1999 E320 right front coil spring cap rusted through almost completely. Left Spring cap is OK. I caught this replacing the front brakes at 137,000 miles. If this let lose at speed, and I use this car almost entirely on the Interstate, it would easily have caused a serious accident.

This is a known problem after looking into it, and owners of these cars expect a LONG service life, or why buy a Mercedes? So a sub twenty year old Mercedes car is NOT considered old...until this one was made, anyway. I feel really let down that Mercedes did not at least notify owners of an unsafe design that definitely needs immediate action to avoid extensive damage or injury. The repair is not exorbitant to do, and is a must to keep using the car.

If this causes an accident, and it is proven you KNEW about the issue, significant liability could be placed on the driver of the car. Hence, this went to the shop PRONTO and will sit until it is fixed.

The ~ $550.00 repair involves cutting out / removing the old spring cap and immediate area of rust and welding in a new back plate and coil spring cap with an inner rubber cushion spring bumper.

failed spring perch and surrounding area due to corrosion

Photos to follow. Being sent from the Authorized Mercedes Body shop. Overall excessive corrosion on the Suspension components, failures in weld Points of control arms, as well as failed welds and corroded spring perch housing.

Granted the car is 16 years old, but it has been regularly maintained and inspected bi-annually. Was Garage kept up until 5 years ago. There are 130K miles on the vehicle I believe that the corossion on the spring perch housing led to the unnderlying Suspension components to fail due to stresses that those components were not designed to withstand.

Mercedes must be aware of this issue, as it appears that are loads of complaints from various model years and several of These Claims have been paid my MB-USA, or the costs of the repairs were shared with deferred costs due to them accepting some liability.