124 wagon drivers look at this.

[Bio300TDTdriver]

I posted in the diesel forum as I have a TD, but this may apply to all wagons.

I found something new to worry about today.

Chris

[Bio300TDTdriver]

Anyone else out there with a 124 wagon that has this problem?

[Pete Geither]

I will check my wagon, but this looks like a very rare situation. The only thing that occurs to me is that the vehicle was grossly overweighted with cargo and abused at the same time. Definately not a normal occurance.

[Bio300TDTdriver]

Thanks Pete,

I will check back later to see what you found.

Chris

[Bio300TDTdriver]

Any of you gas guys want to crawl under the back of your car for me?

Chris

[Chas H]

Originally Posted by Bio300TDTdriver

Any of you gas guys want to crawl under the back of your car for me?

Chris

I recently changed the accumulators on my '95 wagon, didn't see anything like your car. Is there any sign of buckling in the bodywork?

[A. Rosich]

Well, to enlighten the matter a little deeper:

A got informed that two other T-series owners at the time had the job performed on their cars (previous of my work) and that they fully paid for the job.

Three other jobs were perfomed under warranty previous to mine and that one more job was done after it (to a later year model).

I would guess that about 25 to 30 W124 wagons were imported totally into the country (excluding 1990+ models, like my E 320 T which were not affected).

So, seven jobs were perfomed at the dealer to correct rear axle subframe failures. Don't know of out of dealership repairs, but if we stick with the original numbers, I will say that about 30% (one out of three) of the wagons here failed.



I am sure many owners will be driving around without knowing, or not until the rear subframe completely fails and the cars falls to the ground.

Anyway, it became customary at the used car lot of the dealer to perform x-ray analysis on rear axle subframes on W124 wagons and sedans manufactured from 1985/6 up to 1989.

[Bio300TDTdriver]

That's pretty interesting. That is a pretty high failure rate. I copied the service manager at the dealer with you information. I'll post what they have to say tomorrow night.

Chris

[Chas H]

Very interesting, but I would not call the broken part on Chris' car a subframe.
To me, the subframe is bolted to the defective chassis sheetmetal pressing.
But it's likely just a difference in jargon.