My daily driver has been performing like a champ...the only time she let me down was when her distributor cap had cracked and wouldn't start - and how could she help that?!

Please allow me to bring you up to speed on this car. When I acquired her, the vac. line coming from the distributor had been disconnected to increase idle speed or make her run smoother. When a mechanic saw that, he was baffled and connected it. Oddly enough, she did run smoother at that time but not when I first learned of the disconnect.

Many moons pass and she's idling low at stops - the oil pressure drops to 15 and the generator light attempts to glow. Otherwise, give her gas and she's fine.

About a month or so later, I have the belts replaced.

It's time for an oil change, so I change out the oil, air, and fuel filters and get new plugs. The sparks installed are platinum. The tubing attached to the air filter has cracks, so these are patched until a new tube can be ordered.

She runs almost good as new for several weeks but the low idle at stops continues, so that really wasn't addressed - she just seems stronger.

The upper radiator hose busts...I catch the climbing temp in time and get her stopped. She's blown almost the full contents of the radiator on the engine. The next day, when I have the replacement hose, I refill the radiator with red 50/50 antifreeze (had some in the car for topping purposes). Although not to the mark, the radiator seemed full. However, the temp guage white-lines before I can get her stopped. Opening the cap, she looks dry, again. So, getting more antifreeze and waiting a time, I fill her up and away we go.

As the weeks pass, her performance seems the same and I wonder if the radiator incident has done some internal damage. No signs of any...just a concern. It seems she should be looked at by a Benz mechanic - mine is great and knows old cars...but not Benz and certainly not of that age.

The Benz mechanic proceeds to lecture me on the amount of money needed to fix the car. I brought it to him for a tune-up and advise, not to be told that it needs a new window regulator, muffler, and gear shift couplings - which I knew about. But even this guy didn't know a great deal about the 1970 model.

Running away from there, but realizing I might need to use him anyway, I concluded that the timing had to be off after taking the car from the place. She seemed to perform worse. Now, instead of a low idle speed at stops, the engine stumbled when giving it gas. She purred fine about 20mph but stumbled under that.

My mechanic adjusted the timing on the distributor counter-clockwise (clockwise nearly killed the engine) as far as it would go, which wasn't much. Again, she ran a bit better but now was stumbling the same under 20mph and slightly until 30mph. However, giving her gas was almost as if nothing was happening - she was acting as if the engine was being starved of air, fuel or both. I had the pedal to the floor at one point and nothing was happening. Tapping the pedal lightly, would bring her to life.

I blind-corrected the timing by turning the distributor clockwise slightly. Which is where I'm at now. Get her going and she flies - no stumbling above 10mph...however, coming to stops she has low idle and will stall sometimes. Giving gas is a stumble but not as severe.

So, with new air, fuel, oil filters, new spark plugs and a distributor cap...I've read posts that seem to think this is a fuel pump issue. Any suggestions?