Psyko

after reading the service bulletin about spark plug indexing and its importance i ordered a set of oem plugs, p/n 0041598103. i used a marked socket and extension and a brand new torque wrench set to 23 nm. the bulletin shows the gap should point to the 12 o'clock position +/-45 degrees. the plugs i removed were all in the 9 o'clock position. the new plugs i installed and torqued all ended up in the 9 o'clock position. at this point i looked through the forum and found someone with a similar issue, but no resolution other then its probably ok. so then i did an image search for the cylinder heads hoping to find a pic of the combustion chamber with a plug installed, found a few used heads on ebay and the plugs were in the 9/10 o'clock position.

so i guess my questions are:
does that bulletin apply to the USA / homogeneous combustion variant of this engine?
am i going to hurt the engine running like this?
are there any Mercedes techs here who have noticed this?

the car in question is a 2014 c300 with 82000 miles
i don't know if the plugs were original, someone had been in there before. one of the coil bolts was loose and the little plastic finger on the plug boot on #6 was broken off.

i know there's a lot of posts about this on all the forums, and i don't mean to beat a dead horse, but i just dont want something so simple ending up costing me big money.