Ralph wasn't able to get back to me with the estimate and parts choices, but I should hear from him next week. I have an appointment to take the car in on March 5, and he should have all the parts by then.

Regarding the MB "rubber donut" belt tensioner I'll offer the following observations. In 1988 I won the sedan, under 3-liter class in the Silver State Classic challenge (128 MPH average, 132 top radar recorded speed along the course) a 97 mile course over Nevada State Route 318 from Lund to Hiku in the northeast part of the state.

My navigator, one of my IBM associates got so excited about open road racing that he bought an '89 Saleen Mustang that I prepared and drove while he navigated again in the '89 race. We should have averaged over 150, but we got rained on early in the morning and the first third of the course was still wet. At 130 the front began to feel a little light, so I held that speed until it dried out. Then we quickly got up to 150 and slowly gained speed with a radar gun recorded 159, but only averaged 140 for the entire course due to the restricted speed early on.

Part of the prep I did to coax a bit more power out the 302 HO Ford engine was install an underdrive pulley to the crank, which required a slightly shorter drive belt. The tensioner was basically a torsion spring with a pulley and tension can be relieved with a socket on a 3/8" breaker bar, so changing the belt was about a one minute job. I had the same experience with a C5 Corvette.

Like I said before, these vintage Mercs are very well engineered, but do they have to be so bloody complicated?

I like the helper spring on the damper. Can you tell us a brand/part number and where to buy? Great idea, but how did you get the spring installed over the eye?

Duke