I have a question on what exactly I need to do with the chain tensioner while I am r & r'ing the head gasket. On this site:
http://home.earthlink.net/~sasjzl/mercedesheadgasketreplacementjourney/
you can see #1 show a closeup of the tensioner removed as far as I can get it without removing the air pump. It allowed me to remove the chains from the cam pulleys but they say in the manual to remove this and clean it all up. Which I would love to do but they did not say anything about how to move, or remove this air pump to get it all the way out. I would also be ok with not completely removing it. Can someone tell me what the 'tricks' are that I need to know when I reninstall the head regarding this tensioner? I assume from what I have read on this and other forums that there is a very specific procedure to go through to insure that I do not have too much, or too little, tenson on my timing chain when I reassemble everything. I do not see anything about that in the manual I have except to remove and clean it.

The other pictures show a wider shot of the tension mechanism and the front right of the head/block where I am pretty confident that oil was leaking out like a river. I have not cleaned anything down there yet and was wondering if you old pros could tell me if it looks like this is where oil was gushing out. The bottom of the top timing chain cover looked fine to me which was kind of dissappointing because I thought that would be an obvious place to leak...and then fix. I am now thinking that the right front of the head, in the corner where the 'horseshoe' gasket meets at that head is not where it was leaking but just on the firewall side of that vulnerable 'corner' place. At the front right of the gasket, looking away from the firewall, where the new one is reinforced with metal. You might not be able to tell anything because of the quality of the picture but I am just curious if it looks familiar to anyone who has had this same leak.

As usual thanks to all for all the help.

Jim Lee
1995 E320 Wagon