My W124 3 litre Turbo Diesel

Naturally-aspirated

19

05-15-2014, 11:24 PM #1

Hello All,

Thought I might kick off my membership here with an introduction with my '91 W124 3 litre Turbo Diesel. I still haven't done any tuning to the engine at all, after all - my wifr drives the kids to school & goes shopping in it, so this car needs to remain relatively sane, but I do like torque & power. Who doesn't!

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About 2 years ago, I decided it would be wise to stop changing cars every few years and just modernise an older, but good quality Benz Turbo Diesel capable of doing very high mileage & offer reasonable economy.

Older Diesel Mercedes are very rare in Japan and I wanted a rust free one with a decent body. This one came as a neglected and poorly looked after example whose glow plugs were all burnt out. To start it, I had to block the exhaust to build heat in the cylinders - so I could make the engine hot enough to easily remove said offending glow plugs...

Still, it's completely rust free & was cheap enough to buy, although I've spent a fair chunk on all the bits to improve it since & repair everything that was faulty. I've been steadily adding to a list & ticking things off as I complete them.

It had taken 1 year to find this base car and after almost another year of ownership it's nearly completed, largely thanks to a friend in Germany who has sent many of the parts down to the smallest detail to help perfect it, whilst larger parts have been sourced used in Japan where possible (Dealer prices here are verging on stupidity!).

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All the exterior plastics were replaced with mint condition newer model's, of a darker and better looking silver colour - of original paint.

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For licence health (from speed cameras), I fitted a rectractable front number plate mount. At around 100 km/h the plate folds flat. When I'm driving in town it goes back to horizontal & there's a lock to hold it in vertical position (for inspections).

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It has proper (500E) front & rear brakes & handling courtesy of new lower (500E) arms, Bilstein shocks, H&R springs and 500E / 320 Convertible ARB's.

A new high quality sound system (Jelhert conversion at the front) & 200W speakers at the rear with top quality sound insulation. For aesthetics I fitted chrome door pins. I've avoided any temptation to add more chrome now - the flavour is to make the car more modern through improvement, not garish!

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I placed the amp in the trunk with all wiring properly routed and cable tied, with every terminal to crossovers properly crimped and shrink wrapped.

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The Parrot Asteroid head unit offers all the modern features such as Bluetooth / hands-free phone & voice control.

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All of the wood trim was replaced with dark 500E LTD original trim + 500E LTD Shift knob and I covered the original centre console wood panels in a Di-Noc dark colour brushed aluminium film. There's also navigation and self-dimming rear view mirror with compass.

To make the interior family / kid proof, I sourced taxi floor trays which are easy to remove & shake dust, sand, etc. off.

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There's remote central locking too and the aircon is working super cold.

All that was left to do on the interior now was to fit new electro-luminescent instrumentation (With original style gauges) so all the lighting is pure white on the dashboard ( White LEDs). The gauges will then match the Defi boost gauge at night, complete with red needles in the original instrument cluster...

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I also have a pair of 500E heated front seats with memory function - which will be fitted once I've restored the leather on them to perfection. I had thought of also fitting the 500E rear seats, but it's more useful to have a 5 seater than a useless box in the middle, I think (I had toyed with fitting a subwoofer in a custom enclosure, but kids don't need their ears blown out!).

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I changed several seals & gaskets all the way from the fuel tank to the fuel pump itself and finally it's become a completely oil-leak free engine.

It runs perfectly & regularly delivers 600 - 700km per tankful of Diesel.
Ride is smooth, rattle & nonsense free.

Just a few more little details to iron out and it should easily last another 10-20 years by which time it'll be a daily driven classic car. I'm finally running out of things to do to it but have enjoyed noticing the thought & attention that went into the design of this car.

It's proving to have been the perfect choice as a family runabout capable of cruising 1000km in a weekend in comfort when needed. It's got almost 200,000km now, but I don't mind how much mileage we put on. Feels great to have bank vault like build quality & classic German engineering integrity to take care of the family.

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I wonder if in 20 years - today's Mercedes will still work as well as their older designs? With so many electronics & poor build quality, I think not.... but time will tell I guess.

Recently I bought a set of nearly mint original 500E 17" rims. Nothing wrong with the rims that were on the car, but these are three quarters of an inch wider and should improve the stance just a little. I seem to have developed a fetish for 500E bits?

Did have a couple of W124 500E's last year. Lovely bruiser cars, but I wouldn't want to live with their appetite for gasoline on a daily basis...
The 300D Turbo's the keeper.

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We were on a national 1 week holiday in Japan, so whilst at my inlaw's place with my family, today I took the opportunity to fit some electro-luminescent gauges, which will also better match the Defi boost gauge I installed recently.

From http://www.moman.eu I got Design 2,\ which closest matches the original design, incl. same rev counter & speedometer ranges as the 300DT.

Here's one of their library photos: Mercedes 124 & 126[pp_gal169]/2/

I also ordered some fluorescent paint with a harness & 2 UV diodes, fitted at top part of the cluster:
Needles lighting kit - 2x UV diode, Fluorescent Paint

Here's a useful link in case any of you with W124's (Or other older models) want to do a similar conversion:

MoMan Indiglo/Plasma gauges installation - Benzworld.org - Mercedes-Benz Discussion Forum

The description above's OK, but could use some improvement, but as I'm not a member there I can't add to the comments (If anybody else is, feel free to cut & paste the comments below so that someone else can use them in future if referring to that thread).

Here's some notes / tips:

(1). It's best to fill the tank to the brim before beginning, as the best way to refit the fuel pointer accurately is to power it up - by refitting the large round connector. At the same time you can also refit the oil pressure gauge's pointer - at 3 (I'll go there if only the round connector is fitted).

(2). Only the following pointer needles need removing to fit (Use two small spoons to gently prize them off - it's pretty easy): Fuel Level, Water Temp, Oil Pressure, Clock. I masked the black centres off with selo-tape (It's all they had here and I forgot to bring masking tape with my selected tools for this job).

(3). If you try to clean the inside of the perspex glass, don't use cotton buds - as little pieces of cotton woll can get caught in places & is a pain to remove afterwards!

(4). The Moman kit is supposed to come with a "multiplier" for connectors. I couldn't find mine - but anyways a neater solution is to spice the wires together with solder and shrink wrap and have only one connector going to the inverter.

(5). For the UV lights (To make the needles glow red at night) at the top of the cluster - I obtained power by soldering to one of the brass (earth_ connectors at the back of the temp gauge and obtained 12V from the connector for the clock (Ah bugger!!.... Only just realised this'll make the UV LEDS always stay on... I'll have to get another 12V aux feed...A job to do tommorow... :o).
Careful when drilling holes with this - as it's easy to go through the plastic then have the drill bit hit the clear plastic facia. Having a short drill bit helps. Smile

I took a couple of my daughter's sticky foil stickers and put them on the top of the UV LED's to help reflect their light back at the needles.
Used plastic glue (Dries in about an hour) to hold these LED's in place and also to attach wires to the top of the cluster.

(6). I obtained power for the inverter directly from the circuit board inside the cluster which gives varying voltage to the inverter (Confirm with a multimeter to know which terminal to solder to. It's easy to blow the inverter if the polarities are wrong!).

(7). I only cut away one area to feed wires through, as shown in picture below, then used small cable ties to secure the cables both inside the cluster and outside.

(8). Don't forget to remove the original illumination light bulbs from the cluster. You won't need those now the faces are lit with electro-luminescence.

Anyways, it's all working OK now. I'll just need to re-do the power to the UV LED's tommorow. Below are some pics to show what it it looks like now.
Will be interesting to see the difference later tonight.

More pictures later....incl. some of the car with the E500 wheels now fitted.

Here's a pic of the EL cluster. I took the pic last night but exposure was so long, it came out a bit blurred. As you can see the needles are well lit by the hidden UV LED's too. Quite pleased with the result.

Today I re-fitted the illumination LED's in the original position, so that hopefully the odometer will be lit as before. I also re-wired the power for the UV LED's. Turns out that pin 13 on the large circular connector is the one to use. A little tricky to get at with a soldering iron, but I got there by bending the legs of a diode away a little. Careful not to burn the edge of the temperature gauge's face - as I did slightly!

Yesterday I gave the car a quick wash just before sunset and went out to take some pics - always hardest to shoot a white car. Reflection just over-exposes! :p

These are W124 E500 LTD wheels, but I hadn't realised till now, they're the same rims fitted to 2.5-16 Evo's as well. I think they suit it better than the
5 spokes I had on previously...

This post was last modified: 05-15-2014, 11:30 PM by The Stig.