Off topic. Mercedes new car extended warranty, Worth it??? Options

[daytona]

Hi,
As the tittle implies, does anyone have any information/experience with the Mercedes Benz new car extended warranty?
We just took delivery of a new E 450 4matic. The dealership is offering what I consider is a good price for the extended warranty, ad since we tend to keep our cars a long time I think it may be worth buying.
I had a bad experience with extended warranty on a new Cayman S but it was a third party warranty. This is one is actually offered by MB. I just want to know if someone here ever had to make use of it and what that experience was like.
Thanks,
Bill.

[infraredcalvin]

Wifey has had an R, 2 MLs, 1 GLE (current) over the last 20 years, we keep our cars till about 80-100k miles,. Big costs have always been wear items, in particular the brakes. We typically go to the dealer, but they’ve gone from +/- $300 oil changes to my last at well over $600. Obviously we’ll be looking for an alternative next time. Only car that had issues was one of the MLs at 80k miles, had the self adjust leveling suspension, front shocks started leaking and dealer quoted $4800 to replace. We traded in for a new one...

Had the GLE for 3 years now, at 60k miles we’ve done rear brakes 2x and fronts 1x. Weird cause my Audi is the same way, rears wear 2x as fast??? all times dealer only wanted to replace rotors and pads, even though rotors were still in spec. Dealer estimate, 1200 per axle, I did pads myself.

Bottom line, unless the extended warranty includes these wear items, based on my experience, they are pretty soundly built cars.

[Superhawk996]

Had the GLE for 3 years now, at 60k miles we’ve done rear brakes 2x and fronts 1x. Weird cause my Audi is the same way, rears wear 2x as fast???

The reason this is occuring on your car as well as the other cars referenced is because modern ABS and ESC systems rely on a feature called Electronic Brake Distribution (EBD) to bias the rear brakes much more effectively than could be done on vintage cars using a basic proportioning valve to control rear brake pressure. The rear brakes are effectly biased in real time, using them more at low deceleration that don't transfer much weight and using them more in the initial few milliseconds of the stop.

By using the rear brakes more agressively earlier in the stop before weight transfer has fully occured, they can do a lot of work early in the stop to reduce the overall stopping distance. This can be increased even further if there is a heavy load and/or passengers in the rear seats that add additional weight and traction to the rear axle.

Now, factor in the a the rear brake pads are typically only a fraction of the size of the front pads, and you'll see why they wear faster than the front.

The old school world of the rears lasting much longer than the fronts was a testament as to how little work the rears used to do and why so many cars got away with simple drum brakes for so long.

In the case of the Infinity, the feature is called brake torque vectoring. As you've noticed, the benefit is not that great unless you're really pushing hard and your are very tuned in to the handling difference. However, the pad wear that is accelerated by dragging the inner brake to help crate the "vectoring" effect is obvious.

This brake based torque vectoring is in no way a comparison for to real driveline based torque vectoring systems that work via clutches and overspeed gearing in the differential like Audi Sport diff, Acura TL/RL/RLX Super Handling AWD, Lexus RC-F, BMW X6 and the X5M IRRC, Mitsubishi Evo, and a few others.