Patel

[left]
Hi everyone, so I was sitting idling in my parking spot before the train arrives as per usual in this chilly weather, was about -8.5 celceius and oil temps were around 105 and coolant around 10 or so degrees less. Nothing out of the ordinary for my operating conditiongs.

All of a a sudden I hear a “POP!” and see white smoke so I immediately shutdown and get out to inspect. Get to the front of the car and at this point huge puddle has formed and I can see what seems like all my cooolant has evacuated the system. Pop the hood to try and get a closer look and theres coolant all over the front passenger side of the vehicle. I’ve attached some picture of the initial scene. Pretty hard to tell what happened from pictures.

After having it towed to the nearest dealer for a diagnosis. Now here’s bad news the SA comes back and lets me know it won’t be covered under warranty because the upper radiator hose is not a part covered under the MB ELW. The hose itself is fine but the “flange” on the hose is not allowing it to be clamped back to the radiator from what I can understand from the description provided by the SA the whole part being one single piece. I wanted to see everyone else expirence with this type of repair and if they have been successful and having MB warranty this type of issue. As per ELW metal line and fittings are covered. Would you consider this a metal fitting?

Has anyone else run into a upper radiator hose failure before 5 years and 100,000km? What would cause this hose to pop off, failed thermostat or overfill resivoir?

Thanks,

Patel

Leaked out this way


Overflow resivoir


Engine front. Radiator to left.


Most of fluid pooled here and on under tray

kimeran

It's a bit difficult to tell from the pictures, but it looks like the hose on the left hand side (if you're looking at the car). Correct?
If so, that pipe isn't expensive and is easy to change, as it connects onto another pipe if my memory serves me correctly.

I had bad luck where the rhs upper pipe had the same issue where the metal coupling lost its shape. It is a much bigger job as that one goes to the motor, and there's a bunch of pipes to remove to get it out from the motor side. My car had 58000km on it, and I was having radiator issues, so I think that caused it to pop out and damaged that metal piece.

Diabolis

It's a rubber hose, so by definition not made of metal regardless of what you may consider it to be made of... but it's just a freakin' hose. It's a wear-and-tear item by definition and a relatively cheap one at that. Why exactly are you whining?

Patel

BLKROKT

Solo wing

Don't worry about it. The same thing happened to my ML recently. I was driving close to my home, when I got the "low coolant" warning of death, where I started thinking about the head bolts. Luckily I found a very long trail of coolant. The lower hose that goes to the pump is leaking. The car is still in the workshop > three weeks for a F'ing hose. Not in stock in GCC or the US, it has to be ordered from Germany.

Good luck

Patel

LARSLEMANS

Beware also of the lower rubber hose in the bottom of the radiator. It is attached to a plastic adaptor with a kind of clamp that is non adjustable, and just sits round the rubber hose with the factory mounting, without any tightening options.

This morning the rubber hose had become deattached from the plastic adaptor (probably because off pressure in the system when parking the vehicle), and all my coolant had run out of the radiator/motor.

My mechanic fixed it by applying an adjustable clamp instead to make sure that the rubber hose will stay attached to the adaptor, also under pressure.

Could have caused a catastrophic engine failure, all because of this cheap factory solution on such a vital clamp, so please replace the factory non adjustable clamp with an adjustable clamp before it fails.