I was curious about this and did some digging(SEARCH). Mostly ran into comments from pro techs that more or less said you want the special tool.

I've had to do this on numerous Asian cars and said fooey to the special tool.
I fabricated by own.

Bottom line is simply this.

You're going to have to study the face of the crank pulley and look for anything that can be used for anchoring a counter..ie..an oval shaped pulley with eye-holes on each end. I've encountered that situation and built a tool accordingly. Just one example.

Last but not least, there's the ole "bump the starter" trick. You disable the ignition to prevent the car from starting, connect a long breaker bar with appropriate size socket to crank pulley bolt, then position breaker bar so that when the ign. siwtch is quickly tapped, the engine turns a hair and the wedged breaker bar acting as a counter causing the bolt to come loose.

The problem I have with this is:

a. potential damage if something gets air-borne
b. how are you going to tighten it up when you reinstall the bolt. You sure don't want to "bump the starter" on reinstallation.

Build yourself a tool. If Mecedes did it, so can you.

__________________
Mike Murrell
1991 300-SEL - Model 126
M103 - SOHC
"Fräulein"