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

i didnt see it mentioned.. but since you are this deep into the project.. change BOTH of the oil cooler hoses!!!!!!!!!!! they are a high failure item.. and being full flow.. you will loose all your oil in a matter of seconds.

Worst failure I ever had was in my TD that i rescued from the junk yard. Someone put regular gas in it.. Have you ever seen a connecting rod bend and twist at the same time?? hahaha

You saw the dates, right?

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Jimmy L.
'05 Acura TL 6MT
2001 ML430 My Spare

Gone:
'95 E300 188K "Batmobile" Texas Unfriendly Black
'85 300TD 235K "The Wagon" Texas Friendly White
'80 240D 154K "China" Scar engine installed
'81 300TD 240K "Smash"
'80 240D 230K "The Squash"
'81 240D 293K"Scar" Rear ended harder than Elton John

That one brings back some memories.
An update on the car. Last time I talked with the lady the car was still running great and the a/c still works using r12 (I charged it up for her prior to delivering the car after swapping the engine). I think she is up on around 350k miles or so too. Don't ever doubt the durability of the W116 diesel.

I don't know what happened to the pictures from the first pic.

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Jim

RIGHT!No EGR crap to to coat the intake with carbon and if you remove the oil breather so the turbo wont have to inhale oily vapors,perhaps many more miles to come

Were there supposed to be some pictures with this post? 'Cause I can't see any...

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1984 300 Coupe TurboDiesel
Silver blue paint over navy blue interior
2nd owner & 2nd engine in an otherwise
99% original unmolested car
~210k miles on the clock

1986 Ford F250 4x4 Supercab
Charcoal & blue two tone paint over burgundy interior
Banks turbo, DRW, ZF-5 & SMF conversion
152k on the clock - actual mileage unknown

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