Hi. Can someone please advise. I am currently getting a very old Mercedes 307D camper into roadworthy condition, it's proving to be very costly and stressful. Mercedes have given me a huge list of what is wrong with it and one of the things is that the load sensor valve arm has broken away from the axle. I have no idea what an lsv arm is but Mercedes told me that because of this I will have no brakes on the rear axle but my local garage said that that is wrong and this will not cause the rear brakes not to work. Who is right please?

Hope it's ok to add my own reply to my posting to bring it to the top of the page again in the desperate hope that someone will see it tonight who didn't see it yesterday and have an answer for me

A load sensing valve is, essentially, a variable proportioning valve. Very common on trucks, or anything designed to operate with different loads. It attaches to the body or frame, and has a lever attached to the axle. As the springs compress under load, the LSV permits more rear braking. With a light load, it reduces rear braking to avoid rear brake lockup.

If it's not attached, brake performance will suffer. I don't know if you'll have no rear braking at all, but you certainly won't have as good brake performance as you would with it working. Should be a simple matter to reattach the arm, or to replace whatever is broken.

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1989 300 SEL that mostly works, but needs TLC