MTBenz420

Recently I joined the ranks of W211 owners, purchasing an 08 E350 Wagon with 140K on it. The previous owner never reported the intake manifold done. I drove a long way to see this car, and got there before the owner got home from work. I asked to hear it start up from cold, and I think I immediately recognized the rattle of a problem with the tumblers or actuating rods. I've heard it before. I am fixing an an 08 R350 with a known bad manifold that has manifold codes, a rattle and poor low end power. The owner of the E350 admitted the car has been making this noise on first start up for a while. He also confirmed as the car warms up it then goes away. I negotiated a discount based on a bad intake manifold and drove home. The car definitely has low end power problems when cold.

When I got it home and plugged it into Xentry, I had a bunch of old codes, but not any current manifold codes.

Is it common to have the broken intake manifold problem and it the car not to throw codes? I know you can have a broken manifold, codes and no CEL. My thought was to buy an intake manifold and start the job to see the actuators and levers. If they are broken, I can keep going. If not, I can evaluate my next move. Is that a reasonable plan? Any other suggestions?

e350forme

the intake flaps is what you are referring to as a broken manifold?

I have not one but TWO spare intakes if you need one.

there is usually a code for the flaps from what I heard

post what comes up. let me know if you need it. I have a fully disassembled <electronic components > w211 in my basement

MTBenz420

Thanks for the reply. I'll respond inline.

cetialpha5

When it's going, you normally have pending codes. Try moving the lever by hand and see how freely it moves. Could be something else like valves, chain etc., who knows.

Nelsonjmbf

I have the 2006 code that started as 2004 but changed when i moved plastic rod with my hand, would this combined with a non working SAP cause a rough idle on start up? i had a leak in trunk and then my front dome light console went out as well as the SAP, ALso how much for one of those extra intakes?

MTBenz420

Hello, I wanted to post a follow up on this job. I removed and replaced the intake manifold, and learned a lot. Firstly, I found that one of the actuators on the front of the manifold was broken. Here is a picture:


Before I did this job, I was trying to figure out whether to repair this manifold with the kits you can purchase from URO. If you look at the people who have done this job on YouTube, you note that some of the mechanics out of the US repair the manifold and reinstall it. However, I noticed when I was cleaning up around the intake valves, I noticed something in one of the valve ports:


I removed this debris and cleaned around the valve. Here is a picture of the piece out of the cylinder head:


My thought was that my experience supports the idea that build up inside the manifold causes the plastic vanes that move to back and forth to stick, which in turn breaks the actuators. And, it can result in breakage inside the manifold.
I decided to purchase a non-OEM manifold off of Amazon. It came the metal actuator across the front, but little actuators are still plastic. It was around $220. So far everything seems to be working fine. I have much better low end torque.

e350forme

I have 2 spares you sure you dont want oem one, real behr ones or whatevery they are.