View Single Post
  #4  
Old 02-21-2008, 03:38 AM
Strife's Avatar
Strife Strife is offline
General Purpose Geek
 
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: KY USA
Posts: 2,238
It's possible oil is not getting to some or all of the cam lobes/cam followers (lifters), and at least one pair is worn. Changing a lifter MAY help for a while but once you go through the hardened surface of a cam it goes downhill quickly. A popped-out cam oil tube fitting cause a few cam lobes to be eaten and I wound up replacing the cam and all the lifters on that side. It's a lot of money in parts even if you DIY, but the price on the parts varies widely. I'm not a mechanic but the MB shop manual is pretty thorough in this area on doing the job.

I spoke with an MB dealership mechanic with 25+ years experience , and he said that hydraulic compensator collapses are really, really rare compared to the above problem and only found on abused engines with...uhhh..."extended" oil change histories.
__________________
86 560SL
With homebrew first gear start!
85 380SL
Daily Driver Project

http://juliepalooza.8m.com/sl/mercedes.htm
Reply With Quote