Hello Iluvmils, I took the car to a Mercedes mechanic before buying it for a prepurchase inspection and the lifter issue is the only major problem he found with the car.

His diagnosis for the problem was replacing the lifters, now you're probably right that there might be a simple solution to this problem but maybe the mechanic decided to go for the more expensive for me and definitely beneficial to him solution.

I had a compression and leakdown test done on this car, I saw them doing the compression test and they told me it was 160 across the board.

I'm prepared to let the MB professionals do their job, what I'll probably do is try another mechanic, probably the MB Autowerks guys since they are here in Atlanta.

Thanks for your advice.