After unsuccessfully trying to start my 1976 450SL after winter storage I tried poring a little gas down the air intake and all I got was a little backfire. The car seems to want to run, but it only lopes on what seems to be maybe one cylinder briefly for a few seconds. Last year before storage it ran great, except that even after replacing all injectors, plugs, sparkplug wire, coil and fuel filter, cylinder seven gives intermitant problems. Sometimes this plug gets fouled)

I had a battery charger on most of the day yesterday and tried every couple of hours to start it to no avail. Interestingly, after all that cranking, there was no perceptible smell of gas. You would think I would have flooded the engine at some point and would have smelled gas.

I haven't checked for adequate spark, as I don't know how to do this. One of my questions is, is there a fuse or fusible link for the fuel pump? I checked the fuse panel under the passenger kick panel and all fuses appeared to be ok. My brother, who is a body man, said I may have blown a fuse it there was some ice in the pump when I tried to start it (It was about 35 degrees here yesterday morning.

Is there a simple way to test if the fuel pump is working? I have the Haynes manual, but my automotive skills aren't that good. If I could get the car running, I would drive it to one of the local shops that works on mercedes here in the Minneapolis area.

Does anyone have recommendations as to which shop is good? I don't feel good about one of the local MB dealers as they charged my $1,000 to replace a rear wheel bearing last fall and I thought that was pretty high

Any suggestions would be appreciated.