Mercedes Balance Shaft Problem/Parts Walk Through

. As a Mercedes owner or if you are thinking about becoming one, we all dread the balance shaft issue that some of these vehicles have.

Cause:  A range of these vehicles had a batch of "soft" balance shaft sprockets installed from the factory.  Resulting in the premature wearing away of the sprocket.  This causes the mistiming of the camshafts and a check engine light with error codes of p0016, p0017.

This problem does not go away, instead it gets worse with engine degradation in performance, first noticeable at take off.  The problem continues to get worse with random engine misfires and loss of power at load.   The sprocket will wear away until no sprocket is seen at all.

Here are the engines that are affected.

Model 164.156/172/186/871/886

Model 171.454/456

Model 203.052/054/056/087/092

Model 204.054/056/081/987

Model 209.356/372/456/472

Model 211.056/072/087/090/256/287

Model 216.371/386

Model 219.372

Model 221.171/186

Model 230.471

Model 251.156/165

Equipped with M272 or M273 Engine

Check Engine Light On / Fault Codes Current and/or Stored in ME-SFI Control

Module / Oil Leaking at Camshaft Adjustment Solenoi

Watch the Video to go through all the parts that are affected etc

Useful link that has all part numbers etc:  http://www.motor-talk.de/forum/aktion/Attachment.html?attachmentId=681441