Thanks for the responses.

Wiring Harness
I should have covered the harness at the outset. It has obviously been replaced in the not too distant past. After doing serious background reading on this forum, I wouldn't have touched this car if it hadn't been. No guarantee that it's good, of course.

What this forum didn't prepare me for was Daimler's ingenuity in finding other applications for inferior plastics. But that's another story.

Why Bother?
I have this car because I hope it will be an interesting and educational experience. One of my day jobs is translating technical German to English. Mostly power tools and construction stuff. This car gave me an excuse to get German repair manuals and radically expand my automotive vocabulary. In that sense, I already got my money's worth.

My expectations for an E320 wagon this old are pretty limited. I don't expect a 17 year old E320 to pretend that it's brand new. Especially when it's only the 1995 update of an obviously very much older design, hampered by all manner of constraining gizmos that were never part of the original concept. I already have a 14 year old car with performance to burn. And isn't limited to some crummy 25 miles to the gallon, either. So this is simply an opportunity to explore a brand and engineering attitude that's new to me.

I would be amazed if the engine leaped into action just because I fixed a bad head and cleaned the injectors. And it didn't. So I'm now in search of a little direction along a path of systematic troubleshooting based on knowledge of these particular cars acquired by owners of much longer standing. Pointers such as "the ignition switch on these cars has a half-life of three weeks and is always the first thing to go".

With luck, we can also skip the "cars are complicated" intro. I've fixed enough of them to have learned that.

And while throwing parts at a car until it goes certainly qualifies as a strategy of sorts, it doesn't appeal to me. I'd be left wondering what particular permutation of parts actually solved the problem. And that's not why I'm spending time on this car.

When the rain stops, I'll get back to putting a light on the injector wiring.

Thanks again!