Has Mercedes Always Been This Bad?

albion1938:
I know I’m known for being more accustomed to side valve petrol engines with carburettors :smiley: but I am also familiar with more up-to-date facilities. My question to the dealer would be this- why would 6 injectors fail at the same time, so badly that the vehicle went from running to non-starting in a matter of hours?
Bernard

They claim that it’s because the main fuel filter hadn’t been changed at its last service. At the moment our fleet engineer and I cannot argue (we will later when we get the final bill!) because this Actros is one of the few (out of hundreds we run) that isn’t on R&M, we service it ourselves at our main depot. It is quite common on an Actros for a dash warning to come on saying that the fuel filter needs changing, they have even gone into the dealers for servicing with the fault showing and they have come back with it still showing. Apparently changing the fuel filter is no longer a routine servicing task. I’m not familiar with modern fuel injection systems (and I don’t want to be at my stage of this game), but back in the day when we had Simms and CAV fuel injection pumps there was a very fine wire mesh filter in the injector pump as a failsafe guard against anything getting through the inline filter.