M116 - Source of Gas in Oil?

[Strife]

It's a long story, but a smell of gasoline in the oil of my 85 380SL, 119K miles, persists after an oil change and driving perhaps 100 miles. I can't really continue driving this car until the source of the problem is found and fixed (and the oil changed, again). The engine runs well and a spark plug change concurrent with the oil change showed eight normal but worn, tan-colored plugs. The car does seem to "sputter" briefly when it's sat for a while hot, which it didn't do before. It starts wonderfully (other than the brief hot "sputter") in all weather, hot or cold.

This has nothing to do with the timing chain, tensioner, cam gears, etc because I changed them recently and timing is 2-3 degrees off at most. I very strongly suspect that these parts were prematurely worn due to the gas in the oil (the chain/tensioner lasted 25K).

From what I understand, there are three sources of gas in the oil. Is this a complete list?

1. Leaky cold start valve (theoretically, it could be a failed signal to it, causing it to be on all the time, but I'll check for this)
2. Leaky injector(s).
3. Leaky fuel regulator/damper(s) - this car has two.

Because of the age and mileage of the car, I'm willing to put in new fuel injectors and fuel regulators/dampers "shotgun" if I have to. I don't have the facilities to test the injectors and new ones for this car are on sale and not as expensive as the 560's. The dampers - well, they are 24 years old, and so are the injectors.

What would be my plan of attack on this? Here is what I'm thinking to do:

1. Check the signal and the function of the cold start valve (that it doesn't leak when not energized). I have a known working spare.
2. If (1) OK, replace the injectors (I have the holders, gaskets, and o-rings for these, but not the injectors)
3. If (2) fails, replace the dampers (I don't have these).

What would you "shotgun" first? The injectors or the dampers? Is the "sputtering" above a clue (that it's an injector or cold start injector?).

Obviously, I'm really worried about this - it seems like this car is getting away from me, in terms of keeping up with the number of things that go wrong (I know it's 24 years old, but I am trying). While inspecting the regulator/dampers, I also discovered that the ball for the accelerator rod had disintegrated into small pieces of plastic bits next to the LH damper, leaving the rod scraping on a metal fuel line