Hello all!

I recently aquired an 84' 190e 2.3 manual. Back story:

Basically the previous owner loaned it to their nephew and after two years it came back on a tow truck and wouldn't start. Along with a few broken out lights. About 9 months after that I got hold of it.

It would start if you put gas directly into the intake and run for a few seconds or so. A friend that is familiar with these cars said "the fuel pump fails all the time, especially when they sit for any amount of time". So I thought that should be easy enough and without any real trouble shooting(read that as zero trouble shooting), I replaced the fuel pump. It drove fine that night, went for about a 15 minute drive, got it up to about 70, shut it off a few times, started back up. All seemed well. However it still had some lighting issues that I wasn't ready to address.

So about a month later I come back to address the lighting problems and it wont start again. Starts if you put some gas in the intake. I started doing some real trouble shooting this time, mind you I hardly qualify as a bad shade tree mechanic. Considering the pump had just been replaced, i did a quick test of the pump by applying a 12v 6a current to it and I could hear it pumping so I figured that was fine and went about testing out the relay instead.

I have gone through, i believe, all the steps in the alldatadiy.com instructions for how to test a fuel pump relay and it appears to be fine. Yet it still does not start.

-If I put the ignition to "on", you can hear a very short sort of click sound at the pump.
-If I apply a 12v 6a current directly to the pump you can hear it pumping pretty strong
-When I put a multimeter on the leads to the pump and had someone start the car. I saw an initial current from the "on" ignition position, a drop, then i saw a stead current while cranking the engine. However I do not specifically hear the pump working when cranking the engine. It is possible I just cant hear it over the sound of cranking
-I unfortunately do not have the preasure gauge to put directly on the end of the pump, but I try the ghetto way and just took the nut off the output end of the pump and tried cranking the car, no gas appeared to actually come out. Not sure how good of a test that was though.

So I'm a little puzzled as to proper testing methods and I'm a little puzzled over the results I've gotten thus far. Any help on what I'm doing wrong, or right or anything else I should try to isolate the issue are much appreciated. I sort of assume I'm doing my testing wrong considering my results but not sure. Was hoping maybe someone with a little more experience could point me in the right way.

Thank you,
Lawrence

Edit:
Also when I tried to jump connectors 7 and 8 with the relay removed. Which as I understand it should basically "hotwire" the pump, i heard nothing from the pump but the jump wire I used turned bright red after about 4 seconds. It was removed immediately. It was about a 10g or 12g steel piece of wire.