Here's why Sprinters are the worst vans ever!

[Music] foreign so at the dealer I was at we were one of actually very few Sprinter dealers we did everything when it came to sprinters we sold the Airstream RVs we sold cargo we sold passenger we even took on Sprinter mattress and we even had conversion vans of those from explorer that had the high top conversions and the big puffy seats so everything Sprinter was its whole own division early on I forget exactly what year it was the sprinters were pretty new to the Mercedes brand they were sold early on as Dodge Freightliner but I think it was around 2012. that Sprinter came to Mercedes there was this big contract out there to get FedEx was looking for a bunch of new Vans I forget the quantity our dealership got a bunch of these Vans they ordered them for FedEx and it went downhill from there sprinters are not exactly the most reliable vehicle out there they have a lot of issues oil leaks different running issues especially the 2012s and newer anything with adblue bluete def all kinds of different names for it but anything that has urea injection or after treatment for the exhaust emissions which was mandated in 2012. they almost guaranteed are going to break in short order people put the wrong stuff in them they don't put enough they don't put high quality DEF fluid would actually cause a lot of issues as well and when this happens the I believe it was a government mandate but the engine essentially shuts down so if you have a fault while you're driving you get limited power and you get the wonderful engine starts remaining message which is very nerve-wracking if you're not close to home so it'll say you have five starts remaining and once those starts run out you can't start the car you're stuck and the only way to fix this is to clear the fault codes so you usually have to have a dealer level tool to clear these fault codes and then you get one more start and or until the fault codes set again these FedEx sprinters just came in by the drugs they're all broken they're not easy to fix and it ended up just being a total disaster for FedEx now you don't see any more FedEx printers out on the road one of the memorable ones is we had an issue with uh I believe it was there's some other kind of running issue it was running hot or something like that so not the normal failure it would actually start and run and work but it had a bunch of other weird issues going on this is a perspective to even modern or large you know shipping companies that have drivers of all kind of different quality that you know when a car is not yours the level of care tends to drop significantly so this one came in and Tech starts looking at it like all sprinters they're a pain in the butt to deal with and a couple days go by and finally the technician comes up to me with a little jar it's got this pink fluid in it and I'm like what is this he says just smell it so he sticks it up I mean not even close to my nose just like maybe about here about a foot away or so and I about fell over the smell coming out of whatever this was acidic rancid like it burned the hairs out of your nose and I'm like good Lord buddy what what is this and he said it's coolant and I'm like no that's not cool that's not what that smells like he said but it has exhaust fluid put in it and I was like what and he goes yes he said someone got a low def message and decided it needed to go into the cooling system instead of the bright blue cap that says def on it doesn't need to go there it needs to go in the coolant reservoir that's has pink coolant in it so this one I forget I think it was eight thousand dollars or so whole cooling system had to be rebuilt because it actually turned like gummy in some areas and so I mean every line water pump had to flush the block a heater core radiator everything had to be done one of our most interesting client his name was mihai and if you see any of the people that work closely with me at the dealer at the time they will know when they hear I am mihai it was this gentleman of Eastern European descent that drove a sprinter he was a what we call a hot shot driver he'd pick up you know random deliveries and take them to where they needed to go in his sopreneur he had the full setup like he lived in this printer he made his own uh wooden cot so he built the frame had it all set up I believe he even got some kind of restroom situation installed in there so he took a Bayer Sprinter cargo van and turned it into a essentially sleep cab 18 wheeler cab of sorts he was an eccentric individual as most truck drivers are and he came in brought in the Sprinter and he had issues with it running he said it shuts off doesn't run right it skips you know I need to make money with this thing as with all sprinters that come in just about they are money making machines for their owners so they are the ones that push you the hardest to get their cars fixed and unfortunately for the technician side sprinters are not easy to deal with they do not have good diagnostic information you know the even the when you scan them and look at stuff on the computer the fault codes are kind of inconclusive and you have to do a lot more digging than you know just plugging it in seeing what's wrong with it but we had this with one of our longtime Sprinter technicians and I think it's like weeks go on and we can't quite figure out what's wrong with the Sprinter he looks at all these different sensors and just can't figure out what's wrong with it finally I don't know what to cause this but I decided to say a fuel sample so we do that and it is probably about 30 40 gasoline and with any Modern Diesel most diesels in general but especially modern diesels gasoline does not work well in a Modern Diesel usually this ends up in probably fifteen twenty thousand dollars in repairs your high pressure pump your injectors everything has to be replaced because diesel fuel is oil based as is gasoline but it's refined differently but diesel fuel lubricates gasoline does not so when you get gasoline in one of these engines you lose all your lubrication and you end up with metal throughout the entire fuel system this vehicle was actually under warranty so I had to go back to this customer and say hey I'm sorry there's gasoline in the fuel this isn't a warrantable condition how would you like to proceed mihai proceeds to berate me just about you know he as with the many clients that you approach them with something they probably know but don't want to hear that they've been caught in their mistake lie whatever you want to call it starts going up there's no way there's gas in my tank I only put diesel there's no way this could happen I'm like sir I understand that you know it's possible just as we see water get in fuel at fuel gate stations it's maybe you've got contaminated fuel he didn't want to hear it there's no way you need to fix it I'm not leaving until you fix it and I'm like well that's not how this is going to work especially uh me as a advisor I'm pretty low on the totem pole so of course I have to bring this up to the shop forum in the service manager he wants to speak to the manager as well so I grabbed my service manager at the time I'm like hey this is what's going on you never want to drag them in blind so you want to catch them to the side and tell them what's going on up front so they're prepared of what's about to happen so I gave them the rundown that's what's going on customers I rate let's bring them in so he comes in and I don't think the service manager got more than a couple words and this guy was just I didn't put gas in my tank this is you know you need to fix this and on and on and on we actually have a nickname to this day the services manager's name was Craig but uh his name is Mr Greg so he would get up in his face and call him Mr Greg this is what you have to do that just doesn't work you know if you want help with something you need to approach it nicely and respectfully because what's going to happen when you approach someone angry or upset their wall goes up you know they're immediately in the defensive anyway you know we like to err on the side of the customer we want to help them out so I'm like hey let's start an insurance claim this is a comprehensive claim you know something happened to the vehicle that's out of your control we can do that he wasn't keen on the idea I think we went back and forth a couple weeks we start an insurance claim we get the adjuster out he sees what's going on it goes on the case of contaminated fuel it can happen we don't know what really happened but we just want it fixed and to move on adjuster goes through I think he they approve close to twenty thousand dollars or twenty five thousand dollars worth of work put a new fuel tank fuel pump high pressure pump injectors all the lines you don't want to leave anything to chance mihai comes back he doesn't want it he decides that he doesn't want any out of pocket he doesn't want it to go in his insurance we're like well sir we've gone through weeks of this like we've already gone this far how are we going to stop here and the straw that broke the camel's back was the insurance adjuster said we'll cover all this however we need to make sure these parts don't get used in and so they said we need to drill holes in the tank that set mihai off I don't know why to this day but he says he wants to keep his fuel tank and don't put any holes in his tank he's going to keep it more like sir we we can't this is like do you want this fixed or not and he actually decided he said you will not put holes in my tank and I'm going to take my car that was eight years ago he took it I don't know what happened to it but uh we were this close to having it fixed with I think maybe a 500 deductible out of his pocket and I think we even offered to cover that for him just to help smooth over the whole situation and he wouldn't do it it sat at the lot for a few weeks he picked it up and that was the last we heard of I am mihai even with these issues sprinters were a love-hate relationship more of a hate relationship with us in service but the sales guys love these things you know you don't get the big five Pounders or anything like that as we say in the sales world you don't get big margins on these when you're getting these big contracts you get what we call a flat which is just a flat commission maybe two three hundred dollars but when you get these big contracts and you're selling and delivering 50 75 100 you've got you know hundreds more on order you know you're reeling it in pretty well didn't matter if it as long as the paperwork was signed so it may be signed paperwork come to service but the deal is done that's usually how the the sales narrative went is paperwork is signed what we call a a tail light warranty as soon as you can't see the tail lights you're home free but the sales guys are thrilled I've even uh between FedEx and more recently Amazon I've heard of different sales guys even retiring from the large commissions they have received from selling hundreds if not thousands of these things to these big Fleet companies when you get ticket it might look something like this but the first thing that you need to do is take a picture of that ticket and send it to 305 305 that will get the ticket clinic on your case immediately they've got brick and mortar offices in Georgia Florida and California but they can help you find a ticket no matter where you get it in the United States by helping you find a local attorney that will do everything they can to help you avoid costly fines insurance premium increases points on your license risk of suspension even jail time they've helped me out with this ticket and many others and a lot of my friends as well so check them out now at the link in the description below or again text your ticket to 305 305 to get the ticket clinic on your case they are the perfect partner in your fight against any speeding ticket foreign [Music]

Channel: VINwiki

Views: 305,820

Keywords: vinwiki, car stories, automotive, car enthusiast, storytelling, car trek, ed bolian, vehicle history, carfax, car guy, automotive adventure, exotic cars, supercars, car story

Id: sZ8iRO-SvOE

Length: 13min 46sec (826 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 16 2023