How much does a 126 Coupe Weigh..?

[truckinik]

I have to tow my car trailer with my 126 AMG coupe from Ct. to North Carolina and tow it with my 83 Diesel powered Oldsmobile Fullsized Wagon. The suspension in the car is beefed up something serious. The car trailer weight is a mystery, but it's just a typical 19ft. open job. I'm just trying to get a pretty good idea of what the car alone weighs. All of the tags for the car are in Kilograms etc. It's just a pain in the @$$ to play guessing games so I thought I'd ask around. Moving in the next three days sometime. thanks guys.

Nick

[R Leo]

380sec 3760#
500sec 3655#
560sec 3960#

[truckinik]

Originally Posted by R Leo

380sec 3760#
500sec 3655#
560sec 3960#

Damn Heavy car. Now I'm a bit worried. Not so much the dead weight with car trailer combined. It's the up and down, hills along the way that freighten me. The Diesel in the wagon has tons of torque, but only like 200hp if it's lucky. Suppose I'll find out.

[Jim B.]

I'd be worried about the 350 GM Diesel engine yo have in your wagon, Nick. They had intrinsic design flaws in them.

I can't remember the technical details, but they were basically the gas engine modified to run on Diesel fuel - and there wer problems with them.

Maybe you got lucky with yours. Safer to have had the 350 gasser or the 400, 401 or 455 in them, IMO

[truckinik]

Yeah, The 350 Diesel is a problematic engine. The first one in my car however, by some stroke of miracle survived more than 398,000 miles 'til it blew up. Previous owner took great care of the whole car. When the engine went bad, it was covered under the original factory recall for the engine. As a result of this, he took money out of his pocket to have the tranny, and rear end rebuilt. He had a higher speed torque converter, and shift kit installed with it. The dealer, somehow after installing the engine and all of this work managed to talk the guy into a new car and trading the wagon in. I managed to snag the wagon for $700.00 from the dealership who had just finished all of the work. I've barely put 500 miles on the car since I've owned it. It literally has a brand new drivetrain in it. When I first bought it I installed Flowmaster dual exhausts on the car. It runs perfect. Being that the engine was done in 2006 it is retrofitted with the improvements they made to it since the original version. The biggest issues they had back in the day was with fuel injection pumps. This thing runs super strong and goes as good as an Iroc Camaro,or Monte SS from back in the late 80's early 90's. Just to give you an idea of how it moves. No matter what's been done to it however, it still is overall a very weak car if it's expected to pull weight like that. Between car and trailer, I'm probably looking at around 5500 pounds of payload to pull eight hundred miles from here to there....Whew, I hope the car can handle it.

[CamelotShadow]

Was curious myself.

I was under the impression the 500SEC was heavier

I have GVWR 4473 lbs on my door jam
Trying to remember plate under hood
I think it has something like 1700 KG which is about 3700 lbs
but there are 3 weights

So is the 4473 pounds wieght in a container or something
as its on the import sticker?

3700 is lot better
I was wondering how the car could wiegh almsot 4500 lbs

[t walgamuth]

3650 for the us spec 500sec.

Nick, I would think you will be fine with the olds if it has a tranny cooler, the trailer has brakes and you use the gears if you hit mountains.

good luck

tom w

[Jim B.]

I would think for this use, a good set of rear air shocks would help also.

The best hitch in my opinion would be one bolted to the frame.

They are pretty good BOF cars, 1985 being the last ones using that "box" body style from 1977. They were very popular in their time. A whole bunch of them went to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq, where some are still going.

A long time ago, when I was shopping for a company car to buy I saw a 1978Olds Delta 88 coupe that someone had towed a trailer with.

Its hitch was a bumper mounted one, and the top of the bumper was bent back.

I bought a lease return 1977 Olds Delta 88 Royale coupe instead. I stripped off the GM monolithic Catalytic converter, and ran a custom straight dual exhaust on it.

BLATANTLY illegal, but man, it really let that 350 - 4 bbl motor fly.

I put a CB radio in that car and drove it all over the place. It hauled A$$, those big GM engines were really good back then.

[t walgamuth]

Well, yeah, a bumper hitch is not going to cut it.

Tom W

[SwampYankee]

Originally Posted by truckinik

I have to tow my car trailer with my 126 AMG coupe from Ct. to North Carolina and tow it with my 83 Diesel powered Oldsmobile Fullsized Wagon. The suspension in the car is beefed up something serious. The car trailer weight is a mystery, but it's just a typical 19ft. open job. I'm just trying to get a pretty good idea of what the car alone weighs. All of the tags for the car are in Kilograms etc. It's just a pain in the @$$ to play guessing games so I thought I'd ask around. Moving in the next three days sometime. thanks guys.

Nick

Heck, Nick, tow it down with your wrecker. Then you could leave that Olds wagon here with me

Contrary to popular belief, the only thing a 5.7L diesel has in common with the 350 is displacement. It was designed as a diesel from the bottom up and a lot more stout than the gas block. The real problem (there were some quality control issues and they didn't increase the number of bolts on the heads) GM had with their 5.7 was a combination of diesel fuel quality at the time and insufficient water separation. Water and contaminants caused corrosion in the injector pumps which screwed up the injection cycle, causing excessive fuel injection, lifting the heads off the block, stretching the head bolts and allowing coolant into the cylinders. Coolant and fuel injected into the combustion chamber, water doesn't compress, gaskets blow out.

I've always had a soft spot for them, my uncle had a diesel Olds 88 when I was a kid and I loved riding around in it.

That is a big load for that wagon to haul, especially if you fill it with your stuff. If you want to disregard the weight limits and the trailer has it's own brakes it'd probably do o.k. I wouldn't but I'm a pessimist

Good luck with the move! North Carolina seems to be the place to go for CT folks. My father has at least a 1/2 dozen friends who have retired there w/in the past few years.

[t walgamuth]

My uncle bought an olds diesel new and within the first 12K miles it broke the crank.

They beefed them up after that I believe.

There is a lotof similarity between the diesel 5.7 and the olds gas engines of the same era. In fact you can bolt on gas heads and intake and substitute a distributor for the fuel pump and have a very nice, stout gas engine.

So the blocks may be actually different but they were clearly tooled on the same tools.

Tom W

[truckinik]

The Olds Wagon's suspension is all new since I bought the car. It consists of the heaviest duty front and rear coils to be found for the cars. Rear air/coil-over shocks, and air bags, installed inside the rear coil springs rated at 6500 lbs by themselves. As far as the hitch is concerned it's a home made job, done by the previous owner. The thing is bolted to the frame in about six places, as well as to the rear bumper. It's made of heavy box tubing, and 2"angle iron spanning from the center of the back where the hitch is, outward towards the frame rails where the suspension is mounted. I don't know exactly what the guy used to pull with the car, but it had to be big. The car came to me with a tranny and an oil cooler, as well as extra filters on the lines going in each cooler unit. It had a leaky set of air bags in the rear coil springs when I bought it, so I bumped up two ratings when having my new bags installed into the new coil springs.

All of the brakes and tires on the car are brand new. Brakes I did, because the master cylinder went bad, so I had them check the four corners while they put in the new master and replaced two leaky lines. The brakes all ended up getting done with all new parts. The car came with the brand new tires on it. I've dumped more dough into the wagon, just in rear suspension than I paid for it and surely more than it's worth in any book. I don't care, because the car is spotless, and tight as a virgin in every respect. At some point recently I think the previous owner had the front end rebuilt. The car is good to go as far as handling the load is concerned but as I said, power over-all, will always be lacking. Unfortunately there aren't and never were any real optios for power improvements on those gas conversion engines. Wish I could turbo it, but it's been tried time and time again, by many people on the Olds 350 Diesel shop forum and all they ended up doing was grenading the engine and having a nice boat anchor in the end...

Nick

[truckinik]

The engine blocks are still snatched up all the time by drag racers etc. That, Diesel version of the Olds 350 was the only one they ever cast with a four bolt main on the crank and a lot of extra iron inside the block. Since the heads and all other gas components simply bolt right to it, it makes for a very desirable engine block if you want to have a built to the hilt Olds engine in a 442 or something. A buddy of mine owns a machine shop and told me all this back when I first bought my car and he saw it @ my shop. He was surprised to see that the car hadn't been converted to gas as many people did to them, including dealerships way back when they were still on the market. I love the car, truely valuable as far as I'm concerned. I need a guy in North Carolina to take care of my A/C, and an interior guy to install a new headliner. I can install it myself, but a pro is quicker and I don't know where to buy the thing. After that, the car will be like brand new almost. With few exceptions for minor things here and there.

Nick

[SwampYankee]

Originally Posted by t walgamuth

My uncle bought an olds diesel new and within the first 12K miles it broke the crank.

They beefed them up after that I believe.

There is a lotof similarity between the diesel 5.7 and the olds gas engines of the same era. In fact you can bolt on gas heads and intake and substitute a distributor for the fuel pump and have a very nice, stout gas engine.

So the blocks may be actually different but they were clearly tooled on the same tools.

Tom W

Technically true, you got me Tom. The diesel blocks are real popular with the racing guys because they are beefier and the gas components will bolt right up. But there is the misconception that it was just a gas engine that was converted to run on diesel. It was designed as a diesel and in typical GM cheap fashion they used as much pre-existing casting and tooling as possible, but unfortunately they failed to take some internal pressures into consideration when the left the heads with 4 studs/cylinder.

I still wouln't mind getting my hands on a surviving wagon, though

[truckinik]

Believe it or not I saught that wagon out for a lot of years. For the longest time I couldn't even find one anywhere. Then all of a sudden my dad started looking for a used wagon just to play around with and he wanted one that was that particular body style. He spotted the car and called me to go and look at it for him. I went to see it, and fell in love with it right away because it was an original Diesel for one thing, and it was in almost perfect physical condition inside and out. I knew that dad wouldn't be interested in the car at all once I informed him it was Diesel (For some reason Diesel anything scares him) I bought it on the spot and it was when I had just about given up on looking for one. Not only did I end up with my Diesel, fully loaded, Custom Cruiser Wagon, but I think I somehow ended up with the nicest survivor in the country, possibly world...With all of the new driveline and suspension, brakes, tires, and the perfect condition of the body, I don't think there are very many out there anywhere in comparable shape. I got really lucky is all..