Originally Posted by madRiver
The video guy did some google foo and found the following recall and did a self diagnosis that was it:
https://repairpal.com/recall/05V133000
1) MB does overcomplicate things! An electrical fault leads to power braking loss!?
2) We don't know the real story if the the video guy is right or wrong, the dealer is really avoiding repair or honestly cannot find it. And what MB stance is except it is a recall.
I'm pretty familiar with the SBC system and thankful that I don't have it. Some truth to what was said. SBC was electronic brake by wire. There's an SBC pump that's basically your brakes. The pump is mechanical and will fail at a certain point. Mercedes has a counter that keep tracks of how many times you've used the brake pedal. When you hit a certain point, you get a warning about the brakes, that's the white warning. When the pump actually fails, you get the red warning and you basically only have 10% of braking power as mentioned in the video, I didn't watch all of it, skimmed through it a bit. Because the pump is mechanical, it's basically a guess when the pump is going to fail and MB is on the conservative side. In the past when people got the white warning, one way around it was to reset the counter, but that means your pump will still eventually fail, but you won't get a warning about it in advance or you might, just depends how conservative MB was on the counter. So the dealership could have just reset the counter, maybe the tech didn't feel like replacing the SBC pump that day, it's a 25 year warranty and warranty reimbursement isn't as good as a regular paying repair. When you had to pay for it, the pump was a tad over 1k at the dealer and around $800 for a reman unit online. Also had to be programmed by the dealer. So the job is around 2k at the dealer and maybe a tad over 1k at an indy, but you might still have to pay for an hour at the dealer to get it programmed. Also in terms of the warranty, originally it was a 15 year extended warranty, after that ran out, they just changed it to the 25 year unlimited miles warranty a couple years ago. The difference between an extended warranty and recall is that they only fix it if it has failed. With a recall, they have to replace it whether it has failed or not. Basically my theory is that the tech just cleared the code or didn't want to work too hard that day to replace the SBC. That is also not an unusual method of the SBC failing, pump fails in operation and then it's fine again after it's been shut down.
People who have driven both SBC and regular brakes say that SBC has better stopping power but tricky to get used to as they say sometimes it feels like it's instantly on so you have to adjust your driving a little to get used to it.