Went to start up my 98 E300D this AM, after it had been sitting for at least a week.

Car has been fairly reliable, last was suffering from a very small leak in the fuel system somewhere that would let air in if parked on an incline, nose up. I have replaced most of the likely fuel lines, but will need to dive in further I guess.

After the first no start crank, I popped the hood....sure enough I had some air in the line where the prefilter was. Second cranking time was limited to 10 seconds, and the engine tried to catch once. On instinct of my other older vehicles, I opened the throttle to try and coax it to life....didn't help.

I then moved the vehicle to a nose-down attitude, and did a third starting attempt (all attempts were limited to 10 seconds, with several minutes between).

Car no longer has and air in the lines, but refuses to even try and catch.

Did I flood it? Something else I should try?