Be more concerned with the guides versus chain elongation. You can do them without a pin puller, but the puller makes the job far, far easier. Worth the princely sum of $35. While the cam covers are off, replace the camshaft oilers and new gaskets. Be sure to buy new copper crush washers. This is an easy, new guy to MB V8 job to tackle.

Do you have a copy of the factory service manual on CD? It walks you through everything and then some.

There was/is a write up on rolling a chain in the M117 on here, if you search you will probably find it. Not knowing your mechanical background, we cannot tell you the difficultly level of the job. It is more of a nuisance for me to do chains than difficulty. Not something I would recommend to someone new to MB, nor to these engines.

No way a shop would charge $2000 to roll in a chain. It is a few hour job at the most, I could see four hours of labor being charged maybe, plus parts markup. Expect the camshafts to still be out of time even with a new chain, as the sprockets wear... meaning you will probably have to buy woodruff keys to get them at 0/0.

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I'm not a doctor, but I'll have a look.

'85 300SD 245k
'87 300SDL 251k
'90 300SEL 326k

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