Hey Guys,

I'm sitting on the last leg of my bus trip home. What a time this has been. 23 hours to travel 900 miles.

Luckily I've had my laptop and a cell internet card, without this I would have had a terrible time with hotels, bus tickets and peace of mind.

I left the car at Fred Martin in Youngstown. They are a Mercedes / Ford / Suzuki dealer. They have three Benz guys on staff, one of them (Mat) has 23 years on the job and is a Master Tech.

I got to meet all of the mechanics and stand in the shop while they took things apart. The shop rate is $85 an hour compared to my home dealership of $99 or $70 Indy. No immediate answers were found since I didn't get there until near 3pm. Mat is on vacation next week and we all decided to leave the car for him to work on since he has experience with some Euro spec cars. The transport bill to get the car home would have been $695 so I figured I would be better to spend that money on hopefully fixing or finding out what the issue is.

Maybe I'm just happy to be nearing home but I really feel like they will treat me fairly. The mechanic gave me his phone numbers and told me he would be calling after he gets a full day in on the car. The service adviser bowed out of the process because he just doesn't know enough to converse on the issues I'm having.

At this point all they know are fouled plugs, plug gaps were all over the board, he leaned out the fuel mixture, fixed a broken wire on a roll over protection switch added in the federalization, fuel on top of the fuel distributor. Detonation is occurring in the cat making a "popping" sound. (New cat 10k miles go) And he believes that the timing is not set correctly.

I'm curious if this is enough information for anyone to give input. For the good news besides the engine issue everything else is solid and in nice condition. During conversation I mentioned that if this was a huge issue I might just part the car out since the body is 9/10 and has the Euro lights / bumpers ect. Everyone looked at me like I was nuts, then told me it's crazy to part out a car in this shape.

All in all I wasn't given any BS by the people at the dealership and they gave me a nice place to setup my laptop and charge cell phones. If you're ever stuck in PA or OH on Interstate 80 these people are your best bet, maybe your only.

I appreciate the people who are following this thread.

Matthew