FWIW mine was a southern car until 2005 so it has only seen 3 winters in the great white north. Also, I do look at the perch seams each season (at least) when I change or rotate tires and until this incident there was no evidence of any degradation. I think the water can penetrate by capillary action and cause damage over time and then, it just pops. The M-B inspection procedure calls for removal of the spring and all of the mastic sealant and then re-seal it when you are done. That's more than half the work to replace the perch! I doubt very much that many of them get inspected to that level...most are just eyeballed, passed by visual, and then they break apart once the unapparent damage gets bad enough.

I dropped my car off at the body shop today...when I get it back I'll know if they did both sides or not. Apparently M-B is willing to pay for both if the body shop determines that the other side is damaged too but, like I said above, in order to inspect it properly you have to remove all of the existing sealant and then re-seal it so I wonder how they will decide if it needs to be done or not...frankly it is in their interest to do both if, for no other reason, purely to avoid a future liability if it should break off in 3 months.

And yes, I drove it the 15 miles or so up to the body shop (though I stayed off the freeway and took local roads). I figured I had 163K miles on it...I thought I could squeeze another 15 out of it and luckily I made it without a problem.

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Marty D.

2013 C300 4Matic
1984 BMW 733i
2013 Lincoln MKz