ok. I printed the instructions from FSM. I read this inside, then went outside and tried to do this from memory. bad mistake. For starters I did not remove the lash. At this point between goofing the compression stroke and this I'm going to start fresh in the AM and work precisely from the printed manual pages. Thanks for straightening me out guys! I'm 100 % certain that I am just not doing this correctly.

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1978 Mercedes 240D
1981 Mercedes 240D
1982 Mercedes 240D