As layback says, the "rod bender" is only known in the US, it simply didn't happen anywhere else.

The other factor is that apparently if your "rod bender" didn't bend a rod in the first 75k, it wasn't going to bend a rod ever.

What follows is anecdotal, I haven't been to the states myself.

I *have* seen first hand a lot of diesel plant and equipment that has run in the states, and then run elsewhere, e.g. ship engines, generators, power packs, tractor units, and a fairly large number of these things came with operators.

US diesel fuel always had a very bad reputation, on a par with India for example, for consistency and quality, "***** runs sweet as a nut on euro diesel" was a phrase I have heard so often I lost count.

I have also heard stories that experienced marine engineers could sit on the quay stateside and tell which fuel company supplied the boat pulling out based solely on the exhaust note and smoke.

I have also heard stories from ex-pat americans that the mandatory strict annual euro vehicle testing regimes meant that there were no clunkers, while back home people would literally drive the vehicle into the ground.

What follows now is not anecdotal.

I used to run motorbikes as my only form of transport, being english that means Triumphs, BSA's, Nortons, etc, plus the odd HD / Guzzi / Ducati etc.

British bikes back then had a reputation for being utter ****, the british bike industry had just died, japs were everywhere, and everyone *knew* that british bikes were crap.

Which used to boil my piss.

Because yeah, sure, some british bikes were true piles of crap, but other weren't, just a succession of careless owners for 20 years who either neglected or bodged everything, is it any wonder that 20 years later that bike was unreliable?

Which brings us back to MB, back in the ponton era (we had a 220 SE) anyone who bought a new merc was serious money, they cost more than a family home, but they were built.

The W123 was built and financed by the german government of the day to promote exports and bring in foreign currency, competing with the French govt with the early 305 series Peugeots which you also saw all over Africa and so on, and it did that very well indeed, but is was never a "Mercedes Benz" in the old sense of the word.


The W124 was built in a new era, no longer did manufacturers assume that the product was as likely to end up in a wadi in Iran as it was a farm in rural Gloucestershire, and the science of CAD was also in its infancy, no longer did people make a world-wide product, then grab a supplemental spares bag labelled "Iran" or whatever and throw that in the shipping crate.

The lines of communication from the field back to the design offices had gone, completely, in the name of rationalisation and streamlining, there was serious talk of not producing the W124 in RHD at all, and ceding the british / australian / new zealand / south african markets to british car makers, and made under licence holdens, which meant ceding it to the japanese with their nissan sunny's coming off the ships by the tens of thousands.

In the USA the separate marketing department there didn't even acknowledge the W124, still selling off the W123 until well after production of the W124 had started.

Lots of W124 components, from engines to complete cars, were made in south africa, and shipped via europe for sale everywhere except europe (my car is 100% Stuttgart) or sold locally, I know of at least 3 cars that made it to the US and got sold there.

I have just learned that the US W124 has a completely different cab heater / ac control system to our models, I can only assume this is down to some licensing or manufacturing agreements involving patents or market segmentation, none of which applied in the ponton era... back then the product was eligible for import / export or it wasn't, period... and if it wasn't, well, sod you, your dictator could still get his fleet of 600 limos.

The only thing that is certain is that there is no valid engineering rationale for these differences... just ask henry ford.

So the problem that layback is trying to address is HUGELY complex, and I doubt we will actually find a single smoking gun, it will be more a case of finding which of the 20 wounds was the fatal one.