I really appreciate the research. I was doing some research as well today and found similar information. OBD1 wasn't standardized and what Mercedes used was propriatory and is the 38 pin connection located int he fuse box. When OBDII became required, MB added this but also kept the 38 pin for hook up to Star DAS. Some MB's omitted the the 38 pin such as the SLK320 which I why I can hook my crossfire up. To program the new ECU I will have to select a car that used that V8 ECU such as the CL500 that it came out of. When I tried to do this in DAS with the OBDII kooked up, I did not get the choice to select 16 pin and got an error message that I was not hooked up to the 38 pin. The adapter that you provided the link for is for cars with the 38 pin that want to hook an OBDII scanner to. I have the opposite prroblem. I am going to keep on try different V8 cars and try to find one that gives me the 16 pin option. Not sure what else to try. I am starting to think of plan B's such as adapt part of the wiring that includes the 18 pin from an SLK that came with it. The worst option but one that is guaranteed to work is to pull the entire electronics including the dash and ignition, key transmission and all modules from a C500. This is how the other guy in Germany got his V8 Crossfire to run.