Driver1,

Haven't been on the forum in a while. If you do a search of my postings you will see i had the same problem with my base coupe and i got it lemon'd by chrysler and they replaced the car with a new Limited Coupe NO NOISE EVER WITH THAT ONE up until 40,000 lease end. I had a CLK 320 with the same engine and it had its lifters replaced 3 times from new at Mercedes. This is a flaw of this engine. Don't let anyone else tell you to check piston or oil because its a simple failure of the lifters. And in my car it started the noise only at startup and then eventually it became an ever present noise and would get louder as the revs would climb and at that point it was lemon'd. I have lots of experience with this engine in both my present crossfire and my past Mercedes Benzes. Take the car to a BENZ mechanic and see what he'll tell you then take that documentation to Chrysler and push for a replacement. The problem and noise will get worse. My current Crossfire that i got for collector purposes has been having the same problem. And now i've been driving it more often and the noise is just louder and louder and embarrassing. I'm getting ready to have the lifters replaced on that one since the dealer where i got my 3 crossfires knows me well with the incident and knows what to do. Also i'd recommend the extended Daimler Chrysler service plan i got it and i'm glad i did.