Greetings from another project car builder in Australia.

I thought I’d make a post about the track car project I’ve been planning and working on for a while now.

This is my big project and potentially something of a sacrilege for a relatively rare specification of car in Australia. I’ve been down a couple of paths with plans for the car, what I’ll document here is the current specification of the build. Right now I’m in the process of accumulating the majority of the parts I’m going to need so that once a few renovation jobs on my house are finished, I’ll have time to actually work on the car

The aim for the car is to use as many Mercedes components as possible, remain circumspect in appearance from the outside and to be an animal on the inside.

1990 190E 2.6 Sportline - This is a Japanese import with 97k kms when I bought it and in very good condition.

At purchase:



Real leather interior:



A small update with a set of very lightweight forged CLK wheels with a bit of colour coding:



This was my daily driver for a couple of years and the intention was to just make this a really nice and comfortable daily driver. But about 18 months ago I had an incident with tree sap which left a lot of permanent marring in the paint and a financial transaction didn't pan out as I'd hoped so I made the decision that this car was to be the track day project car. The intention is to pretty much completely strip the interior to remove as much weight as possible and to simplify features and electrics as much as possible. Added back in will be a couple of racing seats, some harnesses and a roll cage. And to give it a bit more power as well

So I started accumulating some bits:
- Manual winders for all windows
- Manual passenger side mirror
- LSD from Cosworth 190E. Imported at too much expense and more than a little heartache from Canada
- Brake calipers from a US market W124 400E (I have the rears as well)


- A replacement engine - 3.0ltr M104 from a 1992 300SL-24 ~170kw - a physical bolt in replacement for the 2.6, electrics potentially notwithstanding


- Wheels:


They are the 16x8 et34 from an R129 and they were also the stock wheel on a 190E Evo 1 and are in very good condition. They are reasonably light for their size and I really like the fact they maintain the standard appearance of the car (this is important to me ) while offering a useful upgrade in size from the standard 15x7 Sportline wheel. Might need a bit of guard rolling though for the intended lower ride height.....

First day of (many) major effort. I sold the fairly rare for a 190E interior so I needed to start stripping it out.



Starting to look more spacious now:



Still plenty more to remove. Pretty much the only thing that will remain is the dashtop.

Spending the nights up on stands

More stripping done. Taking this photo was a bit of a holy **** moment...


It's a decent pile of parts and some reasonable weight.....

When I was going down the 6sp gearbox path, I became concerned about how I am going to get the speedo working. That gearbox did not make allowance for a speedo cable. After pulling the instrument cluster out, I decided **** mucking around, I'll just build a new panel with new instruments. But geez they can be expensive and finding reasonable looking stuff in metric units is hard. To that end, I bought a new speedo and tach from Gauges, Custom Gauges, Tachometers, Speedometers, Shift Light, Pod. You can customise the faces how you like.

Since I already have them, I still plan on using them and building a new gauge cluster.





They arrived today. I think my colour selection is a little off as the red needle is a little hard to see over the orange. Oh well!

I have sold off my original Sportline shocks and have a new set of Bilstein B8's (Sport as you know them). I also have some 500SL springs that came from Germany.
Because the car will still see some road use, I didn’t go with a full race seat yet. But with a set of harnesses, these seats still do a very good job of holding one snugly in place.


Sitting loosely in the car


And just to prove that I am in fact intermittently getting my hands dirty and not just wearing out my credit card buying stuff....



After something in the order of six months without touching the car, actual progress! I know it's not overly significant in the grand scheme of car projects, but this hasn't seen a spanner turned for a few months now.



I even took the time to finish setting up the little lathe I got and give it a quick test run...

Hmmm.
So I made the decision to sell the 6sp gearbox I had because I wanted more power than it would have been able to handle.

Mercedes engine:


Meet boost:


Gonna need that stronger gearbox now!

So, continuing my apparent trend of buying lots of stuff and not making a lot of labour progress.....

Popped down to pick up the turbos from my friend. He was kind enough to allow me sample how these turbos perform in his 996 Turbo. They're oil cooled only so that makes the plumbing a little easier. They are actually a pair of KKK K16’s from a 993 911 Turbo.



I've taken the decision to set the car up for E85. So I'll need decent sized injectors. These 90lb (935cc) jobbies should do the trick leaving a bit of headroom.


I don't want to run those bad boys dry under the rigours of track work so a surge tank will add some safeguard. This will mount under the car. Keep the noise down a bit.


Sending plenty of fuel forwards will be a pair of these.



Pumps will be fitted out with my first ever taste of anodised fittings. I could see this easily developing into an expensive addiction.


A metre of fuel rail extrusion to muck around and practice machining before I attempt the final product.


A visit to another mate's place for project car inspiration also netted me this decent sized oil cooler. Something else to try and find space for at the front of the car.


Going to get some exhaust manifold flange plates cut. They're cheap enough so I'll get some spares. That way, I can have a go at making my own basic turbo manifolds. A bit of fun and a learning experience if nothing else.


And finally (for now) a big box of assorted gaskets, bearings, steering and suspension bits from the US. Ordered Wednesday last week, arrived yesterday.


I've also ordered a full set of bushes, mounts and camber arms from a group buy on the 190Rev forum.



My 16V Getrag gearbox conversion package has been paid for and is now sitting in a transport depot in Washington state awaiting loading into a container!



Oil drains for the turbos. I've going to apply a friend's rationale that using AN fittings will allow easier removal and refitting of components. It's going to be a track car, ****'s gonna fail.


A heap of flange. I got a couple of extra head flanges cut because I could well balls up the manifolds. I was fairly happy that this lot cost $190 all up including new studs for the turbos.

I'm going to need camber up the front. I bought a set of universal camber plates, mostly for the spherical bearing mounting component.


The top of the strut shaft is tapered. So I had suspension guy turn down a lip on the strut and make me new nut to secure it all together.

I'll have to get some inverted cups made to hold them using a design from a guy on the 190Rev forum.. They will sit on top of the strut tower and have an extra washer plate installed on the underside of the strut tower fpr strength. They'll look something like this.




I’ve made a couple of changes to his design. So I got these


turned into a pair of these


Which with a bit of CNC sexy time turned out like this


I also have an ECU to run all of this.

Adaptronic e420c
It was cheaper than I'd budgeted for an ECU. That will allow a bit more freedom of funds to look at a brake and wheel upgrade hopefully. Now I'm going turbo, I think I'm going to need more tyre under the back and more brake under the front.

Some more **** to sit on the shelves of speed for a bit courtesy of Summit Racing

Gotta keep all of that E85 flowing around clean of nasties


And to make sure the injectors are supplied clean fuel at the right pressure


Don't want to unduly stress the compressor wheels on gear changes either


To free up a lot of space and reduce quite a bit of weight, I'll be removing all of the current HVAC equipment and replacing with this simple combined heater box and fan. Summer ain't gonna be much fun....


There's also a set of head studs to (hopefully) help keep all that delicious combustion pressure inside the engine.

I also got another box of replacement parts. Amongst this batch are such items as larger brake booster and amster cylinder (to match the upgraded calipers), caliper rebuild kits, wheel bearings blah blah blah. I got a bit carried away with this order though and made my payment before realising I'd gone over $1k so I got stung a bit on GST and duty when it arrived.

My rationale for going twin turbo was two fold:

1. These turbos came up at a great price and I figured they'd be a decent match for my engine if I run with the standard 10:1 compression ratio and E85.
2. My car is right hand drive so the steering box creates a large space restriction on the exhaust side of the engine. With twin turbos on basic log manifolds, i can run the smaller dump pipes from each smaller turbo one above and one below the steering box, just like the standard exhaust setup.

That is basically how the car sits at the moment. No progress for a little while as I'm travelling for work for the next four weeks. 2.5 of those are actually going to be in Denver, now that I've paid for all of that international shipping on my parts!

Damn man looks like you are building your dream car, congrats! Keep up with the posts too, can't wait to see the finished product.

Looks like a very fun project. Dig the CLK wheels too

Very nice project ! Keep us posted on the progress . Nice speedo, is it cable driven or electronic ? If it's electronic can it be made to fit the 16v gearbox, does it came with all the needed parts ?

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190E 3.0-24v (M104 980) turbo @ 0.8 bar
1/4 mile: 2.483 / 13.540 / 175.17 km/h (street tires)

Bout time you wacked it up buddy hehe.......it'll be a sweet ride!

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um.....why have men got nipples

Well, I decided that I really wanted to try and do this as well as possible, while still maintaining a reasonable budget. I'm trying to make sure I upgrade all of the systems in line with the engine and I'm not looking to go too overboard. Around 400hp at the engine is the goal with some reliability hopefully.

Yeah, the wheels came up looking good. I wanted to do something a bit different with them. They're long gone now though. I really wanted to get as factory a look as possible. Working out an intercooler solution to fit within that guideline could be challenging....

Yeah, it is an electronic speedo. I was thinking I could tap into one of the wheel speed sensors for the ABS to hookup to the speedo. It only comes with some wiring. I think the company sells universal speed sensors which you could attach in various places, like the tailshaft for example.

Yeah, thought I should pull all the info together here seeing as how this seems to be the place for turbo Benzes to be seen. It's going to be loud, hot, smelly and very stiff and uncomfortable. So I'm not sure many people would call it a swweet ride when done, but hopefully it will be unsuspectingly fast and that is exactly the result I am aiming for.

That is awesome man, good for you. Seeing you get up to that amount of power will be very good, do you plan on keeping the stock transmission?

I am going to be fabricating a centrifugal supercharger on my m104 24 valve in the coming months but I too want to achieve the same power as you but still keep it as a daily driver so I will pretty much be following your lead in terms on reliability lol

Can't wait to see more!

Project looks awsome,cant wait too see more! The Suspension arms sure look the part along with those cnc strut towers,yum!!

Cheers,
Paul

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Turbo 202 history:
http://www.cardomain.com/ride/735658

That will be a sweet ride soon, I am gonna follow this one!

Concerning the exhaust manifold......it's imperative to get the flow/collectors right. I wouldn't be farkin round doing a home job, especially with the riggers of racing! I have seen bad dump pipes & turbo exh manifolds RUIN a high performance engine. It happens!

If you get turbulence/heat probs. Your in trouble sooner or later I threw away a turbo Mazda engine this year due to ****ty ext mani. Just informimg you mate. Cheers

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um.....why have men got nipples

10 out o 10 for the parts selection.
i have the same fpr, it has made a huge differance to my output and driveability.

ive orderd a set of bushes and adj camber arms from 190rev fourum, i may become a supplier for the parts also, depends how negotiations go, they should be ready around dec, when are you expecting yours?

be sure to open the hole from the fuel tank for those two 044's, the std hole is only 12mm and they will massivly out flow the std tanks ability to supply them, in fact, if i were you, i would use a custom fuel cell, with a da31 (in tank free flow will flow 500 liters per hour), feeding the surge tank. also a fuel cooler on the return line would be a good idea.

that is gonna be one quick, quick ride my friend, keep us posted...

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ce 320 amg
widebody
tiwn turbo
Mutty 'der nail'
soon to be a six speed nail


"some mods improve your car and make it into something it never was, other mods, however, although essentially the same, are not, and make that car a ricer"

if your car isnt shiny, you dont know what you are talking about, remember; paint shine = knowledge. In order to be taken seriously, you should spend all your money on paint, (and get a dyno reading).
Dont forget to polish it often