1972 350SL Questions

[DieselPaul]

I just bought a 1972 350SL, which supposedly is a euro, it has euro bumpers and hubcaps, aside from that I don't know how to prove it is a euro. It has federal headlamps.

The car was parked, running, two years ago. However it has not been started since, I bought the car as a non runner and towed it home. My plan was to pull the valve covers and rub some oil on the cam lobes, pour some oil down the chain, and probably change the oil totally. With the valve covers off the cams look pretty good, no obvious wear, though everything is very dry. The chain also looks good, but when I touched it, you can pull up on the top half of the chain, like pulling it up away from the guide rail. It is tight on the bottom side of the cam gear. So the top half has play, and the bottom half is tight. Is this normal? I've never had an OHC mercedes V8, so pardon my ignorance.

Also, can anyone tell me what spark plugs this motor takes? It has a set of bosch platinums in it right now, which I can't tell if they look worn or not, but regardless I don't believe platinums were OE on a '72. When I had the two plugs out I sprayed some fogging oil into the cylinders.

The car came with a list of about $9,000 worth of stuff it needed from a European Indy in town, including $1,600 for a driveshaft... the flex discs just look iffy. Things like a leaky steering box and mentionned, and the A/C compressor, etc but there is no mention of anything on the motor so *hopefully* the motor is in running order.