Autozen, Chuck and Rob-

first off, thanks for all of your feedback.
Autozen, you're right about my grandpa- things started breaking that should have been fixed on this car: I figure it stopped getting 'real' maintenance about 10 years ago. But, as I said before, the car is in relativley good shape, only 130k miles, and I do like tinkering around with things... My dad sent me his old tools he used to work on with his old home (a VW bus)- my spark plug puller and timing light are actually older then the Benz...What fun to try to figure out this old school engineering- no computers... I am also figuring out that if I want to keep this car around a while, I'm gonna have to be able to diagnose and fix most things myself....I do have the service manual, the service manual for engine 110 and the service manual for 114/115 in front of me. WOW. The section for job 7.2 is HUGE. The can of worms gets deeper.

-Idle Valves: I remember testing these with the aforementioned mechanic, L. I will re-do this test to double check.
-Dwell Angle + Valve Clearances: Found a friend with a tools to help me with this next week.
-Dash Pot : Is there another name for this? I see a fuel filter-type thing before the carb which is about half full of fuel which has the same shape as transmission dash-pots belonging to 123s I found on the internet...On the solex diagram on 7.2 900 - is the dash pot labeled here as something else?
ahhh, the Solex:
-Jobs 7-2 100 and 110: I know where I'll be on my next days off. Thanks for your comments on this.

Has anyone any experience with a 'new, un-over-tightened' Solex. Sounds like you have had good experiences with these Rob? Would it be worth it to buy one of these? I found a guy in Germany, Bob Taylor, who seems to know his stuff and has a 'new' Solex on hand. A bit pricy, but if it would solve the problem of the secondaries, at least give me fresh start from whatever happened to the car in MT....

"Never put car in drive if you are not sitting in it and/or there is someone in front of the car."

Yup. Figured this one out already. Have skid marks in my garage. ;-)

"Buying that carb, the Ford cruise control, and the Chrysler climate control were MBs biggest boon-doggles."
But there are so many of these 30+ year old cars still on the road, real workhorses. Longevity is a true test of quality, no?

May Many Many Thanks, Guys.
I'll report back with my progress.
-CJ

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1976 W114/M110 280
"The Handsome Old Gal"