And did the head gasket job on this car over the last 2 days. It was a piece of cake except for the cleaning out the oil from the cooling system, which I haven't really done yet. The good news is that this HG failure is so common that MB makes a special cleaner for getting the oil out and i'm picking some up tomorrow.
The head was more or less perfect, un-warped surface and no cracks. I just cleaned it and the block up really well and put a new HG on it. This was at the advice of the most respected MB machinist in town, FWIW. I had him look the head over, (he's done hundreds of MB heads), the surface was perfect and it's never been shaved. The CCs looked fantastic, very little carbon and plugs show a great burn. Lucked-out so far.
Here are some pics:
