chrise&sclass

j.Lahey
When you say clamps, are you talking about clamps to pull the axle out? If so, I saw a bunch of videos about this before I ever tried pulling the axles. I have to say, pulling the axles was the easiest part of the job. I dont know why everyone makes such a big deal about it. I did this job on an E class with 4Matic, and 2 different S class 4 Matic. All were very simple. I just got a big screw driver an pried it against a part of the frame or solid part at the area where the axle goes in and they all popped out very easily. I see all these videos with guys getting crazy trying to get the axle out. I dont understand the problem. They come out very easily.

Alfiere

Do you remember which side or how to put the bearings inside? I removed them, cleaned but i do not remembered which side to put. They fit either way

j.lahey

I think the bearings were in the bearing hub so that the protruding side was oriented to the outside, just like I think you can see from the lower picture where the bearings are still intact. If that's what you were asking?

I didn't disassemble bearings at all, just wiped them as good as I could without separating the bearing parts. Then placed them back on the same place in bearing hub and in same holes in the bearing cup.

j.lahey

Ok, interesting. Maybe there are some variations within E-class 4matics then? The car in question was E500 airmatic 4matic.

I can't remember seeing anything to pry against, otherwise I believe we would have definitely tried to take advantage of that since we were struggling to fit the clamp for a quite long time.
Once we got that exhaust clamp fitted, getting the axle was quite easy.

cetialpha5

It just depends how old the axle is and how much rust you have on it. I needed to use the muffler clamp the first time. No issue getting it on though, it was a 2008 E350 so maybe there was more room. The old one was a bit rusted. We did grease it up a little before putting in the new one. The new one caused a vibration so when I got the boot kit and reused the old one, the second time it came out easily as it hadn't been in there that long to rust in tight.