hey rocky,

getting ready to get underway in a few minutes and thought i would check in. no clatter or anything on startup----the car starts rights up, warms up geat, and then when warm at idle starts that missing crap. i have heard many others on here say they drive it like that without problems, until they get the cause figured out eventually.

i did take the car a while ago to a mercedes mechanic about 100 mies from here, who is a quasi friend. he hooked the car up to that lamba meter, did a slight twist or 2 on the richener screw with the allen wrench intot e top of the air intake, and said the miss was definitely fuel related and not electronic. he was impressive and works in a huge shop that deals with mercedes, and i got hte impression it was not the first time under the hood of one of these cars (although he did say he heard they built the car around the AC evaporator and he hadnt had the pleasure of doing one of those yet, like i have.)

he said the car was lean, and the electronics were trying to richen it, and he couldnt do it with the richening screw. he diagnosed the injectors, or the fuel distributor, and said to do the injectors first (bosch recommends changing them at 100k) and change the fuel filter, plus he claimed that if i also did the fuel distributor i would pick up 25 horsepower. i know that when i break the fuel lines on the FD they all change the idle except #8, which has good compression. the mechanic never mentioned the timing or if i had ever changed the chains.

i havent done the FD yet, thats on the christmas list. and now with this 'find' in the oil, i am thinking about doing the chain and tensioner just to be safe.

thanks for the reply and i will see how it goes today. i am low on cars this holiday, plus i like smoking those rice rockets with the SL on I-40!!! Hope its not an expensive ride.....