Talking with club members after our MB club meeting the other night, the topic of conversation got around to W124 coupes and specifically the M104 powered versions. In Australia, all the 124 coupes with the M104 came with the 5-speed automatic transmission. These gave fantastic performance but unfortunately reliability of the 5-speed is not good and the cost to repair them prohibitive. Many have therefore been retrofitted with the 4-speed auto as fitted to the sedans, wagons and earlier 300CE with the M103. The problem with the retrofit is that the final drive ratio is set up for the overdrive 5th in the 5-speed. I know my father's '93 E320 coupe has a 3.69 final drive which gives awesome acceleration in 1st and low engine speed cruising in 5th but would give unreasonably high engine speeds cruising in direct drive 4th. Everyone's response was "just fit the diff for the sedans". One member responded that he used to have a '90 300CE-24 with the 4-speed auto retrofit that did indeed run at silly engine speeds when cruising. He had investigated fitting another diff but the 3.07 of the 300E was apparently not the ratio fitted to the 300E-24 sedan (with 4-speed auto).

My question is, does anyone know the various final drive ratios fitted to the various W124 models? I can start the list with those I do know:

3.07 for 300E (3.0 M103)
3.27 for 260E & 300E-2.6 (2.6 M103)
3.27 for 300TE (3.0 M103)
3.69 for 320CE & E320 coupe (5-speed auto 3.2 M104)
I suspect the 300CE-24 (5-speed auto 3.0 M104) may also have the 3.69.

What about the 300E-24 sedans, 300TE-24 wagons, 300CE-24 4-speed coupes, 300E-2.8 (E280) sedans 300TE-2.8 (E280) wagons, 320E (E320) sedans, 320TE (E320) wagons and 320CE (E320) 4-speed coupes?

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107.023: 350SLC, 3-speed auto, icon gold, parchment MBtex (sold 2012 after 29 years ownership).
107.026: 500SLC, 4-speed auto, thistle green, green velour.
124.090: 300TE, 4-speed auto, arctic white, cream-beige MBtex.
201.028: 190E 2.3 Sportline, 5-speed manual, arctic white, blue leather.
201.028: 190E 2.3, 4-speed auto, blue-black, grey MBtex.
201.034: 190E 2.3-16, 5-speed manual, blue-black, black leather.

E320, 124 chassis use 2:65 , so the cruise is good..
They can get away with it as they have first gear start.

Thanks Arthur,

Wow 2.65, that's tall. If you take the 3.69 of the 5-speed and multiply it by the 0.78 (I think) ratio of 5th gear, you come out with the equivalent of a 2.88 with a direct top gear. You definitely would need 1st gear start. The 5-speed still uses a 2nd gear start. 1st gear is for surprising the unsuspecting at traffic lights

Greg

__________________
107.023: 350SLC, 3-speed auto, icon gold, parchment MBtex (sold 2012 after 29 years ownership).
107.026: 500SLC, 4-speed auto, thistle green, green velour.
124.090: 300TE, 4-speed auto, arctic white, cream-beige MBtex.
201.028: 190E 2.3 Sportline, 5-speed manual, arctic white, blue leather.
201.028: 190E 2.3, 4-speed auto, blue-black, grey MBtex.
201.034: 190E 2.3-16, 5-speed manual, blue-black, black leather.

I think the E420s in the US came with 2.24. They are really not fast cars but very comfortable on the highway.