V6Matty
Senior Member
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2012
- Messages
- 9,260
- Reaction score
- 4,063
- Location
- Newark, Nottinghamshire
- Your Mercedes
- S212/2010/E350 (His) W246/2016/B200 (Hers)
The radiator doesn’t fail it’s a crimp fixing that eventually loosens and then fails allowing the coolant to mix with ATF, to be fair it wasn’t something exclusive to Valeo radiators but the way in which Mercedes were attaching them.
Problem was that when they failed they knew it was a design flaw and the only way to fix was a redesign of the component and fitting, beher was chosen as their coupling was already partially designed with the new fittings in mind, meaning it was cheeper to go that route than stick with Valeo.
Then again my 2004 S211 OM647 had a Valeo radiator and didn’t fail after 15 years and 160k miles, so can’t have been that much wrong with them, just a select few
Problem was that when they failed they knew it was a design flaw and the only way to fix was a redesign of the component and fitting, beher was chosen as their coupling was already partially designed with the new fittings in mind, meaning it was cheeper to go that route than stick with Valeo.
Then again my 2004 S211 OM647 had a Valeo radiator and didn’t fail after 15 years and 160k miles, so can’t have been that much wrong with them, just a select few