Bad Lifter in 91 560 SEC
 

Would appreciate any help I can get. I had a ticking coming from the rear of the engine on the drivers side. Pulled the valve cover and one of the lifters is bad...I think...the rocker arm has play so I assume it's becuase the lifter is not pushing up on it. If this is correct how easy is it to replace the lifter? Looks fairly straight forward...pull valve cover...mark and release timing chain....remove cam....release rocker....remove/replace bad lifter...reverse operation. Is it really that simple? Lifters are less than $30 and a new cam will set me back $250 or so. The shop wants to charge $900 but I don't know if that includes replacing the cam. Ideas...advice? Thanks!

Jeremy

My two cents, would be to replace the upper timing chain rails, and the chain itself.
Also, check the other cam for wear (and the lifters too).

Definetly noticed wear on one of the cam lobes - but all the other lobes on that cam are fine and there is no "play" on any of the other rocker arms. Is it normal for a lifter to collapse?

It's possible oil is not getting to some or all of the cam lobes/cam followers (lifters), and at least one pair is worn. Changing a lifter MAY help for a while but once you go through the hardened surface of a cam it goes downhill quickly. A popped-out cam oil tube fitting cause a few cam lobes to be eaten and I wound up replacing the cam and all the lifters on that side. It's a lot of money in parts even if you DIY, but the price on the parts varies widely. I'm not a mechanic but the MB shop manual is pretty thorough in this area on doing the job.

I spoke with an MB dealership mechanic with 25+ years experience , and he said that hydraulic compensator collapses are really, really rare compared to the above problem and only found on abused engines with...uhhh..."extended" oil change histories.