so what does it take to get some power out of a 99 e300td?
 

I am really into performance muscle cars and I bought the 99 e300 since it makes a lot of sense since its a comfortable daily driver that gets good mileage. I never thought about doing any type of perf. mods to it at all, but now I'm wondering if there is a capability of getting some good power out of these things...I am a car guy afterall and it only took a short amount of time to think about modding it. How much would it take to get the car to a somewhat respectable 11-12 second 1/4 mile performance? Are the trans and rear end capable of handling power?

Try supercharging it.

are you being sarcastic? The car is already turbocharged.

I don't know about an 11 sec 1/4 mile, but I think there is an ECU flash that can be done to get some more horses.

It should be able to make up to 200hp with an ECU remap. If you want any more than that you'll have to put up about $2000 for a new injection pump.

The turbo is a huge limiting factor on that car. The turbo is extremely tiny even for stock power output.

How far do you want to go? I'm in the middle of a 400HP upgrade project right now on my '98.

What do you have to do to get it to the 400hp mark?

7mm pump elements, big turbo - like HX40 or HX35 at the least, custom exhaust manifold/exhaust system. I'm also putting in experimental injector nozzles and custom turned delivery valves.

All together probably about $3000 worth of stuff. At least that's what I'm budgeting.

500HP is possible.;)

Biggest bang for your buck will be Speedtuning USA's "agressive" ecu flash for ~$250.00

I got the Stage 2 chip upgrade from speedtuning and my EGR has been thwarted and I can say the car is not a muscle car but is better. Total cost is $410.

I am not sure what the transmission and rest of the drivetrain would do with more power than this is putting out so if you do go crazy to 400+HP you'd better budget for a new tranny and differential too. These are designed to match the power of the engines they are mated to. I think you can get away with a marginal increase, like the speedtuning chip delivers, but if you go all out don't expect the rest of it to hold up that well.

If you want Muscle buy an AMG gas car. My C43 does 0-60 in under 6 seconds and still delivers 20 MPG city/27 Highway.

Hey Marty...

Where is the report on that new Chip??? Did your fuel economy increase or decrease???

What trany and rear end did they use in the same year e500 or e420?? If it is the same drive train how high can you safely increase performance before you need to worry about a different big bang?? :(

On another note, another thread about a year or so ago discussed the W210 Inter cooler and said that it was engineered to fit the space available instead or being engineered for optimum performance, suggesting that a larger inter cooler would be beneficial... I would expect that turbo lag would be increased with a larger cooler...

A bigger IC alone isn't going to make a whole lot of difference performance wise. However, it will allow you to run more fuel.

Keep your fueling the same + add bigger IC = not much but lower EGT's
Add some fuel + add bigger IC = :)

I don't get the impression that the chiptuning for the OM606.962's adds a whole lot of fuel. Then again, I've yet to see any EGT data on a stock/modded OM606.962...

Like others have said before - the OEM turbo is a MAJOR restriction. I honestly wouldn't push it much past OEM fueling. It SINGS and you can tell the wastegate is almost always open. Nothing wrong with that, per se...just no good for the top end and making more power in general.

Cheers,

Matt

Hey Matt,

Good to see you here.

Glad to be here - espeically now that I FINALLY own a Merc. :D