Having owned a 89 300TE I can say it suffered from hydraulic lifter
noise at 200K miles.
However to fix that it required new lifers and everything in the
valve train replaced because
the replacement lifters were harder metal and I was told it would
damage the camshaft.
Replacement Camshaft was harder so all the valves needed to be
replace too. However given you
had to do a valve job it was timely to replace all of that, I choose
to sell said car and buy the 83 300TDt,
(plus the tranny was taking time and clunking into reverse (rebuild
time?))
I'll also note it takes a bit of care to get the MAF setup right to
give best economy, I suffered from
poor mpg over the life of the vehicle as compared to expectations.
epa 17 city, 21 highway, 19 combined
saw on average over last two years 18.6. Other vehicles in the
stable see epa est highway number on average.
On 17-Oct-05, at 2:36 PM, Marshall Booth wrote:
There were valve guide problems (very rapid wear) with the early ('86
and maybe '87) M103s (most all replaced under warranty) some head
gasket
leaks (more in M104s) and it is usual for ALL of the Mercedes gasoline
engines to require top end work by the time the engine reaches
200-250kmi. That's what I used to call a valve job (valves, guides,
seals, maybe even seats) back when I worked on gasoline engines.
John
1983 300TDt 358k Kilometers (mobil 1 Delvac)
1990 300TDt 149k Kilometers (mobil 1 Delvac)
1993 500SEL 168k Kilometers (mobil 1 0w40)
