It was a streak of mishaps:

First I wanted to check the vaccum system of my distributor. Of course, I broke it. Since I went on a business trip anyway, I sent in the distributor to get it fixed.

Coming back from Las Vegas, after a 26 hr. stopover in Atlanta (missed the flight in Las Vegas due to increased security after 9/11) and haven't really slept for quite some time I wanted to put the car together right away.

Of course I hadn't marked the distrubutor position when I removed it (it didn't say so in the manual ) I had to install it about 25 times until I hit the right spot.

Finally, after looking at a picture of another M 102 as reference, I finally was able to start the engine.

It fired right away, also procucing a loud "klonk". Scared to death that I ruined some gearing at the distributor we finally figured out that I had forgotten to remove the wrench from the crank with which I had turned the engine while installing the distributor.

Not alone that the wrench cut one of the oil hoses to the oil cooler for the gearbox, it also opened the bolt at the end of the crank (I was glad that the pulley didn't fell of)

First problem was, that I have the steel plate under the engine, since the car used to be a police cruiser. Next problem was, that the bold had to be tightened with 200 Nm (which is a little tricky when you can't reach it from below the car but have to find your way around the radiator fan.)

Biggest problem was: The manual said: "Block the engine." It didn't say, how to block an engine with automatic transmission.

Finally we came up with an solution. Put the engine on o.T. and pulled the plug #3. We took a clean nylon rope and filled it into cylinder #3

We carefully compressed the rope and could block the engine that way.

From that ecliptical point on everything went just fine

Kind regards
Eberhard