Not for the weak of heart. Pulled this engine from a '79 300SD that is getting another engine. This is as bad as it gets in my opinion. I was not able top pull the torque converter with the tranny when I separated the two because I am unable to turn the engine to remove the flywheel/tc fasteners.

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Jim

I hate it when you can't turn the motor over. If it's rear wheel drive, you can usually pull it with the torque converter still attached and fight with it outside the car. Front wheel drive is another story. You either have to pull engine/trans (which I hate), or drop the pan and see if you can move the rod with a pry bar or something similar to make enough room to get to all the torque converter bolts. I have in the past even broke out my air hammer to convince a rod to move or make the hole in the block bigger so that I could get the engine to turn just enough to get to all the bolts. Luckily, I have never run across this problem on a Mercedes so far. Says a lot for how strong the bottom ends are.

I have not started taking the engine apart but I suspect that something happened to the oil pump/chain. Usually when this happens you have lost oil flow to the crank brgs. I post what I find when I finish with it.

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Jim

Went to bolt the "new" ebay engine into the car this afternoon and found there is a substantial difference between the oil pan that was on the original engine and this one. The original is from a 116 bodied car and the ebay engine is from a 123. There are alot of additional gussets on the rear of the oil pan from the 123 that are not there on original 116 engine. Anyway, the gussets interfere with the frame cross member to the point that it prevents you from being able to bolt down the engine. I knew I should have compared oil pans prior to lowering the engine in the car. Looks like I should be able to alter this pan to make it work. Another days worth of work to resolve this.

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Jim

Jim:

Looks like an oil supply failure -- the bearing looks partially melted to me.

Final failure was rod bolts, crank then smacked the rod through the side.

Messy, almost as bad as the mess in my brother's car when the crank broke (also a possiblity here). His rod stayed on the journal, but got broken off by the crank thrashing around (he was going about 65 when it blew).

Peter

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1972 220D ?? miles
1988 300E 200,012
1987 300D Turbo killed 9/25/07, 275,000 miles
1985 Volvo 740 GLE Turobodiesel 218,000
1972 280 SE 4.5 165, 000 - It runs!

It was most definitely an oil supply issue. I found the screen for the suction of the oil pump laying in the bottom of the oil pan. Not sure if the screen came off allowing something to get in the oil pump resulted in the failure or not. The crank brgs were shot along with some of the rod bearings. In addition, the rod bolts were broken and the "clamp" part of the connecting rod that broke was turn inside out. I'll probably disassemble the oil pump later on to see what it looks like inside.

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Jim

Picked up the correct oil pan for the '79 300SD today. Look at the additional gusseting on the later model 617 engine versus the '79. Quite a bit of difference. Anyone ever seen one break in this area? About the only thing I can figure is that they added this support because of the tranny change.


Based on what I can figure the '79 oil pan would make this engine more versatile to go into other types of vehicles. I have not looked to see which one is used on the '81 300D. I'll check that out over the next few days. I imagine it is the same as the SD.

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Jim

Since the upper pan is bolted directly to the engine block I'd seriously doubt if it could ever flex and crack. A guess would be that design change has probably got something to do with the controlling the total weight of the vehicle.

Sidebar...
I've discovered there are some big differences in the gussetting and shape of the bell housings used on the early cast iron 4-speed and 5-speed transmissions. I'll try to post the pictures if I can find them.

Update:
Note the difference in the top of 4-speed W115 tranny on the right here and the 5-speed 115/116 tranny down here:

Attached Thumbnails

 

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Never a dull moment at Berry Hill Farm.

Should make getting to torque converter bolts and finding the drain much easier . My guess is the later design was added when room permitted to help reinforce the engine/transmission connection.

Here are the parts - check it out.

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Jim

want to get finished dismantling the '85 5-cyl turbo I picked up last week. It has a rod through the block on both sides. Probably going to be interesting to see when I get the upper oil pan off and get the pistons out.

Kevin

I finally got the ebay engine in today. Had a delay to pull it back out and put a '79 oil pan on (the later model engine oil pans will NOT work in the 116 model - I found out the hard way). Hopefully will finish it next weekend. Another diesel MB saved from the scrap yard. The body looks good on this car.

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Jim

I'm curious if a W116 engine would would work on a W123? Not that I would plan on doing something like this but I had a chance to buy a wrecked W116 with an engine that had fairly low miles once.

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DJ


84 300D Turbodiesel 190K with 4 speed manual sold in 03/2012

My Dieter is a w123 with a w116 SD motor. It's a '78 or '79 617.950. I have no history or idea how many miles are on it. I've driven the car 700 miles this week and it runs like a top!

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Over 21 years I owned several:
w108
w110
w111
w115
w116
w123
w124
w126
w212

Looks like a rod bolt failed, and the crank then hit the loose rod next time round. Burn marks are from lack of lubrication as the rod bearing opened up -- long term lack of lubrication would have scored the crank, I think!

Cap on the rod will get bent open when the bolt fails.

Very ugly, DO NOT reuse rod bolts, they are MUCH to inexpensive to risk this kind of failure!

Peter

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1972 220D ?? miles
1988 300E 200,012
1987 300D Turbo killed 9/25/07, 275,000 miles
1985 Volvo 740 GLE Turobodiesel 218,000
1972 280 SE 4.5 165, 000 - It runs!