a broken intake assembly!

Everything looks alright, right? (e350, 2006)



WRONG! who knows how long this **** has been like this...



The intake on the left side of the engine is disconnected! It is sooo dusty inside the intake too... gah...

Mercedes Calabasas sucks... they should have caught this when it happened (if they didnt cause it... they probably did... i'm never going back there again after the fix it / give me a new engine, lol)

 

Well...if you clean your engine bay once in a while you would have caught that long ago.

I wouldn't worry about any damages to your engine tho as the loose intake connector just means it's sucking in hotter air rather than ambient air from the grill.

 

Well... hotter and dirtier air... the dealership is fixing it now, but they didnt even offer to change the air filter or do an oil change.... I hate calabasas motorcars

 

Friend of mine (E55 supercharged) bought a new tube from MB (S55) because one side of his E intake tube is smaller than the other. It worked perfectly for him and the whole thing stock looking.

 

Mike,

I am not sure if you already know as I maybe telling you the obvious here, but here it goes:

Technically this was definitely not a problem for your engine. The hose funnels the air from the grill into the filter housing (the big black box on top of the engine with the star and MB written on it). Once the air goes through the filter housing it goes through the throttle and via the inlet manifold to the cylinders. The actual filter element sits in that housing and was working equally fine with or without the hose connected correctly.

As mentioned, the only thing you had was some warmer air being pulled in from the engine compartment. A none issue as well, let me explain:

Warmer air is less dense so it would lead to slightly less fill of air, and therefore fuel into the cylinders of your car. However, the optimum ratio of fuel and air is continuously being meaured and controlled by several sensors (airflow meter, exhaust sensors) and the engine management computer. In other words, to get the same power in your car your throttle would have to be opened just slightly more to let the right amount of air enter the cylinders. Still burns fuel and air in the optimum ratio as controlled by the compu, unless you wanted to get the maximum power out of the car for say a 1/4 mile race. Only under full throttle and load would the engine provide just that little more power (in this case we are probably talking about less than 1 HP...).

This leads me also to say that the need for clean air filters in combination with modern fuel injected engines (as mentioned above, controlled by air flow & exhaust sensors as well as an engine management computer) is a bit of a none issue. You just get less ultimate power out of the engine. Optimum fuel burn and therefore engine efficiency should stay the same. That is why I think MB recommends air filter change only at 50,000 or 60,000 miles (high mileage, do not have the maintenance booklet and exact mileage at hand). Any adverts or car places telling you to change filters more often seems to me to be more driven by them making some money from you...

Interested to hear any other opinions or comments on my final thoughts here.

Have a great day, enjoy your beautiful car. My E350 has now 21k miles and every time I drive it some of that new car excitement is still there! What I love most are the strong engine in combination with the 7 speed and the airmatic suspension.

All the best,
Bode

 

I am not sure if I agree with this statement...

Yes, this one is true to a certain point.

Let's say that the air filter is so clogged that in order to get the optimum ratio of fuel and air, virtually all or most of the fuel needs to be cut off, so your engine will stall. Engineers go to great lengths to get the most air into the combustion chamber, and you will only defeat the purpose if you leave the filter dirty.

I do agree that in this case there was no damage done to the engine since the "snap" is pre-filter and not post.

 

firstMB - good points! I ommitted to make clear that there will be a point that filters need to be replaced (as you say, before they fully clog).

I guess I cannot think of a reason to change them more frequent than the MB recommended frequency, which is probably still conservative.

Just curious, how do you see the value of a pair of those "higher efficient" K&N air filters in your MB?

 

Back in '97 when I bought a 4Runner, I went out and bought a K&N drop-in air filter...because of all of the hype, of course. I didn't notice any power, or MPG gain. On the power measurement, it's just based on the "feeling". The MPG measurement was more accurate as I have always calculated MPG on every fill-up since I started driving. It's a pain, but it lets me know when my car is having problems.

So, the only good thing, to me, was it's reuseable. But, based on that alone, I have stuck with the conventional air filter from then on.