2013 E350 Sedan. What is this tube? I can clearly see that whatever is it’s broken.

 

your oil dipstick tube.
BRB; gonna go take a pic of mine.

 

That would be your engine oil dipstick.

Looks like the plastic top broke off.

You'll want to order a new one,.. then use needle-nose pliers to try to get what's left of it out.

 

Thanks guys!

 

might have a shopvac fired up right next to it as you fish it out incase there's plastic bits in there, yo uwant to suck them up rather than half them fall into your oil panl

 

i'd use a drill bit and EZ out to (carefully!) Ease the remaining plastic out. Hopefully there's still a dipstick attached.

 

Thank you Rapid!
Ordering now 👍🏼

 

How this breaks is a mystery to me. It just sits there...

 

Right??!! I bought the car in Florida last June. It’s in Colorado now. Going back to Florida next week. I figured I’d take care of some maintenance items. Realized I don’t even know where the damn dipstick is! Anyone need a Mercedes mechanic 🤪

And before you guys jump all over me I’m only changing the oil, plugs, filters, putting in a new dipstick and cleaning the throttle body. Easy stuff that I can actually find!

 

I agree with DFWdude -- how that broke is a mystery

And good for you for doing the routine maintenance yourself

 

Good luck with the plugs. Use only MB OEM plugs, the Bosch ones might not line up, they're indexed. Or get some copper washers and make sure they're indexed properly. There's several threads on here about them. The MB dealers change the plugs by removing the intake manifold but there's threads on here about how it can be done without doing that.

 

Glad, you noticed it . I have not seen a broken dipstick top broken off either . It's probably someone yanked it out ,that's weird

 

It probably broke last time oil was changed. The mechanic broke it either pulling it out or pushing it back in.

I broke mine on my 2013 S550 a couple months ago when checking oil while filling up. Mine broke half way down the stem so I was able to easily pull it out with needle-nose pliers but the OP’s top broke right down to the O-ring seal. Half of the seal is visible in the picture.

I would use a very fine hook tool to pull it up from under the half-moon plastic that is left of it.

New stick for my car was &110 with tax.

 

PLastic gets hard and brittle from the heat cycles.

 

Nah, someone snapped it off. There are so many plastic parts today on modern cars, manifolds, oil pans, you name it. They would all fail due to heat cycles and they don’t.

 

Not to mention that these plastics are tested, tested, and tested some more in freeze chambers, heat chambers, etc., to ensure they don't fatigue and break.

 

It's a new mod called "dipstick delete!"

 

Some MB models indeed have dipstick delete. My 2001 W203 C320 has never had a dipstick, by design...

 

Well, I can tell you that when mine broke I did not bend or twist it in any abnormal manner. It broke when I pushed it in and it is difficult to do without any side force at all but it broke with very small amount of force. I do believe the plastic gets brittle over time especially under hood in climate with close to 100 degrees daily in summer time.

 

Well Arrie, then MB used cheap plastic for this part or engineered the shape improperly with a small cross section. Manufacturers use plastic for half the engine it seems these days. Not just dipstick handles, but complete oil pans, complete intake manifolds, etc. Parts that are subject to very extreme temperatures, not just hot air flow that this dipstick handle is exposed to. I guess this is just bad Mercedes design.

 

So far, we've heard from people whose dipstick handle broke off. What happens if it breaks well inside the tube (below the o-ring), and the blade cannot be pulled out?

 

The metal part reaches almost in the bottom of the pan so even if it broke below seal it would not drop very deep in the tube.

Now, I’m talking about the S550 dip stick. That has an eye on the top like my E550 has. Pictures in earlier posts show a different design.

 

Yes, every dipstick I have in 4 cars is the eye type. This is an odd looking dipstick handle for sure.

 

Both our '11 E350 4M and E550 4M have the above green "button" head dipstick... on older models the red "eye" dipstick was common:

 

This is the design I have. In my S it is blue though.

It broke right where that small hole in the plastic is. That is how far the steel “cable” runs to so it will not break below that point.