"Don't change the operating parameters" - a 190E build

Winter work has started.

First, I pulled the diff with the help of a friend. Much easier to do on a concrete floor than on a gravel driveway...

Here's the RacingDiffs kit:

I took my time and it was fairly easy to remove the diff housing from the case and install the blocks.

However, on those diffs, the circlips are the shims to preload the bearings. You can't put the last clip in without stretching the case!

Time to buy yet another tool...

It is the standard case stretcher from Amazon. It is designed to work with standard Dana axles. I figured it would work with some custom adapter plates...

So I drew plates that would bolt on the side of the diff to fit the tool. I also drew another plate model to bolt to the case (at the "top" and "bottom") to hold the diff on jackstands. I ended up combining both in one plate:

It took me a few turns with an adjustable wrench and the clip went in!

Next is axles...

When I was removing the diff, I found out that the axles were greasy. I pulled them to refurbish them.

Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the boots were dry and cracked.

Obviously, water got into the outer joints on both sides...

Unfortunately, you cannot get aftermarket axles anymore. They seem to be only available from the dealer... at 450$ a piece! The only available parts are the boots and the outer joint. I decided to get 4 boots and clean them up as best as I could and run them.

For those who are interested, I found this shop (not affiliated by any means) who makes stronger aftermarket axles and even a conversion kit that uses universal joints for high torque figures. Basically, for the price of stock axles from Mercedes, you can get stronger ones:
https://www.thekangaroosteam.com/shop-1/drivetrain-upgrades

Here's the finished units after a lot of cleaning and re-greasing:

While I was working on the rear subframe, it was time to fit the rear sway bar. As I said previously in this thread, common knowledge around Mercedes forums is that the only bars that fit the W201 chassis are the W201 bars. This means that if you want to upgrade, you need to find 16V or even Evolution parts, or go with the aftermarket Ultraracing bar. Both are $$$. Then one day, I found a post of one guy racing a 190E in Lemons or Chumpcar or something like that who said that a CLK430 bar fits good and works. The W208 CLK is very similar suspension-wise to the W202 C-class, which is the successor to the W201 190E. I got on eBay and found a CLK430 bar and ordered it. The diameter is 16 mm. There's also the CLK55 bar that was also available and can be found used, which has a diameter of 18 mm. Stock W201 is 13 mm.

To remove the old bar, you need to drop the subframe and remove the upper links... Fun.

I don't have pictures of the new bar in the car, but it went in. It's about 0.5" wider than the W201 bar. I think it'll work. I am still waiting on bushings for it. I went with universal Energy Suspensions poly bushings instead of OEM.

For the end links, the W201 uses a plastic part. I was hoarding S124 wagon metal links for a long time and it was time to install them. I thought they would be bolt-on, but no! The bottom bushing is wider by about 10 mm! Fortunately, it's just a solid rubber bushing with a steel tube inside. I cut a few mm off each side and they went in. I'll take more pictures later.

And finally, the stock US headlights had yellow fog lights. The DEPO e-codes I bought in 2015 had regular white bulbs. I swapped that to get the original look:

   That sure looks like a lot of work.   When you put the axles back in, be sure and use a torque wrench, to the proper torque.  If not the bolts can snap like a dry twig,  don't repeat my mistake.   Might even consider new bolts.  I used new bolts on a similar set-up, after the first set broke (the ones not properly torqued).

The rear bar is in. You read it here first, on GRM: W208 rear sway bars fit on a W201. Stop looking for unobtainium 190E Evolution II bars and get the 16 mm or 18 mm units from the CLK430 or the CLK55!

I finished the install with universal Energy suspension bushings:

On the pictures, the camber links were not installed. I re-installed them and cycled the suspension. It seems to work. There isn't a lot of clearance between my aftermarket camber links and the bar. It might not fit with stock camber links...

Another thing I wanted to fix was the wheel offsets. The car looks good from the side, but from 3/4 views, the wheels are "hella sunk like the Titanic" (saying this takes me back to my stance days circa 2010...). I had 20 mm and 12 mm spacers laying around that I was using with the stock wheels. With the wider wheels and un-rolled fenders it wouldn't clear so I took them off.

To start, I installed a wheel with the 20 mm spacer to see how it would look. It was poking just a bit too much:

So I hammered the fender lips flat (I heated the fenders with a heat gun so the paint wouldn't crack) and fitted the wheels with the 12 mm spacers. I think it's right:

I put the other side wheel on, and there was much more fender clearance... Something was wrong. But then I noticed that when re-installing the sway bar, I swapped the camber links from side to side! So next time at the shop I will swap the links back, I just might get enough clearance to fit the 20 mm spacers!

Are you planning an M111 swap? I know that ECU which plugs directly into Bosch 2.0 ECU harness you know :)

Thought about it, but no. 

You're talking about RusEFI?

Do you have anymore S124 endlinks? 

Also, I need more information on your dif mods.

I got the S124 endlinks from Rockauto. They're Delphi #TC2119. You need to cut the bottom bushing so that its total lenght is 40 mm in order to fit it inside the W201 control arm.

The diff kit is from Racingdiffs:

https://racingdiffs.com/collections/lsd-conversion-sets/products/mercedes-benz-progressive-lsd-conversion-set

We'll have to wait until spring to see how good it works. From the info I could gather on the internet, it seems to work well for moderate power levels. 

I can send the dwg file for the diff spreader adapter, or I can get a batch made if more people are interested.

Rocambolesque said:

Thought about it, but no. 

You're talking about RusEFI?

yep that one :)

With the rear bar in place, it was time to install the front bar. I thought I could just get away by flipping the stock brackets around to put them in the stock 190E 2.6 position and use the correct bushings for the new bigger bar, but it didn't work. I realized that the new bushings had a larger OD and that the actual 2.6 brackets, which were also used on W124 cars, had provision for the larger bushing. So I had to purchase those. I also had to purchase the other "half" of the brackets (no pictures) and that took long to arrive. But now it's pretty much installed.

With that done, I did other small jobs like aligning the rear bumper, which sat crooked since day 1. It's a bit far from the body, but at least now it's centered and the gap is even. It'll look better when painted.

I had a local shop turn my rotors and I painted the hats with VHT exhaust paint.

I wanted to polish the faces of my wheels and repaint the "windows". I made the mistake of having them sandblasted to remove the paint/clearcoat, as the good "aircraft paint remover" stripper isn't available in Canada. The guy who did the job told me he would use a fine sand and I asked him to only do the faces. He returns the wheels 1 month later, fully blasted with a coarse sand... I thought about having them powdercoated, but shops quote 750$ for that and that's for basic colors and finishes. So I see a whole lot of sanding in my future. More on that later, but here's one wheel after hitting the face with a 60 grit paper on a DA. I will have to sand more to get all the pits out.

The next big job was to rebuild the lower radiator support. It was rotten from the inside out, but was still holding the rad in place.

I removed the bumper. While doing that, I found out the side brackets were also rusted and I will repair them. It shouldn't be too hard.

About that time, I figured that my ITB idea wasn't really the best and that the way to take advantage of this big strong engine and those long gears was by going turbo. I don't know when exactly that would be done, but I had to keep that in mind while building the rest of the car. If you look at the previous picture, you'll notice that the stock support is a formed tube tied to the top "cross tube" with brackets. The rad is installed in the brackets. It's light and strong, but at the same time, the area between the back of the bumper and the radiator was occupied by the brackets. That means there is no room for an intercooler. Also, with the location of the tow hook, both boost pipes would have to come from the left side of the car. But with the shape of the lower radiator support tube, there would be no room to pass the tubes.  The plan was to build a new, removeable, radiator support, that would take less space.

I started by cutting the old rusted tube.

I used a 3/4 steel tube and flat side brackets made out of flat bar:

The brackets would bolt into the frame rails and the tube would now be located under the fan shroud:

I made some "weld nuts" to fasted the bolts into the frame rails:

Made some brackets:

Welded onto the tube:

I added gussets to the side brackets and installed the thing in the car:

Holding the radiator:

Now there's enough space for an intercooler!

It even has tapped 10-24 holes to hold the belly pan.

Now it needs paint and I have to cut the old parts off. 

The next big job is the timing chain.

I really like the detail behind this thread. I hope someday I own one of these MT Benzes and can benefit from the knowledge shared here (example: budget swaybar updates & potential end-link issue).  Happy motoring!

Put the diff back together. When doing this, I realized that the ratio is 2.86:1, and not 3.27:1 like I thought I had for some reason. During the reassembly process, I had a bit of trouble with the circlips that hold the stub axles in. Originally, there were radial clips at the end of each stub. The clip would rest against the face of the side gears. With the "LSD" blocks in place, there was no more room for those clips. Racingdiffs include circlips to convert the stub axles to a "push-lock" style (like you would find on some inner CV joints). I had the wrong clips, they sent new ones, all is good.

Moving on to rust repair on the bumper brackets. Starting with the right side:

Left side was almost identical...

After that, I went over the welds with seam sealer like this

I had a lot of painting to do on the front end. I started with the front crossmember:

While I was in there, I decided to refinish the top radiator support where the OEM paint was slowly chipping away.

Side brackets primed and painted:

Filling and smoothing the inside corners:

I don't remember if I showed this here, but the front right fender was rusted and got damaged when I rolled it. There were a few rust holes in it, but the general shape was OK. Since welding this was not really possible (too apparent and I'm not good enough to weld the "class A" surfaces hehe) and finding a new fender was difficult, I decided to fill the holes with POR-Patch and smooth them with filler.

Then I got to masking in preparation for primer and color coats:

Finally, primer and color

In the end, it looks like the primer sprayed further than the color, giving me that "line" you see in the last pictures. It doesn't really matter, because this area is almost invisible with the headlights installed. I was satisfied of the repair and the finish from the spray cans!

After claybaring, the fender came out great. Now 100% invisible, but miles better than it was and surprising finish from a can. I put clearcoat on the fender, but not in the engine bay.

Now a special post for those who said they enjoyed the details in this thread:

Before reassembling everything, I had to solve another issue. The headlights mount with 3 screws. 2 on top of the radiator support, and 1 at the bottom of the headlight assembly. The bottom one screws into this expanding plastic clip thingy. Now, I couldn't put rusted screws on my freshly painted radiator support... Also, I lost one of the bottom screws and both my plastic expanders were broken. I got new expanders, but to make a long story short, I couln't find the screws for sale anywhere. They were part of a "headlight installation kit" that is mostly NLA or prohibitively priced. The top screws were similar to a regular metal screw, but the bottom ones were unthreaded at the tip to push into the expander. Those are the old parts:

By measuring the screws, I found out that the thread was identical to a #10 metal self drilling screw. So I bought a pack of long ones on amazon:

Built a "lathe":

Got something close, but not perfect. By chucking the head of the screw, the runout at the tip was too big and the resulting diameter was inconsistent. 

I ended up chucking the tip, "machining" (with a file!) a portion of the threads and cutting the screw to length.

Now that's good:

Works as intended:

I made a total of 6 screws. 2 had the special tip and the other 4 were just the stock metal screw cut down. In the end I hit them with cold galvanize to finish them:

More reassembly tomorrow maybe...

After fabricating the screws, I reassembled the front of the car:

And finally:

Once the car was on the ground, I realized that there was a problem with the front sway bar. It wasn't matching the control arm's angle anymore with the lowered suspension:

So I flipped it

I noticed that the headers were slowly melting the plastic loom on one part of the wiring harness, so wrapped it with DEI sheating:

FIxed the alternator wiring while I was in there, it was bugging me since day one (sorry, no before pic):

Finally out of the garage!

For some reason, it now drives muuuch better than last season. I didn't get pictures of this, but over the winter I changed the fuel tank vent valve. The car was always smelling like fuel and there was pressure/vacuum in the tank. Now it doensn't smell anymore and the thing runs smooth!

Now the wheels... If you remember a few posts back they were full of pits from sandblasting. Well, after many hours of 60 grit all the way to 2000 grit, let me show you the result:

Needless to say I am very satisfied! I will finish the remaining 2 over the next days and paint the non-polished parts. They will look wild on the car!

OK, one last picture on the stock wheels:

I had to run the old wheel/tire setup for a while because the "good" wheels weren't done.  The old tires were from 2015 and sat in the sun for whole summers when the car was down at my old place. Let's just say that their service life was over and they were just a temporary solution... The pseudo-LSD (which works good BTW) in the rear with those plastic tires made for some interesting handling.

Anyways, back to work on the 16" wheels. I spend many hours carefully masking the polished surfaces:

I carefully applied a few coats of Proform 5 into 1 primer, followed by many coats of Dupli-Color silver wheel paint and clearcoat. 

The end result is this:

I am very pleased with the results! For the first time, I actually read the instructions on the paint can and shot all the color+clear coats in a 2 hour window. It looks fantastic, very OEM+ look.

Then I found a new garage next to my shop that was open on weekends, the guy was cool and he mounted the tires the next Sunday.

It looks great with the 20 mm spacers in the rear (12 mm in the front too)

A few more:

I find that the look is just classic 90's Mercedes. A dark 2-tone paint job, polished wheels, black interior with wood trim and Pioneer 6x9's in the back, etc... It could have been a car from a rap video. King T would drive this thing lol.

I've been driving the car more. It drives good. The engine delivers good power for what it is. 1st and 2nd gear acceleration is brisk. 3rd is good for a fast pass on the highway. So far I am impressed with the performance and the smoothness of the 2.3 engine. 

Since the Megasquirt installation, I had this weird issue where the car could drive well at one time and run rough and misfire if I cycled the key. To remedy, I could just cycle the key again. I think I found out why now. I set up the car in "untimed injection" mode, where the injection event is randomly chosen everytime the key is cycled. I originally thought that untimed meant random injection point, but always constant all the time. Seems like I didn't understand correctly. I might try switching to semi-sequential to dial it in better. Or maybe I'll go full sequential over the winter. We'll see.

I started fixing small things. My sunroof wasn't operating as smooth as when I bought the car. Last year, it started requiring me pulling the panel forward to close it if the temperature was colder than 20C outside. This summer it did that all the time. I found out that those Mercedes sunroofs require a special grease called "Gleitpaste" (of course it needs a special tool/lubricant...). That grease is normally sold in large containers which cost a lot. I found a vendor on ebay selling it in 14g containers. I bought that, cleaned and greased the sunroof rails and now the sunroof slides like a new one.

The car also has a Hirschmann power antenna which used to work. After sitting for so long, it just quit working. I disassembled the antenna and found out that if I would extend it by hand (by turning the motor), it would retract automatically when I reconnected it to the car. I tested all the eletrical and by using the wiring diagrams I concluded that the wiring on the car side was functioning properly. Thinking that it could be a bit corroded from sitting all that time, I ordered the correct antenna wipes for a few dollars. It didn't work. The antenna could retract, but couldn't extend. 

I took a look at the circuit inside the antenna and found out that a few components looked burnt.

Of course, all those antennas and most parts (except for the mast itself) are now NLA. I couldn't just buy a new circuit online, and a complete, working, second hand antenna could fetch from 150$ to 250$. 

But the good thing is that many european cars from the 80's and 90's had the same antenna. Saturday morning I was browsing the local u-pull junkyard inventory and to my surprise, there was a 1990 BMW 325i there. It's very rare that old euro cars pop up in junkyards here in eastern Quebec. Most of those were sold in the Montreal area and stayed there. I seized the opportunity and drove there. I found the E30, the antenna was already partially removed. I bought it for 24$.

It looked seized solid lol. Probably went through an old car wash with brushes in the 2000's and stayed like that. But I thought maybe the circuit was good. 

The circuit on the BMW version is the same shape, but the components are not placed the same as on the Mercedes version. There is also one less pin on the wiring connections, as the Mercedes has the provision for a car phone and not the BMW. I swapped the circuit over and tested it. It worked!

However, after cycling the thing a few times, the same problem reappeared. The antenna stayed down and the motor went silent. Then I thought of something: then antenna was probably corroded and required more torque than usual from the motor to raise. Maybe the circuit shuts off with a thermal protection? I removed the antenna again, the circuit was indeed hot. It might have been that that caused the old circuit to burn... 

So I completely disassembled the antenna to individual pieces, cleaned it throughly, polished the metal tubes, sanded the bushing, shot the inside of the antenna mast with a good quantity of PB Blaster and made sure that thing could slide with absolutely zero resistance. Then I reassembled everything and lubricated everything with a good amount of my newly acquired Gleitpaste:

Put it in the car, now it works:

It's probably good for another 20 years (with regular cleaning with the antenna wipes now) and best of it is that it did not cost 250$!

Looking good!! The wheels came out fantastic, honestly. If I didn't have the Ceginus wheels already, I'd be looking for a set of those.

So much progress! 

What wheels are those? 

The wheels are Mercedes "Algieba". Made by Ronal. Available on W203 C-class and W208 CLK. 16x7. I don't remember the offset exactly, but it's around 35

A few weeks ago, I drove the car to my parent's place. My mother, who is very good at sewing, made me a shift boot with spare leather she had in her fabric inventory:

It turned out pretty good. It's a bit different than the OEM design. It reuses the factory trim piece for the auto shifter.

A week later, I brought the car to a local paint and restoration shop, Origine Auto, to get the hood painted. Two weeks later, the owner calls me to come and pick the car up. The work is absolutely perfect. I did not expect it to be this good. The owner told me he actually did not use the standard Mercedes 199 paint because he tested it on a panel and it was a bit off. He scanned the old paint on the fenders and found a Ford color that was 95% there and he tweaked that. He straightened the hood that got bent over the years by repeatedly getting pushed down in the middle when being closed. He even polished the top of the fenders so the shine matches. Check it out:

This one is taken by the bodyshop:

Since the rest of the car is pretty much sorted now, I think it's time to add some power. I have been thinking about how to do this for a long time. I gave some thought to two swap possibilities: 6 cylinder 3.2 M104, 4 cylinder 2.3 S/C M111. The M104 six would have required to modify the front upper and lower rad supports again, figure out a new radiator setup, and change the ECU wiring to do some sort of semi-sequential 6 cylinder fueling (MS2 can only do 4 injector drivers). Plus, it moves the weight forwards in the nose. I ended up finding two potential engines, but the deal went through. The M111 four could use a similar wiring configuration, but it's DBW and MS2 can't control that, so I would've had to figure out a new throttle body solution. It also needs engine mounts brackets that are only available in Europe. Also, it sounds horrible. 

I came to the conclusion that turboing the existing engine would be the way that makes the most sense. The power goal is about 200 to 250 whp. Now the thing that is difficult to evaluate is how strong the stock components are and what are their limits. Not a lot of people turbo these engines, most end up being thrown away during swaps. Same for the transmission. From what I can gather, a stock M104 dynos at about 220 hp. People who swap those in 190E's seem to be doing OK with stock transmissions and differentials. If the M102 is as strong as the M103 six, it should be able to take the abuse from the turbo.

The setup I plan goes like this:

• Welded mild steel log manifold

• 3" downpipe that merges into the existing 2.25" exhaust

• 2" aluminum IC piping,

• 440cc or 550cc injectors

• Electronic boost control via the MS ECU

• Maximum 12 psi.

I'm at the point where I have a turbo, but I'm having a hard time making a choice. I was hoping some of you could give me pointers on this. The stock engine red line is 6000 rpm and the gears are long (2.85:1 diff ratio). For example, shifting at the top of 2nd gear puts you back to 3500 in 3rd. My first pick was a "classic" Garrett T3/T04E 50 trim with a .48 a/r turbine housing. I figured 10 psi from that thing would probably put me at the power goal. Full boost should arrive at 3000-3200 RPM. Then I thought the price was quite a lot (1200$ CAD) and got scared of the lag, especially between gears when not shifting at high RPM.

Then I thought about turbo Volvo's. The later 5 cylinder S60/V70 2.5t models have a 2.5 engine and use a small TD04L-14T unit. They make about 200 HP. I thought I could get that, run the pressure at maybe 12 psi and that would probably put me at the lower end of my power goal, while giving the car great low-rpm torque, which is the RPM's I drive in anyway. I didn't give the idea a second thought and went straight to the junkyard. I found a good unit and purchased it (only 80$!):

Cleaned up:

This unit has compact size, internal wastegate and integrated blowoff valve.

Unfortunately, I had the great idea of loosening the clamp holding the turbine housing to the CHRA in hopes of making the removal easier. I broke the turbine wheel while doing that. I bought the turbo anyways.

I found out that you could get a "high-flow" 9 blade exhaust wheel for this model. I bought one on Ebay. It should arrive soon.

But I'm still undecided about the turbo choice. I remember Corky Bell saying that a too small turbo can create more heat and cause detonation. He also said "never send a kid to do a man's job". Let me know your thoughts...

  From what little I know, a smaller turbo will have less lag, build boost faster.  The down side a smaller turbo will be limited on how much boost it can make.  If the plan is limited boost and keeping the engine stock, might be better to start with a smaller turbo and see how that works.  A small turbo with a inter cooler, should add power without risking damage to the engine.  I had a Volvo 850 turbo I forget how much boost it made, but seemed to work pretty good.

I'm not sure what your budget is but if you're going used tdo turbos I'd suggest a tried and true Mitsubishi tdo5-16g or a hta68. 

Buuuut for current turbo tech on a 4cyl of that size the Garrett G25-550 does amazing. I'm not educated on how well the m102 head flows but I bet the g25 would be so fun. 

So now we are on my old home turf, Junkyard turbo :-)

Remind me, it is a 2.3 liter four right?

I would say that for your targets, the TD04 Mitsubishi cores are a good match. But I would suggest looking for a slightly bigger 15 or 16 compressor (15t, 16t or 16g does not matter too much). The higher powered Volvo turbo 5´s had these as well as some Saabs. If you can find one with a larger exhaust housing (there are several, number 9 being the largest readily available) that´s good.

I used a 16t on my 2.0 Pinto at first and with standard 9.2:1 compression ratio it made boost pretty early. Another 2.3 liters will make it spool even better and I would say that a solid 250 bhp flywheel should be quite easy. 

Boost control has its merits but it´s not all that easy to setup and chances are you won´t really need it in a setup like this.

You can really make this a nice driver engine especially if you have the will power not to boost it to the moon :-)

Gustaf

I ran a tdo4-15hl on an 8v 2.0 vw and spool was quite quick (low 2000rpm) so I would bet on a 2.3 with a better flowing head you would be fine. As others have said there are many versions to play with. The mounting flange is weird but that's not a huge set back. 
I relocated the wastegate on mine by welding a tab on the comp cover.  There's an indexing pin between the compressor side and the center section that If you remove will allow you to rotate the cover.

I ended up using a basic manual boost controller on mine and it was happy up to around a bar. I agree with Gustaf, unless you want big power no need for fancy boost control set ups. 

I would not worry about the strenght of the engine these just like the m103 can handle upwards of 400hp easily on stock internals, the heads don't flow the best but they manage if you want to up your rpm range you could put some shims under the valvesprings or get a smaller diameter valvespring and put that inside of the stock ones.