Haasman,

thanks again for the fast reply!

to be honest, I NEVER had the valves adjusted since
I got the car, and went a total of let's say about 20000
miles or even a little more. but why wouldn't it fire up
all of a sudden instead of taking gradually longer and longer
to start? can the valve adjustment go bad all of a sudden
if it's cold?
is it hard to do the valve adjustment myself? I have absolutely
no idea how to do that...

the second possibility I can think of, regarding your comments,
is checking the GPs again (they're only 3 months old), but it
might be more likely that it's the valves, what do you think?

t.

p.s.: the car wasn't used to cold weather before I got it - might
that cause valve disjustment?

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1980 300D, 156K