Exploding R320?

http://www.landxml.org/R320

My many years of automotive experience causes me to suspect that the owner is being less than completely honest.
I suspect a very overheated tire self destructed and not that the vehicle simply "exploded" on it's own.

What do you think?

Oberkanone said:

http://www.landxml.org/R320

What do you think?

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I think the owner is a moron.

Oberkanone said:

My many years of automotive experience causes me to suspect that the owner is being less than completely honest.

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What a crock.

Obviously the operator is seriously deficient in the common sense department. I really can't see what this has to do with the vehicle or the tires.

Oberkanone said:

My many years of automotive experience causes me to suspect that the owner is being less than completely honest.

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Exactly, to me it seems she is telling 90% of the story.

From her statement:

While Mercedes would like to believe that I was running that tire fast enough and long enough to cause it to blow and beat up the car, that still does not explain the amount of damage done to not just the outside of the car, but the inside as well. Or the fact that part of the tire had the strength to break through the bumper and fly 30 feet up in the air while fighting blizzard condition winds and still have the force to break through the outside wall of my house and knock out a beam.

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Notice that she did not deny spinning the tire excessively. Another item of note: she mentioned something like 4 times that the incident was reported by someone other than herself....why is this important to someone who is telling the truth?

I couldn't find anything on MB website about tire inflation systems (don't know if the luxury vehicles are equipped with them), but if the electricals went haywire this could have blown the tire. In my experience as a tire guy, I've blown several comm truck tires (due to tire defects, not op error ) and they could very easily do the damage that was shown in the pictures. Sorry to see it happen to such a nice vehicle.

Is there a switch to turn off the 4-ETS?

4-Wheel Electronic Traction System (4-ETS) All-Speed Traction Control Controlled By ABS, Engine Management and Differential

I'm curious how she could have spun the tire enough to blow it with the traction control system and all wheel drive.

Turn the traction control off and you've got open diffs ...

With open diffs, if one side is stopped then the other side runs twice the speed, and if it's open center diff as well, 3 wheels locked and 1 wheel spinning means that spinning wheel will be going 2x2=4 times the indicated road speed ...

From what I've heard/read, turning the traction control completely off on MB is not possible - it just reduces the threshold at which it will interfer.

The first clue the driver is an idiot is sitting in the car while fueling instead of attending the pump. Here's my rough calculation: Dumbass + highsided car + throttle foot = kaboom.

lol.....purdy funnee -- get a grip, lady!

Interesting, to say the least.

Also, I'll second the suggestion that the person telling the story isn't telling the whole story. Her grammer doesn't have to be completely technical, but the language of her story is stilted and ungainly - like she lacks the ability to explain everything in good detail.

There are few vehicles that have a central tire inflation system that can adjust the tire pressure automatically, and I don't think that the R320 is a vehicle with that ability. Just looking at the pics, it seems like there was likely a tire defect that combined with wheel spinning resulted in a complete and instantaneous failure of the tire. Part of the tread with sufficient weight could likely punch that hole in the side of the house if it came loose from the wheel - which the picture shows almost no tire left so that is very possible.

Absent observing this in person in controlled settings, I'd chalk this up to a defective tire failing in a very rare and catastrophic way. Happens to one in a million, but it does happen.

Yeah, I'm callin "Bull****" too. The car put itself into drive? Best guess is she overheated the tire, igniting it AND the diesel which she let spill all over the car.

Notice how nothing in the story is her fault?

• The fuel spill - complain to the station attendents.
• Can't raise the height - car doesn't work the same as her last one.
• Car isn't in Park - it must have done it by itself, because she couldn't have doen it herself.
• Can't remember what she said on the phone - that's OK, Mercedes must have recorded the conversation (implication - if they didn't, it's a coverup)

Ever since that bimbo killed her kid with her Audi and blamed the car, there's been this assumption that is something bad happens with a car, it MUST be the car's fault. It's going to be interesting when MB pulls the computer and reconstructs the events - I'm sure that will be a conspiracy too.

I think I've got it. This picture tells the story:http://www.landxml.org/R320/images/DSCN0412.JPG

Somehow her tire came off the rim and she was just sitting there spinning the rim inside the tire (and alot!). If you look at the edge of the rim, where the bead would sit, the entire edge is black. Seen this before but only on rims which were driven on flats for a while. The second clue is on the inside of the fenderwell - can you see the copious amounts of rubber plastered up there? AND they just happen to coincide with the edge of the tire. (this could be a rust-proof coating but I don't think so)

VERY good point R2point0...I suppose the car applied the accelerator until the tire failed...or it verbally told her the best way to get unstuck is to floor it and wait until you melt through the ice...or any other lame excuse she can think of. That vinyl siding didn't put up much of a fight did it?

greengeeker said:

I think I've got it. This picture tells the story:http://www.landxml.org/R320/images/DSCN0412.JPG

Somehow her tire came off the rim and she was just sitting there spinning the rim inside the tire (and alot!). If you look at the edge of the rim, where the bead would sit, the entire edge is black. Seen this before but only on rims which were driven on flats for a while. The second clue is on the inside of the fenderwell - can you see the copious amounts of rubber plastered up there? AND they just happen to coincide with the edge of the tire. (this could be a rust-proof coating but I don't think so)

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I don't think that's what happened. I blew the photo up, and there is nothing on the bead of the wheel to show that the tire came loose. The edge that appears black (inside lip) appears to be just that way because of the lighting of the photo - the outside lip is still chrome on the face of the wheel that shows to the outside. The inside of the fenderwell also doesn't appear to have any rubber crumbles anywhere. It's got pieces of the tire where the whole thing blew up, and some black plastic like the durable surface that is in the wheelwells of all cars, but no crumbled rubber that you get from driving with a flat tire.

If you look at the photo again, you'll notice that the black substance extends to the painted lip of the fender. Whatever, just a guess anyway

>>>In closing I would just like to point out that if India had run down that porch instead of walked, she would have reached the car when it blew. It would have killed her. If the car had blown when the boys were back there trying to push me out, it would have killed them. If it had blown when Warren Listul was back there trying to push me out, it would have killed him. If it had blown when I was back there trying to unlock the car, it would have killed me. If it had blown while I was driving myself and the three kids home, it may have killed us all, and injured or killed someone else on the road>>

Just a matter of time till this idiot does kill someone. Of course that won't be her fault either.

You guys missed the whole point of this story.

WHO THE HELL PUT THE SNOW IN HER DRIVEWAY?
MERCEDES, why didn't you snowplow the poor womans driveway? I mean, she payed so much for that piece of s$$t car that doesn't even detect how deep the snow is? Oh my!!! Thank God I got a VW.

6 or 1/2 dozen - MB needs to figure out what happened. That kind of sophistication needs to be idiot proof or it does not belong on the market. Its just a blessing that no one was injured. _ I am sure MB will give them a new car and DB will fly back to the lab.

I have personally had a tire tread separate while driving 80mph in an old Cadillac (1969 vintage). It did sound like a bomb going off. The loose outer tread caught on the inner wheel well and tore it most of the way out. The initiating event was the fender skirt coming loose and cutting the tire tread. It was scary, but fortunately what was left of the tire still held air and I was able to drive the few more miles home to fully assess what had happened.

I suspect that tire failure did happen here, but I sure as heck don't believe the story . . .

Check out all of the snow packed underneath the rear axle--to me, it looks like the vehicle high-centered, and this one wheel was not making good contact with the ground, it was spinning for some fairly long period of time such that it heated the tire to the point that it failed and then exploded. If any interior airbags deployed, this was in response to the tire explosion and/or the body damage caused by the tire tread hitting the vehicle.

BUT, if it did happen this way, the pavement right underneath where the tire was would have gotten pretty darn hot, and you would expect to see some melted snow and ice in this area--don't see any (unless it snowed more between when the incident happened and when the pictures were taken and it's covered over).

Wonder what got shot up through the side of the house?

Of course, there is the OTHER conspiracy theory.

That she works for BMW or Audi, and she set all this up to smear Mercedes.

HAHAHA, I needed a laugh this morning. It is not hard to figure out what happened.

Limited slip does not mean fully locked. Full throttle when you are high centered does not help you get out.

Altho, some do come from the factory with options like the new Toyota FJ that has a center diff locker to go with the electric rear locker.

It looks like MB employs braking to limit engine tourqe to each wheel, so, possible limited slip plus braking to each wheel.

I am glad no one got hurt, but come on, use some common sense.

Perhaps strangest of all is her using peoples' full names....my neighbor George so-n-so .....she's not far from this side of clueless.

http://www.landxml.org/R320/

KaBoom! Part II

Forensics report......Waaaahhaaahhaaahhaa!

Yeah, but who spins their tire at "just" 50 MPH to get out of a snow drift just feet away from their house?

But for the other stuff, that's indicitave of the quality of Mercedes vehicles as of late...

Fred

High sided lots of throttle to get out boom! Oh oh this looks like someone has a lot of explaining to do. Ok lets blame the car because we are too stupid or lazy to dig out. Give me a break here!

This is a classic example of what happens when a moron operates a machine. Clue #1 is the dumb woman sits in the vehicle while fueling instead of attending the pump. That right there nominates for a World Class Idiot. Then she high-sides the vehicle and instead of getting out a shovel she just boards the ****er. Ya, that will work. I guess it's Mercedes fault. Their software engineers should have added a few lines of code to deal with that.

Trying to program a system to account for every possible situation an idiot will get themselves into is damn hard.

When you make something idiot proof, they'll only make a better class of idiots.

I also like how the investigator lays the blame for the DTCs as contributing to the tire exploding instead of realizing that some were caused by the tire exploding...

Bottom line is that the woman is a complete moron and the accident would never had happened if she had taken the proper precautions.

Idiotic forensic report said:

Another system failure was the vehicle engaging drive while stopped through no action of the driver.

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How in the world could they possibly know that?

Not too hard to tell who paid for that report.

It's clearly obvious that passing an IQ test is a requirement for owning an expensive car. I suppose the saddest part in these cases is the fact that these idiots have the money to buy them...

Here is a new case where a driver sank her SL500 in a stream because the GPS told her to...
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/...n+off+as+satnav+leads+woman+astray/article.do

What a twit...

You can see the type. Hubby had to buy her a large and expensive SUV to keep her and the kids totally safe. OMG, what could have happened if she had left her faux Coach purse on the accelarator to get out and check on why the engine is screaming and we're not moving? The house looks to be flimsy enough that a tennis ball could have done the damage. The rafter was likely not even attached.

I will admit, I don't trust computers in cars, but even with this over-computerized beast, there's way, way, way, too many failsafes.

My guess is, she did NOT get out, but rather just stuck it in drive and floored it.

As has been said many, many, many times in this thread, this reeks of BS.