M110 Cam Housing Gasket
 

I have a 110 984 series & 110 987 engine. The 984 uses a gasket between cylinder head & cam housing. The 987 has never been apart & didn't come from the factory with a gasket between cam housing & cylinder head. Can anyone support this finding? If I put a gasket in there, it would throw valve settings off, but would I get better sealing? The 987 engine is the later design, so you assume other Mercedes design improvement

I was under the impression that 110s never came with the gasket between the cam housing and cylinder head from the factory. My '83 280SE did not have one (don't remember which version of the engine was installed). The service manual indicates that the gasket is "for repairs". It's not really a gasket, but rather a very thin, almost foil, sheet of metal. I suspect it could affect valve timing very slightly; I did install this gasket upon re-assembly after a valve job and did nothing to correct the valve timing. I ran the engine for another 175k miles before the car was wrecked w/o problem.

I had a POS Pontiac J2000 with an OHC 1.8 engine with a magical factory required liquid gasket material (very expensive) that you had to use between the cam cover and the head. The engine was a piece of junk with heads that warped on a predicatable basis, but the abovementioned stuff worked and never leaked...

the 110 engine liked to leak oil there. the gasket was to fix this problem.
use it if you have big oil leaks or are taking the cam housing off.
the metal gasket has a glue on it already although i still sprayed it with a copper sealer. won't effect the timing or much of anything else.
don't worry about it. do make sure that all surfaces are very clean though.

george