adapted to the OM642 platform. It may require two cyclonic separators to handle the volume of CCV gasses or a single Provent unit. I do know however that the setup on my TDI has worked extremely well and is getting better all the time since I am actively making changes to increase separation efficiency. I have the EGR deleted on my TDI so that helps that part of the equation too

 

Interesting things to read about-might just spark an idea or two for your situation:

Swirl Motor - cheap replacement solution (Pennies!) - Chrysler 300C Forum: 300C & SRT8 Forums

 

Interesting mods to the OM642 by the Jeep guys:
Jeep OM642 CRD Performance Mod's - JeepForum.com

 

Delete the motor. Read the posts on using a 4.7K ohm resistor inserted in the wiring harness after disconnecting the Inlet Port Shut-off motor. I just did this simple fix and in the OM642 engine I have a fix for 20 minutes work and a few pence for a 2W resistor

 

This bypass works to get rid of it completely. No more replacements.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/264442323719?ul_noapp=true

 

quality of oil and fuel is not the problem with swirl valves, injectors go strait into combustion chambers so fuel dos nothing for intake cleaning the reason for oil in turbo out let most of the time is the pvc .mb has updated this part 14 time and most dealer dont even know about this !putting the latest pvc and add a oil catch can in the system helps this system very much.part of the reason there is a 700 m suit against MB .also cuts down on going into re-gen.