Wife came into work yesterday saying the 400E would hardly run and stalled a few times,,,, very unusual. Took it out for an Italian tuneup and after 15 miles of rather hard driving, it still lacked power and wanted to stall. Pulled the distributor caps off today and the old 119 curse reared it's ugly head. Green corrosion all over the place. Put new caps and rotors on and made it into a new car again. Checking my records, and I keep EVERYTHING, I can't see where the caps and rotors were ever replaced in 96K, so that is really no shame. I was surprised at the price of things from just 2 years ago though when I did the same to the SL.

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95 SL500 Smoke Silver, Parchment 64K
07 E350 4matic Station Wagon White 34K
02 E320 4Matic Silver/grey 80K
05 F150 Silver 44K

I have done them twice on my 92 500, I was surprized to see the corrosion, I hope you did the rotors also. The caps were $118 ea and rotors $50, times two, at 50,000 and $157 and $97 this time at 90,000!

Pete and Peter:

The exact same thing happened to my 1991 300E two years ago. Wife complained about sudden shut off (always start right up). Replaced the plugs and saw no difference. Did the rotor and cap (severly worn and corroded after 100k miles) and all is fine for two years now.

I've done them a few times on several 119 motors and find prices to be declining.