A Swedish Mercedes fan has complained to a Swedish website that three out of the four Mercedes models he owns have problems with the AdBlue system.
The Swede, who wished to remain anonymous, has driven only Mercedes models all his life. He currently owns four Mercedes diesel models and three of them have the same AdBlue problem. He detailed the situation on the Swedish website www.carup.se.
All the models he owns are nearly new with around 5,500 km on board, the latest being the new Mercedes E-Class All-Terrain. As with the other two models he owns, shortly after he bought it, he got a fault message on the AdBlue exhaust after-treatment system on the dashboard.
The urea-injected AdBlue system is widely used today by diesel-engined models to treat exhaust gases. The newest AdBlue system such as the Mercedes AdBlue system uses two urea injections and for German manufacturers is supplied by Continental, a similar system is also installed for example in VW Group diesel models.
The AdBlue tank has to be filled once every 8-10,000 km and if it is not refilled, the car goes into a protection system and the engine will not start.
But the same happens if the AdBlue system fails. In the Swedish customer’s cars, three of his four cars had the same fault. The system’s pump failed and stopped pumping AdBlue liquid into the system. This causes the system to start giving errors and eventually stalls the engine.
The major problem is not that the pump has failed, even if the cars have very few kilometers on board. The problem is that the pump is integrated into the AdBlue tank and the whole system has to be changed, and replacing it is very expensive. The Swede is talking about a price of SEK 30,000, equivalent to €2,665.
He was extremely disappointed after the official Mercedes service department refused to repair his car under warranty. Usually, in such cases, manufacturers try to blame the customer for fueling the car with non-conforming diesel, which is not the case.
Noticing that this problem had occurred in three of his four cars, the Swede was convinced it was no coincidence and started to check other Mercedes owners.
He was not surprised to find that many of them had the same problems with the AdBlue system. He therefore hopes that Mercedes will take an official position on the issue. The carup.se website sent a request to Mercedes-Benz Sweden but had not received a reply by the time this article appeared.
