Now I do not have a 99 diesel so I can not say from experience how hard they are to replace.

First of all 1000 dollars sounds to me to be alot of money for such a simple job(again I dont have one but I have done other cars numerous times.)

ON fastline the parts are about 20 bucks each so their goes 120.

Labor should not be more than three hours. It takes me about 2 hours to do mine and I work fairly slowly.

Now if you do a search on the forum you will get alot of various info on the replacement of glow plugs. I personally change mine whenever I get a new diesel only because I am crazy and must change everything before it needs to be. I make sense to me but for 1000 bucks I would be very hesitant to change them out.

I bought last year a 300d 1984 with 235K with the original glow plugs in them. I replaced them even though they were working for reasons stated above.

Now generally speaking the purpose, or better stated, real value of this forum is that you have access to professional mechanics and crazy people like myself who are willing and eventually able to fix most things on these cars. These folks will give you information and guidance on how to do these jobs yourself. I do not know if the common fuel rail is in the way or what special needs to be done to access the glow plugs but glow plugs are no harder to change than spark plugs when you get direct access to them.

That being stated I dont know how much a dealer would charge to change 6 spark plugs on a new mercedes. It might be around 1000.

If your car starts without any problem you can wait to determine the best course of action. At 1000 bucks he is not offering you any deal. If he had the fuel rail off already and charged you for the parts and just a littke labor I might go for it similar to the wisdom of putting in a new water pump when you change out the timing belt if it is driven of the timing belt.

If this guy has all this stuff apart why is he hitting you with 750 dollars in labor for 15 minute of work?

Agian, You most likey will get some great info from folks that did this one already,

welcome to the forum


bob c