Sorry to hear you had such a bad experience with the MB, and there is no way a 10% power increase could cause these kinds of issues. I will never buy MB just based on that story.

This really comes down to your dealer and your relationship with them. I have a really good one with mine and they know how OCD I am about over maintaining my car so they have looked the other way. They even offered to install XKR-S dampers and springs before I decided on coilovers. Then again its all about your relationship with them.. Find a good dealer and keep them.

 

Skeeter--

You say you litigated the issue, but before what tribunal? MBZ's "inflexibility" should have been irrelevant to the trier of fact, no? If a neutral third party is deciding whether a 10% increase in hp and torque caused a differential to rip from the frame, I would ordinarily be pretty comfortable that I could get an expert on the stand to say that the margins engineered into cars by reputable manufacturers including MBZ comfortably exceed that 10% threshold, and that therefore the dealer could not meet its burden of proof. Put another way, that expert could testify that the forces necessary to cause a differential to separate from a car frame of a properly constructed car would be several times those generated by any increase in torque caused by the modification....