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.....