Thank you all for your help with this. It's the only mercedes V8 I've ever worked on so without you I'm alone with my factory manual.

i put in new cam sprockets, 3 upper side rails, tensioner, tensioner rail and timing chain. I also rotated the right sprocket one tooth which helped things quite a bit (each tooth represents 10° as there are 36 teeth in the sprocket). I can't believe the right cam shaft was off by one tooth all these years!

Now the left cam is 5° BTDC and the right cam is 5° ATDC. Isn't that strange or it lower gear wear or uneven thickness cylinder heads causing this? Will there be no obvious performance difference if i just leave it alone? Woulkd you put in two offset keys, one to retard the left cam and another to advance the right cam. If so i guess i should rig up the dial indicator, set the valve to 0 free play and determine the crank angle at 2mm of valve lift.

I rebuilt the engine 100k miles ago and I replaced all the lower rails at that time but not the gears. I really don't want to take the timing cover off.

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1972 450SL
1982 300D Turbo