Welp, after a nice meeting with Mr Hunter at a Park and Ride, the issue is #6....either the injector or the prechamber. Considering this started after installing reman injectors from Bosch with now 8K on them, the prechamber probably is not the culprit. The ignorance is that after 5 Mercedes diesels, I have never heard hammering like this before. Not a sound I will forget again for sure.

With some Googling of MB injectors, I find that a company in India is advertising that they make all the Bosch components and I have no idea just how anal they are about the quality of their products. I know darn well how the Germans are so I find myself baffled over an injector that is junk after 8K miles. Not that the germans do not make mistakes....but usually those mistakes are due to over engineering, not the quality of the steel.

So, some new injectors, checking the prechamber and the IP timing and I will report more.