Hatterguy, you may be right. What is missing here is he should really take the time to knock the engine down just to accertain what is what. At this point the extent of the damage is an unknown. Expecting to pay others to do everything for us is probably not viable in this economy. There is no doubt I would like to turn over some of my problems when they occur and just say fix it as well. Pretty soon I would not own the cars. Thats perhaps why people like us have access to so many used mercedes. I changed my buying profile awhile ago. I simply tell the seller the retail price of what I find wrong to repair. Greatest buying stratagy I have found so far. Much better approach than just telling him what is wrong. We can fix a ton of problems ourselves at really reasonable costs. I consider it a hobby. If I repaired cars for a living it might be otherwise. Since his engine is not known to bend rods with a little effort perhaps a good set of used rods are available cheap. That is one of the reasons I personally like to see young people own these cars. It teaches them how to be resourceful in a lot of cases. That training stands them in good stead for the rest of their life. Doing the labour yourself does keep the price under control. Then if bore damage was evident you could go for a short block. Either used, rebuilt or new. I myself would not even bother to go inside this engine if a good cheap used block could be found. For a few hundred dollars for example. Different people will always tackle problems different ways. Right now there might not be any bore damage depending I think on how many miles it has been driven since the event. He simply might have a few bent rods. Anyways until someone has a good look or has dealt with this particular problem on this particular type engine a few times so they pretty well know what to expect in there its pretty well up in the air at this point. The only positive thing I know is the more this engine is driven in it's present condition the more likely it is that additional damage could possibly occur. This site is primarily for the guys that are prepared to get their hands dirty.

Anybody want to know the pricing of a 606 shortblock?

Here you go...:

http://www.rebuiltenginesformercedesbenzcars.com/catalog.html

Scroll down to the bottom of the list.

A shortblock OM606 is $4,495, A long block is $8,195.00
FWIW, the same price as the 350.

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1987 300SDL (324000)

1986 Porsche 951 (944 Turbo) (166000)

1978 Porsche 924 (99000)

1996 Nissan Pathfinder R50 (201000)

Who are those guys??

Wow, they've come down quite a bit. When I checked a couple years ago a longblock was over 12K.

Edit - Metric Motors also has a 606 (mis-classified under 350SDL) longblock for 8200.

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Rick Miley
2014 Tesla Model S
2018 Tesla Model 3
2017 Nissan LEAF
Former MB: 99 E300, 86 190E 2.3, 87 300E, 80 240D, 82 204D Euro
Chain Elongation References

No idea who those guys are??

If I were doing to shell out $5k for a rebuild I'd want to be very carefull that it was a quality rebuild. The fact that Metric is about $3,500 more would make me queston whats the difference?

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2016 Corvette Stingray 2LT
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200