I've had my first MB for about 15 months. Last summer I put in Bosio injector nozzles from DieselGiant. They were fine and then after a thousand miles or so, I noticed my car nailing, mainly when cold and at idle. I didn't do much about it at the time except for the occasional italian tune up.

Last August, one of my axles goes bad, and I had to make a road trip in a couple of days, so I went to Napa and had them order in a couple of axles as quick as possible. When I got them, I noticed one looked like my old ones while the other looked different. It had about 6-8 hex bolts holding the housing together and I believe it was made in Quebec or something like that. When we got ready to put them in, I noticed those hex bolts were loose, so I tightened them as much as I could, then installed the axles and once again made sure they were as tight as I could get them.

I made the road trip (400 miles), and noticed some of those bolts had become loose and some grease had leaked out, so I retightened them using extra leverage to increase tightness. 800 miles later last December the axle came apart when I went around a corner and the car got towed (thanks AAA) and went into storage until May.

I then return the axle and get a free replacement that is a "regular" rebuilt one from Napa, and install it.

Today I was trying to investigate the cause of my car's nailing in cyl #5 by switching injectors and inspecting the prechamber and glow plug. It apparently is not the injector because the nailing stayed in #5 and the prechamber and glow plug looked ok to me.

So, then I decide to do an italian tune up to see if that makes any difference with the nailing and after I get off the freeway I hear a thunk, thunk, thunk coming from the same area as the axle I have already replaced twice. I am wondering if I have another bad axle, and if I do, I'm going to get the replacement from CVJ this time around and try to get my money back from Napa.

By the way, the nailing was much quieter after some hard driving, but still audible.

What I learned from this experience is don't buy just any rebuilt axles for my Mercedes, because this will be the third time I will have to switch out axles.

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