NHTSA Complaint #11499006 — 2006 MERCEDES-BENZ E350

Driving the vehicle on several occasions on Interstate 66 and the vehicle spontaneously went into limp mode. Now we find out it's a balance shaft issue and is a known problem from Mercedes in the M272 engines for our 2006 E350 4-matic. They evidently used balance shafts with materials that were too soft, resulting in premature wearing of the balance shafts with all of the M272 engines produced during this time having the problem. There was a previous class action lawsuit, which Mercedes settled, however, the consumers were not adequately notified and no recall was ever issued for the cars. Now we have 2nd or 3rd owners having these problems that didn't get a notice and have no idea there is a huge expensive and dangerous problem with their vehicle. On I-66 traffic moves at 70 mph (regular lanes) or 75 mph (express lanes). Having the vehicle spontaneously go into limp mode because of this engine issue is dangerous and could have caused a fatal accident on multiple occasions for us. Mercedes should be recalling all of these engines and fixing them properly before someone gets injured or killed. When I spoke with Mercedes, they said because I was not involved in the class action suit at that time, they were not willing to fix the car or pay for any portion of the repair, which they quoted me as costing $16,228.96. The problem is the Mercedes went into limp mode on multiple occasions and there was no check engine light to indicate what the problem was for several months. We had no warning that this was going to happen which created a dangerous situation while driving. There were several incidents on different dates spanning months before a check engine light came on with codes and Mercedes could identify the problem specifically was the balance shaft failure.