First Out of Warranty Repair....$1900. I have questions
 

2014 E350 59k miles. Several sensors started going crazy a few days ago, car shut down on the freeway. MB dealer couldn't get it in for 17 days! Found a good independent mechanic. All issues tied back to blind spot sensors. $700 a piece not including wiring. Says they were taken out by snow and salt. This wasn't a bad winter! Is this going to be a yearly repair? It looks like MB has had several failures with these but no recall or upgrades? At 1900 per repair should I get the aftermarket warranty?

Ouch! I'm sorry to hear that.

I'd be interested in hearing if others have suffered failure of their blind spot sensors ...

it seems like the usable life of accessories like blind spot sensors, hands free trunk lift, and etc are about 50K miles....... Just the other day the turbo boot went out for no apparent reason......... my car is just under 50k miles........ hmmmmm. Perhaps extended warranty is not a bad idea.

If the failure was caused by weather then you can make an insurance claim using your car insurance.

This is not good news!
It snowed here heavily last night and I had a bunch of driver assist features go out, including the blind sport assistant, lane departure warning etc.
Everything came back after restart but as this was the second time in about 6 months I am wondering if I should start saving now.
I've got the same car.

Would love to see pictures of failed parts.
As far as MB shows - blind spot radars are mounted inside taillight, while lane departure cameras inside central rear view mirror.
How the snow can get into those locations?

When you say "car shut down", what exactly do you mean?
Do you mean the sensors stopped working and disabled themselves? Or do you mean the car literally just turned itself off and loss power, leaving you control-less during your trek down the highway?

If it is the former, then this is probably normal, as my advanced sensors in the BMW automatically disable themselves in inclement weather as to not give false warnings and inaccurate control gestures.

two year elw from mb is about 2400$ with the amount of crap that breaks on these cars it seems a must have imo

Absolutely, especially if you plan on keeping it long term.

Loss of acceleration, power steering and all gauges. Engine was still running. I was able to pull off the highway shut the car off and restart.

Wow, so you say the shop said "All issues tied back to blind spot sensors. $700 a piece not including wiring...they were taken out by snow and salt."?
That seems more like a general electrical issue to me (ECU? TCU?), rather than a blind spot monitor (which doesn't have anything to do with control of the vehicle, and doesn't even intervene mechanically; i.e. the car would still function properly if equipped without blind spot sensors) that only flashes a light in the mirrors.
Now if you have said he pointed to the Active Steering Assist or Active Lane Keeping or Distronic sensors then that would have made a little more sense. I would get a second opinion if I were you---seems like that is a bogus diagnosis.
I could be totally wrong, but I (and perhaps a few others in this thread) was thinking you were saying that is was merely the auxiliary safety features that failed...not the entire electrical system. :nix:

Bad blind spot sensor put the car in limp mode. Really?! Hope this fixes it for you OP.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...9dfba6d666.jpg

This is a blind spot/parking assist sensor
The blind spot proximity sensors are mounted in the bumper in the front and rear. They are more robust than the standard Parktronic sensors if you look at them closely. Not sure where you saw they are mounted in the lights. They are subject to weather issues due to their exposure.

My mechanic says they basically the bad sensors hampered the control unit's ability to process correctly. I can leave them unplugged with only the failure notice as a result. All other systems will be ok.

Hmm... It happened again just a day after the snowfall, Tuesday morning, right when I started up the car.
There is no salt here, the snow has stopped and it was a beautiful sunny day. Yet, right after start up the warnings came on.
However it didn't affect drive-ability in any form, as it shouldn't have, just the "nanny" aids packed it in.
However on Wednesday and today (Thursday) everything was / is back to normal so it's might have been just an electrical hick up.

I hope your experience is better than mine. I told my mechanic to leave them unplugged for now. 60 miles driven and so far so good other than the blind spot warning. He pulled 2 pages of error codes. I have found the sensors on eBay. I may try to replace them myself.

You have to drop the bumpers in order to replace them. For sure on the front two. Not sure if you can access the rear two without dropping the bumper. The attachment clips are all on the inside of the bumper plus they come unpainted.