Bought the daughter a 99-ML320 2-months ago. 76K miles. She's driven it about 3000 miles including from Atlanta to NY to school. All was perfect until.... last week while coming home in the rain, the engine started misfiring badly. It was bad enough that she pulled off the road and shut it off. On restart, it was fine, but the check engine light was on. My dependable experts are in Atlanta, there are no dealers in Ithaca NY, and only a few good independents. Took the car to the guy who serviced her 260E for the past two years... he says he can't figure it out but the codes say there was misfiring on some cylinder - he says the "computer is telling the car to misfire and his recommendation is "take it to dealer - replace computer".

My local guy in Atlanta says it is probably a bad plug, or plug wire / resistor, and could have been caused or rather aggravated by water splashing up on the bad wire / plug.

Now we have moved it to the other well respected independent in Ithaca and it's been there a week. They were to start on it Wednesday and as of today, they are "still looking at it - don't know what it is." When she drove it from one shop to the other, she said it ran very rough, and seemed to surge when stopping. Any suggestions??