Frankly,

The symptoms are sounding more consistent with your failure. It will be interesting to see if the tensioner rail is broken at the pivot end, the upper end was a good 1/2 inch or more off the tensioner piston and when I tried to move the rail it didn't move smoothly. I didn't think much of that at the time, because I felt the loose end of chain was laying against the bottom end, now I'm leaning toward that rail breaking.

Again, I feel lucky it happened while trying to start rather than while tooling down the road. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that the upper pan is intact just to cut out some of the work .

__________________
Mike Tangas
'73 280SEL 4.5 (9/72)- RIP
Only 8,173 units built from 5/71 thru 11/72

'02 CLK320 Cabriolet - wifey's mid-life crisis

2012 VW Jetta Sportwagon TDI...at least its a diesel

Non illegitemae carborundum.