Dan, thanks for your help on this. It's funny, the MB manual instructions mention nothing about pumping it with oil but Chilton's does. Pumping it with oil makes complete sense to me (putting the tensioner in a container of oil and depressing the tensioner) give how the hydraulic tensioner operates.

You wrote that the engine should be cranked with the coil wire removed. I just want to make sure I know what that means. Do you mean that I should remove the starter plug wire from the distributor? I guess (?) that might make the car attempt to start (thus pumping oil) but it won't actually start, thereby maybe pushing oil through there and removing slack in the chain? I'm just guessing.