The best thing about this car is that it was so nice in every other way besides the mechanical problems that I could justify going first class on everything. Because it was a basket case and I was willing to take the risk the price was very low and that left enough in my budget to make it perfect without breaking the bank. My last basket case was 35 years ago with a 66 E-Type Jaguar with a blown motor that a friend and I picked up with a horse trailer. I did a writeup of that one that you can find in the archives under my name.

I thought about retrofitting it with new style injectors and prechambers but ended up using my original injectors. I sent them to Metric along with my cracked head. Mike pop tested them and said they were fine. As for the prechambers, I replaced them because Mike said that the diffusers were stuck. I had to replace 2 exhaust valves and all 6 intake valves. The springs were all good. The new head came with guides and seats and the prechambers had to be fitted to the head which involves some machine work and some shimming.

I am aware of the new style injectors and prechambers because I have a very sweet running 92 300D 2.5 (and the issue of the "Star" that describes all that stuff May/June 1990 pgs. 44-47). Mike said they stick with the standard application and I was a little bit wary of being a pioneer. It probably would have run better if I had taken that chance but if I had retrofitted the new stuff to the old it probably would have cost another $1,000 if you count new injector lines, new injectors and more expensive prechambers. Has anybody ever done that?

As far as the alignment goes, I really didn't get a 4 wheel alignment because they don't mess with the rear end but I did get a reading on the rear with regard to toe. On my original post I said that it was it was minus .14 degrees when the range is plus .25 to .75 but now that I am looking at the sheet it is plus .14 which makes it only .11 less than the low end of the range. The sheet had it printed in red to show that it was out of spec.

The rear hubs are on semi trailing arms which are mounted to an eliptical subframe. The geometry is such that the rear wheels toe out as the wheel rises and toe in as it drops. Based on that it seems that an increase in ride height would increase the toe. You can check it out by comparing the toe out with a loaded down trunk against the toe in on a car with an empty trunk. In my case, the car was really squirrely before I replaced the subframe and differential mounts. That's because the subframe had come down as the mounts collapsed from age and that caused the rear wheels to toe out more. It all worked to my benefit because the last time the previous owner took the car in for "erratic handling" he ended up buying a new set of shock absorbers because the mechanic did not know what he was doing. I could feel an additional improvement when I put in the 19mm spring shims. what I am wondering is can I put in an additional shim and get it up to perfect?

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Tom Hughes
St. Louis
84 300SD
92 300D
86 300SDL