2023 MERCEDES-BENZ Sprinter 3500

The contact owns a 2023 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 3500. The contact stated that while driving 65 MPH, there was an abnormal metal grinding sound coming from the rear of the vehicle. While driving at various speeds, the vehicle went into LIMP Mode. The transmission was shifted into neutral(N) and the vehicle was restarted. The vehicle was taken to the dealer, who diagnosed the vehicle with pinion bearing failure and the LIMP Mode failure causing an Emissions issue. The rear axle, air charger GPS, turbo, and oil sensor were all replaced. The vehicle was taken to the dealer and was diagnosed with the same failure. The vehicle was repaired. The manufacturer was informed of the failure and a case was opened to discuss a buy-back offer for the failure. The failure mileage was approximately 9,600.

Vehicle suddenly lost ability to accelerate. After driving narrow mountain roads with a lot of downshifting and upshifting, vehicle was on a long, gradual downgrade, then approached a long, slight (4%?) upgrade. Vehicle would not maintain speed and began to decelerate. Pushing the accelerator to the floor did nothing. Attempted to manually shift gears, but transmission would not downshift, or upshift. This almost resulted in being rear-ended by a semi. The speed limit was 55 and vehicle had decelerated to ~25 mph by the time I found a place to pull over. I stopped and was able to shift into Park. Revved engine and it behaved normally. I shut off engine for 1 minute and then restarted. Transmission and all other systems worked fine and continued to work normally for several hundred miles since then. There was no CEL, or other warning. There was no indication that it entered "Limp Mode." I suspected that something went wrong with the logic in the electronic transmission. Mercedes Benz dealership could NOT find any codes logged in the OBDC. The service manager told me, "It might have been some kind of computer glitch." This was a 2-lane, country road. The semi was behind me, and several cars were behind the semi. For about a mile there was no place to pull over. One impatient driver passed both the semi and my Sprinter in a "no passing" zone. We were all fortunate that there was no collision.

I noticed there was a reall of the front hub assemblies, however my truck must not be on the list of vins affected. I’m not sure where the problem originated, but I just passed over 20k miles and im experiencing signs and symptoms of what that recall would affect, this started a few weeks ago, not getting any better. It just stars vibrating and shaking pretty violently. like a wheels coming off. My father is also experiencing similar issues in is 2022 king ranch with 40k miles. Both trucks, very low mileage shouldn’t show these sort of symptoms yet. I’m not sure if they go hand and hand but it also disengages advanced track and all the front sensors and what not when it happens. After reading a few articles I do not feel the truck is safe on the road until probably inspected.