I will pull the intake manifold tomorrow and check. The head gasket job was done by a shop that I don't trust at all, (not MB people), before I got the car. They charged my buddy $3600 to replace the head gaskets w/o a valve job or other head work and used the cheapest parts available in every case.

I'm pretty sure that they then test drove the car and it overheated right away. Rather than tear it back down and figure out what went wrong, they somehow determined that it would run cooler with the heat comepletely bypassed and told him that he needed his heater cores replaced for some crazy price. (That is about a 25 hour book job). He drove w/o heat from then on until he basically gave me the car when it needed another pricey repair later.

The car does run cooler with the heat bypassed but it will still overheat on a hot day w/ A/C on. Something weird is going on and I've been chasing my tail going through the normal cooling components. It's a really nice car, (70k miles), I can't wait to solve this problem. (And one other but that's another thread).

Thx again for all replies.