I have a 1985 190E 2.3 8V. I have a loud valve tapping. I have taken the valve cover off and found that the rocker arm on the exhaust valve on cylinder 3 has a lot of up and down play. I can physically move the arm up and down when it rides in the off lobe position of the cam. The head was rebuilt a year ago and I have only driven the car about 1200 miles since. Should I be looking at the hydralic follower or for an oil supply issue? All the other cylinders are fine and the car runs great, it just sounds like a machine gun. By the way I put a temporary shim in between the valve stem and the cup that the follower end sits in and the noise went away.. but it was shimmed too much and there was a miss (apparently the valve was not closing all the way with that shim). It was only for testing (1 minute of running teh engine) purposes it is gone now. Any help is much appreciated.

Replace the hydraulic element on that valve.

If the others are fine I see no reason to think you have an oiling issue. How does it look in there?

__________________
Steve Brotherton
Continental Imports
Gainesville FL
Bosch Master, ASE Master, L1
33 years MB technician

Everything looks clean and nice in there. I will order the parts tomorrow. Thank you for you help.