Hello, I picked up a 1994 E420 with 107k miles, a little bit of drama at the dealership, I had previously tested the vehicle myself with the best method I know, letting the vehicle run for 15-20 minutes with the AC on and seeing how it idles and how far temp gauge goes up, it was fine. Today it wasn't, the engine was skipping and car wouldn't smoothly accelerate, I've had this same problem with my 190e 2.6 and notified dealer I wasn't interested in this. The dealer said he would drive car and see problem for himself, even though I told him no need to drive bcuz you could hear skipping yourself, the dealer drove off anyway and came back in two minutes, skipping had mysteriously vanished, from my experience with the mercedes I know you could stop this problem by changing the sparkplugs but I don't think the dealer could have changed eight sparkplugs that fast. Took it to my mechanic for PPI including leakdown and compression test, told him about skipping, mechanic couldn't duplicate same problem, said everything checked out fine, compression was 160 and leakdown was less than 20%, did tell me I need lifters, not sure exactly what this was but mech told me that's why car had a ka-ka-ka sound which I hadn't heard myself, said cost of replacing lifters including labor was $1600, went back to dealer who agreed to knock of $1000 from selling price. Later on tonight I started hearing ka-ka sound, car sounds like a diesel if you are standing outside it, will definitely fix lifters I hate that sound.

Can anyone give me info on this lifters issue and also how did skipping in idle mysteriously dissappear, got dealer to write in bill of sale that he would fix skipping if it came back within 30 days.

Thanks, sorry for long post.