http://www.startekinfo.com/StarTek/outside/5840/?requestedDocId=5840

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W163.154, M112.942, 722.662, ZF.970.402

Can you believe that crap!?!?! Anyone with a 163 ML will know what I am talking about.

That's interesting it says something about in the interest of customer satisfaction that the service can be performed at the customers home or place of business or something like that.

Maybe Mercedes wants it done as soon as possible before the customer loses power steering and crashes and sues the heck out of them for continuing to put vehicles on the road with hose clamps that they know and have known for some time were defective.

Seems kind of dumb to keep making th same mistakes, hope that's not a trend with the new ML.

As a fellow ML owner I get to say in my very sarcastic voice, "wow...didn't see that coming". heh heh heh

Having had to bring my W163 3 times to the MB dealer for this crap (and a lot of you also had such a visit) - I'm REALLY surprised this was not on the top of the "lets look at the problems we had with the previous model and make sure this works before we release the vehicle" list.

So much for learning from our mistakes...

The real problem is not the clamp, but the fitting! It has no barb or convex ridge on the end of it. If it did the clamp would never come off. Any good machine shop could replicate the fitting out of brass with a barb on the end, and the problem would be solved for good. Evidently MB figures a new clamp is cheaper than a new correctly designed brass fitting!

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David L

Maybe they think if they re-design the fitting they will be admitting that the design without the barb on the end is defective, which would result in a lot of vehicles driving around with defective fittings.