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In the section '2.6 L' a small paragraph refers to using "Elfin magic" to "shift gears." Is this some sort of joke? Should it be removed? Jhswalwell (talk) 20:13, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
see discussion on Mercedes-Benz R129 page. This page appears only to be correct for the US market. I have added "R129 300SL" to the uses for the 3 litre engine as there were 12,200 of these cars sold in Europe.Don Crewe 12:26, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Other important information: the engine (at least the 2.6l version) is known to leak oil through the valve stem seals. Mercedes can fix this this by replacing the stem seals, which will cost a trained Mercedes engineer about 8 hours. I have no idea about the price of the parts, but I guess those will be low compared to the cost of the work. The fix will only help for new engines, which obviously don't exist anymore.
What happens is that the oil leaks into the cylinder, which causes a bad combustion. The coal will at least ruin the spark plugs, and if things get worse it will burn the valves. If you drive lots of long trips (especially highways), you can get very far with this problem, at the price of adding approx. 1l of oil every 1000 to 1500 km and replacing the spark plugs at every service (I got 290000 km that way with my 260E). After that the valves will be burned and the engine will only run on 5 cylinders or less. The only option is an engine head overhaul, with some luck you don't have to overhaul the short block.
Symptoms: blue smoke from the exhaust, especially if the engine has been running idle for some time. Engine will run very bad when you have to drive in traffic jams, to the extent that it will almost shut down. Oh, and you get an occasional misfire when accelerating, which you can "fix" by lifting the throttle and pressing it again (the misfires are the reason that you shouldn't fit an LPG fuel system in this car before the oil leak problem is fixed).
The engine was used in the 190E-2.6, W124 260E, and the W126 260SE, occasionally I can see (and smell!) the problem when driving behind one of those.
Now I don't have a good reference for this information, I got it by talking to the guys at the local mercedes workshop. That's why I don't put this into the article itself.
Erikm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.126.206.180 (talk) 17:37, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
I owned a US 1986 300E for awhile in 1998. It was brought over from Germany using the European Delivery program, but was outfitted with all required US/DOT equipment. I distinctly recall that the owners manual listed the power output at 177kW, not 177HP. This worked out to 237HP. I believe this is correct, since the car had a lot of power compared to the 190HP VW 30V V6 ATQ (or even the 170HP VW/Audi 1.8T). I have seen the 177HP number on some sites like Edmunds, but I don't think it's correct, I think it is a kW number being incorrectly used. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.230.177.190 (talk) 17:33, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
Moved info about 722.3 transmission to the 4G-Tronic page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.172.112.119 (talk) 22:17, 22 September 2016 (UTC)