It's all over. Let the crying begin...

I'll write up a DIY later (sorry, could not take pictures), but here is what transpired last night and this morning:

Jacked up the truck. Took out the adjustment bolt and bottom plate. Fussed a little (okay, a lot) with the bar itself and then focused on the hexagonal sleeve.

Wacked the rear end of it a couple of times with a hammer and a chisel (yes, you will seriously mar the sleeve, but who cares?) and the sleeve started to slide out of the coupling and towards the rear. Yes - THE SLEEVE SLIDES OVER THE TORSION BAR. A couple more wacks and sleeve slid out of the coupling enough to expose its front edge. A couple more wacks (boy, that's a lot of wacking off - sorry, could not resist, it was a loooong night) with the chisel ON the front edge and sleeve slid all the way out and the bar came crushing down.

Think of this setup as a chinese finger puzzle - hexagonal ends of the lower control arm and the torsion bar are the fingers, and the sleeve is the puzzle itself. Once you release the tension, the puzzle slides fully over the torsion bar end and viola - it's off.

Since I do not have a lift, I could not extricate the cat out and had to drop the frame crossmember holding up the center differential. 6 bolts, no probs, except for the fact that diff slipped an inch when I took the first 2 bolts out and I had to scramble for a jack to hold it up in place. So beware, if you do not want to damage that very expensive looking piece of hardware, hold it up BEFORE attempting to take the frame crossmember off. With the crossmember out of the way, cat came right out.

With buttoned down exhaust back and secure and frame crossmember bolted on, I retired for the night expecting a major battle with the torsion bar in the morning...

Wrong! I lathered up hex parts of the bar, arm and the inside of the sleeve with lithium grease and they all came together like a champ. I used a block'o'wood to hammer the sleeve as far as it would go into the coupling and reassembled the back end of the torsion bar. Put the heat shield and the wheelwell shroud back on, dropped the truck, test drove it, cleaned and put away all the tools - all in about 1 hour!

Bottom line - if you know what to expect, have all the right tools, and do not have any problems with fit and finish of replacement parts, the entire cat replacement procedure should take no more then 2 hours. Less if you have access to a lift and air tools.

As for the old cat - I will take pictures of it and will post it all over the web, as well as send it to CEO of MBUSA and CEO of DCC, and every other possible VP of the DCC I can locate, as well as NHTSA. By the time I got the cat out, it was open like a tomato can. The weld came right off and the top separated from the body. There is no way this type of failure can be caused by anything OTHER then TRULLY CRAPPY workmanship of Mercedes' part supplier. Mercedes knows about it, acknowledges it by issuing a recall bulletin, and yet CATEGORICALLY refused to replace mine (and others) - that is just plain wrong! I'll post a picture of the cat on this thread later today.

Phew...