I wanted to follow up on my earlier post on my personal experience with the Harmonic Balancer failure. I took the car into my local MB shop and they quoted me $4000 to do the work which included replacing the Crank pulley, drive belt, front engine cover, oil pan cover, and whatever seals and gaskets were involved. Their quote originally included 28 hours of labor. Thanks to all of the great posts here I quickly realized that was WAY to many hours. I questioned my service advisor and he said he would gladly call MBUSA and see if the hours have been updated as that was the last number of hours they were given. As anticipated he came back saying that indeed the hours were reduced to only 18 shop hours but none of their mechanics could complete the job that quickly and went on to say that 22 hours would be their minimum charge.
I am not going to mention any dealer names but at this point I said screw you, I will send a flatbed to pick up my ML and take it somewhere else for repair. I found an indy that specialized in MB who took a look at the repairs and found that the front cover didn't even need replaced. He said it was only slighly touched and some aluminum repair would make it like new. Well to make a long story short I got the same repairs done at the indy for $1400 which included replacing a leaky water pump that the MB dealership didn't even catch. I also asked them to change the fuel filter which included also changing the fuel lines...HECK they did this part and threw it in for free!! I couldn't be happier with my experience with the indy.
As a real kick in the butt I just got a flyer in the mail from the MB dealer yesterday asking me to fill out a survey and conveyed that they hoped that my service experience was a pleasant one. YEAH WHATEVER!