strat300ce

At 160,000 my 1991 300CE had a piece of an exhaust valve break off resulting in zero compression. One shop said time for the junkyard. Another gave me the option of two of the three: cheap, good, fast. I took cheap and good, and fortunately the piece blew out the exhaust rather than downward. Six weeks and 2 grand later I have a completely rebuilt cylinder head, new timing chain, and head gasket. I'm lovin' it. Rob Harper

Saijin_Naib

Glad you kept it running.

Can you post some pics of the car?

strat300ce

Will do next week. Basically it looks about like yours.

ps2cho

Did the timing chain break or something?

strat300ce

The timing chain didn't break. It began to run rough on a trip, cylinder no. 4 tested to zero compression. When we got the head off one exhaust valve had a piece missing, like someone had taken a little bite off of it. The cylinder walls all looked good, no scoring, so we decided to rebuild the head, and change the timing chain while we were in there. The car had been burning a quart every thousand, and getting worse, so that should be fixed. Runs incredibly good right now. First engine repair I've had in 45,000 miles, so I'm trying to be positive about it. Didn't really have 2 g to spend but I put a transmission in it 2 years ago at about 140,000 so I didn't want to have to give that away. None of the choices seemed too great but fixing it came out on top. Still best looking MB ever, to me anyway.