Just an FYI for everybody: Changed my waterpump on my 85 380 SL. It took me 12 hours. I believe it could be done in 6 hours. In my case, I just couldn't believe that MB engineers would be so dumb as to make us remove the harmonic balancer (or is it called an osciallator), and so I wasted 6 hours trying to figure a way to remove the water pump without removing the balancer.

Once I finally bit the bullet and just removed the harmonic balancer, then the job proceeded smoothly enough. Also had to remove the alternator and the distributor. Time consuming but not too difficult.

FYI: I had a 77 450, where it was possible to line-up a notch in the balancer with the bottom bolt of the water pump, and that allowed you to remove the water pump without removing the balancer. But this is NOT the case with the 380SL; you must remove the balancer (IMO).