I came across this again today. I am thinking I may do it on my 95 soon. the clunk when shifting is getting annoying. I spent today and a couple hours yesterday swapping differentials from one 83' 240d to another 83' 240d. dropping the differential on the w123 only takes 1.5-2 hours and about the same to install wondering how much harder it would be to do this, though. It looks almost like it'd be in there as tight as a balljoint.. what a PITA..

I have been pondering this for a week or so and keep coming back to how big of a deal would it be to just drop the rear sub frame with diff, control arms and all. A guy could totally go through it much easier I think?

In looking at it I think you could do it with a transmission jack and lower the whole thing down?

__________________
1995 E300 (W124)
1999 ML430 (w163)
2011 GL350 (x164)
2016 Sprinter 144" 4X4 lowtop (906)
2004 E500 (W211) 4matic Wagon (Gold)
2004 E500 (W211) 4matic Wagon Avantgarde (silver)

oh man, I haven't even considered trying to drop the whole subframe and replacing everything. the whole subframe moves around easily with removal of a few bolts on the w123, my guess is it would be harder on a w124.

I am more of the type of person who doesn't like to fix things that aren't broken, only because the times I've gone that route it seems to kind of blow up in my face and make more work for me.. haha. I've had 2 other w124's and this is the only one with that clunk while shifting. I am sure I'll get to it when this rain slows a bit.

I just did this 2 months ago on my 87 300d...not too bad of a job, but I was preparing for the worst. See a thread I posted 2 months ago from some tips I learned from my experience. The hardest part, for me, was lining the diff back up so I could put the bolts back in.

I spent the $100 and did this job with the tool...removing the bushings was super easy with the tool. The only thing to watch out for is to measure how far the bushings go in BEFORE removing them, so you can put them in the correct depth on installation, otherwise the forward bushing wont match.

If you are interested, I'd sell you my tool for 1/2 price, $50 plus shipping. Good luck!