After spending about the last hour on my hands and knees sorting through wet leaves in a futile attempt to find the 'clip/ring' that is the most vital part of my timing chain tensioner assembly for my 1995 E320, I surrender. I am ready to pay my 90 or 100 dollars for losing this glorified washer. What I do not understand though is why when I look at a tensioner on ebay for my car it shows the large part that screws into the engine block but does not show the inner thing that looks like a lipstick case and actually pushes on the left chain gude to keep the correct tension on the chain. Since this is the piece that the 'snap/ring' attaches to I am wondering if it is sold as another seperate part from the rest of the assembly. Or do they just not bother showing it in the pictures? The other thing that I am missing, and I am not sure if it was even in the assembly before, was the small cylindrical thing that looks like a bullet. In fact the way in which I lost this clip ring was while I was vainly trying to overcome the pressure of the spring and start threading the inside piece. As you may have already guessed, it went flying unexpectedly and that is how my ring seperated from me.

Any homegrown ways of replacing that ring? The hardware store had a C clip that looked promising but it was a tiny bit too large and it is just too important a part for me to take a chance on.

Any ideas, thoughts, suggestions are most welcome.


Thanks,
Jim Lee