Originally Posted by DieselPaul

I've seen some Mercedes documents stating that this can be removed, my 190D automatics both have them, as well as my stick 190E. But when we were doing research trying to find out what it was on my friends 16V he came across a TSB stating it had been determined it was not necessary and could be removed. However I can't find, nor cite that source, maybe someone else knows if that is true or not.