I have an 87 SDL 300 with about 270k. It lost power for the brakes and would no longer shut down when the key was turned off. I knew it was a problem with the vacuum pump and found as feared that the internal parts of the pump had come apart and some had found a new home inside the block.
As the car had been driven quite a bit in this condition I fished out what I could see and put on a new pump. My hope was that the parts had found their way to the bottom of the pan and I was not anxoius to go about doing the complete search and retrieval for the bearings other pieces that were missing at this time. In addition it was on my wife's side of the driveway and if I was to launch a complete search and recovery it would have to be somewhere else.

With the new pump installed I started it up and it ran great! And had a properly working vac pump! All the excitement was lost as i moved it out of the driveway. I heard a loud clink, the engine began nailing very loud and lost power.

So now I am trying to determine my next steps. I suspect/hope that the damage is limited to the ip gear being off a link, or two. My plan is to set the crank to tdc and check the cam marks. If they line up I will reset the ip timing and see how it runs. If the cam & crank do not line up I will need to take the chain off to reset them as well as the ip. Of course if I get it to run well again I will need to take off the oil pan to fish out all the missing pieces.

So I have some questions for anyone with experience/knowledge for this type of issue, or anyone who has read this far and would like to give their 2 cents:
1 - How far off can the cam & crank be before damaging the valves?
2 - Is it worth the effort to try to fix this engine?
3 - Is there a better approach to fix this than I have described?

Thanks - th