Thanks for the responses. I read about the upright position in a link from one of the posts here, as well. I mentioned it to my mechanic and he said that may be true, but in real life, in his 25 years of experience (most of it at the MB of Beverly Hills dealership), they've never had that be an issue. In addition, I checked out the box the Fichtel-Sachs clutch came in, and it shows that the only requirements be that the temp sensitive metal clutches be on top. Horizontal positioning of the clutch being apparently o.k. and vertical position not requested.

I asked my mechanic about break in period as well and he said no. Initial lockup (5 secs or so) and then it should free up and work right away.

I'll check with the dealer about DTB (what does that stand for?, I can surmise it refers to some trouble report) for this part. I got my part online arrives overnight even though it's UPS Ground because it's local (from the UPS tracking info), my mechanic gets it from some distributor locally, arrives in about 2 hours.