When threshold is met and programming is required, is a fair enough warning. people purchase things without doing homework... Its like buying a 6.0 powerstroke or 7.3.... no brainer. Same with benz, you buy a 211-219-230 from 03-07 you are getting sbc no questions.

 

Yes, it is supposed to give the driver advanced warning, not sure how far in advance. However, several owners have stated that NO advance warning occurred, leaving them with very little braking power.

FWIW, I do plan on replacing my SBC unit when the warning appears. Hopefully that will be before the reduction to emergency backup.

John

 

Forever or at least until they can retro fit a unit that has perhaps a proper shutoff valve that gives you braking force acceptable over 5mph and update the software to warn you BEFORE it fails that the service life is reached. Not everyone scans their car at the dealer every week.
It can be done and should.

Businesses already sell remanned units so not sure what you mean. I suggested they adopt a different style shutoff valve if applicable, welcome to aftermarket. I better take the brembos off my track car since they are a liability being a modification to my bmw oem braking system, never mind me doing all the brake plumbing myself with raw aftermarket tubing. Good god what have I done.

Wrong. Message occured AFTER the failure, i just happened to not be attemping to decelerate off of a highway when it happened.

Wrong again, Im upset about the "safety" thing. The cost is salt in the wound but worth every penny to me. Call me crazy but I value life over money.

 

Engineering is all about compromise. Maybe they did a cost/benefit analysis and decided that the trade off was worth it. Remember, the pump is mechanical, I believe they are just guessing when the pump will fail, there may not be a way to tell in advance when the pump will fail, just that when it fails, you get a message. They may have programmed the warning message with a conservative estimate using MTBF, but that's just the mean, in a bell curve, some will happen sooner than others.

Business sell the remanned unit from Mercedes, for some other small business to tackle re-engineering a niche product, the profit and the liability probably means it isn't going to happen and hasn't yet. That's why there's no aftermarket part, when there's lots of volumes, there's aftermarket parts, when it's limited, you're stuck with OEM.

 

I can agree with this, however by taking the risk on saving money at the expense of a less than adequate emergency hydraulic braking force they should make whole that kind of a decision (it backfired). The fact that there could potentially be a more effective solution (if in fact an always closed shutoff valve did the trick) and cost a nominal amount more in productions costs could almost be considered negligence. Skimp anywhere you would like, just not the brakes...

I also agree that the warning may be based off of the malfunction itself (probable) but as mentioned elsewhere in the thread, they should have perhaps a separate warning that the service life of the part is nearing it's end. That won't account for premature failures, but it would go a long way in giving the driver adequate knowledge of the condition of their vehicles braking system.

When I replace mine, I will take the old one apart and figure out if there is any truth behind this shutoff valve theory. If there is and it can be done cheaply/easily I will start buying up remanned units and adding that feature if I can. I'm sure I could find some buyers.

 

Full system. Emergency operation. Much more available if you search enough on the Internet.




Personally, I'd plan on using the parking brake under my left foot...

 

Yep and that would be the normally open rather than normally closed shutoff valve supplying Y1 and Y2 (front brakes). That thread i posted has a much more technical discussion about it.


Good luck with a parking brake at highway speed