After finding the camshaft retarded on my daughters normally aspirated '81 300D, I have checked several things.

Benzmac said that he has indeed seen these engines jump time after a vac pump failure which dropped chunks into the works. I pulled the vac. pump and it's all okay.

The key on the camsprocket is also verified okay.

Has anyone ever seen a crankshaft timing sprocket shear a woodruff key?

How do you time the injection pump. I could find no marks viewable after removing vac pump. Since the pump is splined, do you simply get the cam and crank aligned on number one compression stroke and insert the properly aligned injection pump into place?

It's inevitable that I must pull the harmonic balancer, but I hate to disturb it after all the harmonic balancer problems that I've seen posted here.

Thanks for any help you can offer,

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Larry Bible
'01 C Class, Six Speed
'84 Euro 240D, manual, 533K miles
'88 300E 5 Speed
'81 300D Daughter's Car
Over 800,000 miles in
Mercedes automobiles