Today I replace the strut in the center console armrest that performs a soft open when you push the side open latch. The strut is a little costly from MB for such a small piece but I had very good luck ordering a substitute on Ebay that comes out of Germany. It works like a charm now.

The process isn't that hard depending on how agile you are:

1. Four phillips screws hold on the lid using a metal trim ring on the top of the console box with lid open. There are two on drivers side and two on passenger side.
2. Once these are up, you can pull that ring up and it will pull the strut portion up with it and there will be a few attached wires at the back for the locking system, alarm, etc. I was able to leave these in place but if you don't feel you can work on this inside the car, you may need to disconnect these. I don't have any advice on how to do that because I didn't.
3. With the assembly partially pulled up, you will be able to access the anchor points for the small strut. There is a pin at the top and one at the bottom held in by a VERY small retainer clip. I put some towels underneath the whole assembly in case these popped out and fell into the console, you don't want that.
4. Remove the small clips and the pins and you will be able to get the strut out. It is in a sleeve on the top so push that down and out and then you will need to pull it up.
5. Install the new strut in the reverse. One challenge is that the strut needs to be slightly depressed in to get the pins to line up. you might want to exercise the strut slightly before installing to make this easier. I found it only needs to be compressed about 1/16" of an inch to line up with the pin.

Now it works like magic and never has the entire time I have owned the car!!