FIRE on S320

[Wellington]

Dear Friends, I seek your help and advice prior to litigation on this matter.
It is a long story so I have condensed it into the relevant facts, I have had my S320 since new in 1998 and covered just over 160,000 miles, all its maintenance has been carried out at Mercedes-Benz dealers and the book stamped.
Last November it was involved in a no fault road accident some not too serious frontal damage. Whilst in the care of the body repair shop, which was not a Mercedes dealer and had carried very satisfactory and quality work for me and my family in the past, the car caught fire, the body repairers have denied any liability and I have had to pay to have the damage put right at a Mercedes Dealer at a cost of over £7,000.
Because the parking warning system was not working, as part of the accident repair an employee of the body repair company (which has its own vehicle transporter) drove my car to a Mercedes dealer to diagnose the electrical system for the parking aid. During the journey, which was the Monday before Christmas last, round here we had regular overnight temperatures in the minus range usually -3 or -4 and sometimes minus 7.
The car caught fire, not seriously, an engineers diagnosis is that the exhaust system got so hot that on this winters day the radiated heat from the section just at the rear of the transmission tunnel where there is no heat shield, the heat was sufficient over a 2 inch air gap to ignite the undersealing between the transmission tunnel panel and the rear seat base panel, the heat spread into the cabin and ignited the interior sealing and sound proofing and melted the vacuum pipes for the doors which run underneath the seat. Fortunately the rear seat had been left back at the workshop.
During the course of the repair the Mercedes dealer replaced the MAP sensor and reported misfire on three of the six cylinders.
As mentioned before the body repairer is denying responsibility on the grounds that no warning was given to the driver and it could have happened to me whilst I was driving.
The Mercedes dealer promised to back me up with a supporting letter but has reneged. I am looking for any precedents and an explanation of the cause of the fire and any other knowledge to help me present a successful case in court, Many thanks for your time taken in reading this.

 

[Blakey]

Hi Wellington,

Sorry to hear what you're going through! Sounds like a nightmare.

I would be interested to hear what the credentials of the engineer who made the diagnosis are, and who he was hired by; - the body shop, MB or yourself.

It strikes me it would be unlikely that the exhaust would be able to set fire to the underside of the car unless some other factor were involved, eg, some combustible material being present. There would be stories of numerous other mercs going up in smoke otherwise. There have been instances of cars going up when parked on long dry grass but that's all i've heard of.

I realise my opinions don't help much, but good luck in your claim.

Chris.

 

[teddycatkin]

Assuming your insurance is fully comp-? I would leave it all to the insurer to sort out --they all have contact with legal teams.--and demand a hire car until all is satifactory.

 

[horgantrevor]

Assuming your insurance is fully comp-? I would leave it all to the insurer to sort out --they all have contact with legal teams.--and demand a hire car until all is satifactory.

good advice its taken this long whats a few weeks more

 

[television]

How could the body shop get the car that hot, it would take a high speed run of an hour to do that, if it was possible

 

[Wellington]

Thank you for your valuable help and input, I tried to keep my first post short with only relevant fact so that it did not appear that I was Rambling on.
Thank you Blakey, the engineer is fully qualified and is experienced in producing independent reports and appearing as an expert witness in court.
I myself have spent 46 years as a motor engineer before retiring last year, the last 40 years running my own hands on spanners business specialising in automatic transmissions. I agree with his conclusion that the fire was caused by the undersealing being ignited and the only logical heat source was from the exhaust .

Teddycatkin thank you also.
I have always insured comprehensively and this renewal declared the cars value at £8,000 and the company took my premium on that declaration, however when I made claim they would only make a "total loss payment" of £3,300 and since I had "retained the salvage" they reduced the amount, which means my nett expenses on fire damage to my car for which I was not at fault are now just under £4,000 which is under the Small Claims Court Ceiling of £5,000,

Television your help is appreciated also.
The distance from the body shop to the place where I believe the fire was noticed is less than 12 miles, about half of that would be on not very wide A and B roads though built up areas and the rest on country lanes ( the sort favoured by burn up bikers)
I am told that the fire brigade attended and that the fireman reported
"the cats were red hot'.
The ambient outside temperature would have been just above freezing at this time, we had regular minus overnight temperatures and I was out one night when it was minus7.

In short I am looking for a way to show that even if my car did produce a fault whilst this man was driving it, only his continued negligent and abusive driving with an obvious problem caused the damage.

 

[Xtractorfan]

The only way you can prove negligence on behalf of the bodyshop is if they had tampered with the exhaust in any way and their incompetence led to the fire starting.. almost impossible I would say... Even driving the car hard or fast should not have made the exhaust heat up to such an extent..unless partially blocked.. As for the insurance company they will only give you book value.. less mileage and condition deductions..at the time of the claim..
I would advise that you cut your losses now and put this sorry episode behind you..Life isnt always fair..

 

[Rory]

Are this:

During the course of the repair the Mercedes dealer replaced the MAP sensor and reported misfire on three of the six cylinders.

and this:

I am told that the fire brigade attended and that the fireman reported
"the cats were red hot'.

related? Wouldn't the cats get red hot if unburnt fuel was being dumped into them?

 

[Wellington]

Hello Rory
yes that is what I thought, and want to prove that the driver negligently drove on with a severe misfire on three of the six cylinders and thus caused the fire, the repairing Mercedes dealer has said that when the engine management detects a misfire it shuts down the fuel but has not specified whether it shuts off the fuel completely and stops the engine running or as I suspect only the fuel to the afflicted cylinders and leaves the engine running, I need to establish which is true or if there is no shut down of fuel supply at all in which case continued driving with a misfire will fill up the exhaust system with unburned raw fuel

 

[Miffy]

Not sure if this applies, but when my car was driven by a garage rep to carry out a repair, my 2 week old rear tyre developed a puncture. They said that as the car was in their possesion, it was their responsibility to replace the tyre, which they did.

It is my understanding that the ecu shuts down the injectors of the cylinders that missfire to stop raw fuel entering the cat

 

[Wellington]

Thank You Mark
Do you know whether they replaced your tyre out of goodwill or under a legal obligation of care?

 

[Miffy]

Thank You Mark
Do you know whether they replaced your tyre out of goodwill or under a legal obligation of care?

I am not sure, they called me and apologised my car was going to be a bit later being returned and explained why. They did not say if its a legal obligation, just that the fault happened whilst the car was in their care so they will rectify it.

 

[bouncer]

Possible that the impact / accident caused the cat bricks to break, ceramic bricks are susceptible to impact shock, the ceramic can crack and block the gas flow thus causing the heat that can make the cats glow.
Over fuelling due to misfire will do the same thing. . . but saying that the driver will / should have noticed this, so it's his responsibility to stop.
I'm very surprised that the temp has got that high so far back down the system.
I have seen Turbos glowing red, I have seen inlet pipes and manifolds glowing red on the test beds.
When we are running type approval on an exhaust system the exhaust has to be conditioned before testing (to simulate 2 years of driving), this involves pulsation where the exhaust is fitted to the test engine and a rig / valve is attached to the tailpipe which interrupts the gas flow by blocking off the gas for 2500 cycles this takes several hours and the engine runs at 75% of full power under load. I did I see the inlet / manifold pipes get red. . . that's when we forgot to start the blowers.
If the system is hot enough to ignite the under seal that far down the exhaust then it must have been dumping fuel into the exhaust at some rate. The car must have been driving like a pig, and the ceramic cat bricks will be melted.
They had a transporter, they should have used it.


My 2p worth.

sTeVe

 

[Wellington]

Thanks Steve
The impact was not that severe the air bags did not deploy and the repair cost was about £1,700, the repairing Mercedes dealer said that I could have the exhaust re-used after they got the engine running again but I had the exhaust renewed because my consultant engineer said that even if they were OK now it was likely they would fail pretty soon because of the heat involved

 

[Number_Cruncher]

>>When we are running type approval on an exhaust system

Do you work for Arvin?