Chuck's comments are spot on.

The main reason I am wary of installing the cam housing to cylinder head foil gasket alone is becuase is does require removing at -least- half of the head bolts am I am just not comfortable disturbing the torque against a 20 year old cylinder head gasket. With the overall labor involved, it's not much more work to remove the head, have the surface and valve guides checked and install a new head gasket. Maybe I am paranoid, but I did this job all over and went down to the the head the 2nd time becuase of an oil/coolant mix problem after I RnR'ed the cam housing. To add insult to injury, I never acheived a leak free cam-housing to cylinder head! It was improved, but not perfect.

Also, if you do the job, make sure you reset the chain tensioner prior to re-installation. The tensioner is the racheting type, unlike the V-8. It also might be stuck in the head; I had to puchase a large metric bolt to thread into the tensioner in order to remove it for resetting. On the 126 cars, you can unbolt the A/C compressor and swing it out of the way; I would recommend unbolting the the lower brace from the block and not disturbing the bolt which connects the brace to the compressor. On my car, the upper brace bolt which goes thru the brace into the York compressor was also the bolt the held on the lower compressor head. This may have been non-factory, but it was the case on my car.

On the valve adjustment: I have always been successful adjusting the valves with a regular craftsman 17mm open end wrench, but you do need to remove the spring clips. My M110 seemed to always have had the need valve adjustment at every 10k miles.

The factory M110 manual which is included on the 123 and 116 CDs is an excellent resource.

These are fun cars; I wish I still had mine.

__________________
as ever
Paul

1989 560SL
1987 300SDL
1987 300TD
1983 BMW 633CSi
1972 280SE 4.5