I have a serious problem and am getting shafted by the Mercedes Dealer here I think. My ’97 S-500 (V-8 engine of course) has the tapping from the problematic hydraulic compensators on one side of the engine that so many have described in other posts. The tapping noise developed and got louder and louder over the last few weeks, and while it is not always present, it is now almost constant. When I took the car to the dealer it wasn’t making the noise at first when we put the hood up, but after 2 minutes of idling the tapping on one side came back.

I am an American diplomat living in Moscow, and I took the car to the most reliable Mercedes dealer here (“most reliable” means almost nothing however), and they are going to charge me $3,000 to fix the car. They want to replace all 32 hydraulic compensators and want to charge me $1,000 for these parts alone. They say at the same time that the timing belt and rails are worn and will replace them as well, and the main fan belt that connects all the pieces together, and the total labor for all of this will be 15 hours and another $1,000.

This seems like BS to me pretty obviously, but I need facts and informed judgment from you please. They have already had the car for 3 days, and they say that they can’t tell me which hydraulic compensator is bad, and “their policy is only to replace all of them.”

They also refuse to give me the part numbers and claim this is their policy. They are going to order the parts from Germany which will take ten days to get here. They are charging me the following for parts, and I need to know how far out of line they are, since I can order parts from America and have them sent to me duty-free. If anyone can tell me the part numbers for my car it would help: WDBGA51G8VA351677

- Hydraulic Compensators: 32 at $32.10 each or $1,027.42 total
- “Oil Bridge” is the Russian term used for what I think carries the oil to the hydraulic compensators, and each one should serve two compensators it seems since they want me to buy: 16 at $17.85 each or $285.71 total
- “Valve Fillers” in Russian and since there are 2 listed I assume there is one for each side: 2 at $47.78 or $95.57
- Timing Chain at $373.78
- “Silencers” supposedly for the timing chain: 2 at $10 each or $20 total
- Main Fan belt $73.25

There are a bunch of other parts listed, but all are much cheaper and I haven’t had my staff translate them all.

HELP!!!!

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David Foley
'97 S-500