The Butcher

Cool comparison shot. Looks like your build is 2"-3" taller?

Las Vegas G

Could be. Didn't have much time to do any measuring to compare, he was in a rush to get home before the axle falls out of it.

haa

What a fiasco! Right as the dealers were hoarding them for fatter ADMs with almost 80 of them on dealer lots waiting for buyers in the US. I can assure you that bubble has burst!

JW001

Do you know if that truck in the picture is in the US? The squares in the two videos look to be in Russia

pat12

No

NEUNLFER

I just received confirmation my 4x4 Squared is FINALLY on a boat to Canada (Halifax) after sitting in Germany awaiting a ride for almost 3 months!
Dealer unfortunately also confirmed today the truck will sit at port in Halifax until the recall/repair can be performed by the VRC.
Hope MB comes up with a fix ASAP.

Jonny2021

n Ukraine

JW001

For those of you that have your 4x4 squared already, what's happening with your trucks with the recall? I told my dealer that I would prefer that they have the parts in before flatbedding mine in so that it's not just sitting at the dealership potentially for months waiting on parts. They still don't know what replacement parts MB will require for completing the recall. Seems like as of now, ithe non squared diff housing is not the chosen replacement.

The Butcher

I would think trying to convert the non-squared housing would not only be a costly solution, but potentially longer lead time than having new housing made. Just guessing, but they would have to tool up to make the parts for the conversion, or go groveling to LeTech to have them produce an additional 300 or so of them. Either of those options would take awhile to do. @Las Vegas G can speak to the actual parts needed for the conversion, but I imagine producing 300+ new assemblies at a plant will be the solution, not retrofitting non-squared housings to replace them.

JW001

I just assumed that the diff housing was interchangeable with the non-squared but I suppose that might not be the case. I did noticed that the axle on the squared has more reinforcement.

Las Vegas G

What I have learned from a reliable source is that MB made a "special" all new rear axle housing that is different in some way from the standard G550 / G63 rear axle housing.

Most likely it was supposed to be stronger than the others and had a special mounting flange on the ends to mount the Portal boxes that is different from the standard G axle.

For the LeTech conversion we actually take the stock housing and chop the ends off of it and weld on new flanges that the LeTech Portals bolt up to. And then additional reinforcement is added to the lower part of the Portal up to the axle tube just like what you see on the factory axle.

I cannot see how they are going to come up with a solution fast, my prediction is they may have something in 3 to 6 months if lucky, could be longer.

For sure if I took delivery of one I'd hang onto it and keep it safe at home where you can at least look at it.

NEUNLFER

I’m confused…
Mercedes logged thousands of test hours with this new design for years prior to releasing the vehicle.
We saw test mules running around the Nurburgring last year flat-out, and intense winter testing in Scandinavia, all without catastrophic failure of any critical driveline components.
Now the production vehicles show up with what one should assume is the same differential/axel design as the test vehicles, and are failing under “normal” use.
Weird.

JustinM

Agreed as they will need to perform testing for a period of time once they develop a solution.

The Butcher

Complete speculation on my part, but maybe a handful of first run rear axles were made for testing that were done properly, and then when it came time to make the larger run of production axles the raw materials they received had defects in them. Or, something in the cast process was done incorrectly (like too long or short of cooling cycle). From the pics posted the failure appears to be at the plug weld where the axle tube inserts into the diff housing. There are a handful of likely culprits, and I'm sure they will figure it out eventually. As Bill said, it could be awhile before they get a fix figured out.

hdinmotion

I was told the same thing by my dealer.

Jonny2021

https://mbpassion.de/2022/12/g-klass...erradgetriebe/

JW001

So according to the article, some non-squared G's dating back to the 2020 production in Germany are affected by the rear diff housing defect. 805 vehicles worldwide are affected. I wonder how accurate this article is. For trucks that were made in 2020 to have had this issue for 2 years now and mercedes not addressing it until now sounds kind of hard to believe. Plus, the squared has a different housing from the non-squared.

haa

Considering that the 4X4 Squared uses a different rear differential and this recall is specifically for that differential, I am deducing from the article that there are approx 805 4X4 Squared worldwide of which 278 are in the US market. That goes along with initial estimates of 300 4X4 Squared coming to the US.

gopherdave

Curious if anyone has seen any price reductions in these lately? One would think that the recall and initial ADM might make it go down but everything is still holding at $100k< ADM

JW001

nothing is selling since there's a stop sell order on these

gopherdave

oh wow. I heard about that but didn’t know if it was true or not. Does that just affect MB dealers who are selling new? I’m assuming used dealers can still sell right? Or am I wrong in that?

haa

Per the recall the car is deemed not safe for road driving by DOT and sale ban by Mercedes, with rear axle literally falling apart with no parts or fix currently available and most likely for another few months! There was already more than 80 of them sitting at dealer lots before the recall was announced so it should not be hard to find one once the repairs are completed.

In case you did not see this:

JW001

For people that have their squared, what are you doing while you wait for the official recall notice to be sent to you. Are you still driving it, leaving it parked, or having the dealership take possession of it until a fix is rolled out. Seems like people on social media still drive their trucks and there haven't been any more word about additional trucks breaking down.

efathalla

And I know a few MB Dealers that sold their 4x4 after the recall, not sure how they did it.

JW001

I read that recall notices are going out in February to customers. I wish we had more data on how many vehicles have had their housing compromised and what they were doing before it happened. The recall notice makes it sound like the dealerships will only need to inspect and replace if necessary. So what criteria are they telling their service people to use for determining if the housing would fail or not? Sucks