The information on this page has been supplied along with the photographs by Rick Horden (rickbenz) with a view to enlightening owners of Mercedes-Benz Diesel powered vehicles of a problem on the fuel injector system on the 'A' Class A170CDI, this problem may also apply to other Mercedes diesel fuelled vehicles.

When Rick bought his Mercedes 'A' Class in February 2005 he was well impressed and being a 2001 A170CDI he knew that he was not only benefit from the economy of the diesel but also the torque. He had bought the car from a Subaru Garage, Lucas of Mansfield and as well as having been told it had been subject to a 121 point inspection and safety check also made sure that the car would be covered by a warrantee period, which was
three months even though the car had only covered 38000 miles. One could ask at this point, with belt and braces how could he go wrong?

Rick drove his prize possession home, and like many of us did his own inspection producing a list of defects as long as your arm, which included steering column, front brake discs, blown bulbs and even white indicator bulbs in white reflector housings. The garage supplying the vehicle took all this onboard and the work was carried out at a Mercedes Garage.

Some six weeks later after having done several long runs Rick became aware of a problem which initially appeared to be either an oil or brake fluid leak which he spotted on his driveway, his inspection revealed that the under-body panel was also covered in an oily residue, as a result it went back to the retailer again. This problem led to the car going back a total of seven times before the fault was located, a leaking injector was the cause of the problem.

After the final visit and some 5 months later the problem appeared to have been corrected and Rick got on with life and the pleasures of driving his Mercedes, by this time the car had covered 45000 miles.

However this was relatively short lived when after covering only another 6000 miles during which time the car had run well, Rick suffered the experience of having an injector blow on his engine, an experience he would not want repeated, the engine sounded and ran like a tractor rather than a Mercedes-Benz and the incident could well have caused a serious accident.

It now appears that the garage where it took 5 months, and 7 visits to locate a leak on an injector, instead of doing a professional job had merely applied more pressure to the injector retaining bolts (torque bolt and claw) and in doing so had stripped or severally weakened the threads by over tightening.