Based upon what the service advisor told me he indicated the belt came off the pulley. When that happened, the engine pulley kept turning and the belt wrapped itself around the engine pulley damaging the hard rubber "hockey puck" pulley and also damaging several electrical sensors. I am not sure if any other damage has resulted since until we get replacement parts installed they have not tried restarting the engine. Based upon the dash display, we know the engine temperature hit and went beyond 120 C. This was probably due to no coolant flow due to the water pump not turning.

I told the service advisor that if Mercedes would spend a few more cents on the parts it would be more cost effective than paying for all the warranty repairs not to mention customer satisfaction with their product. He agreed and indicated that he sees many older Mercedes products coming into the dealership for regular service with 150,000 to 200,000 miles with very few problems while he has new Mercedes products with 10,000 miles on them that have tons of problems.

Up till now everyone has been complaining about the crankshaft balancers that are on Mercedes V-6 engines and could not understand why this part was not made to last. At least this part has a metal inner and outer cylinder with a rubber vibration damper in between. The part on the 1.8 L 4-cylinder is even cheaper, being a hard rubber hockey-puck design. The V-6 damper lasts around 50,000 miles while this part does not even make it to 20,000 miles!

From what I see, Mercedes quality and reliability started declining around model year 1998 and has been declining ever since. I do not see it getting better yet with their problems being both electrical and mechanical. When a vehicle with less than 20,000 miles breaks down and leaves you by the side of the road, I put that brands quality/reliability on the bottom of the barrel. Even American cars have better reliability through 60,000 miles.

When you see Toyota's, Honda's, Nissan's and Subaru's going to 200,000 miles and beyond with few major problems you wonder why Mercedes cannot even make one that is reliable in the first few years of ownership. Actually, I do not wonder because if they wanted to do that they could by appropriating the proper resources. It all starts with the corporate leadership and until that changes their quality/reliability will continue to decline.