I have an 84 euro 280e which I am pretty sure was never federalized. It has a lot of power. It does not have a distributor which retards at high rpm like my 74 bavaria BMW did. I wouldn't be surprised if your car has a distributor which has a advance curve which is very detrimental to power production especailly if it was changed to make it us legal.

On my Bavaria I modified the advance characteristics so that it operated exactly as they did before the emission control days. I am sure you can do that too.

I used several distributors, one from an old vw that I bought from a salvage yard and one from a '60 mb 220s, they basically are all the same with different vac advances and different weights that cause the advance to occur at various rpm. I looked at my reference books and mixed and matched until I had that beemer screaming. The difference was like night and day.

I imagine you can get a distributor from a vw high performance parts supplier and interchange caps etc to get what you need.

I have the old books so if you have questions about what you need to make her hum pm me and I'll be glad to help or I'll post here if you like.

Tom W

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[SIGPIC] Diesel loving autocrossing grandpa Architect. 08 Dodge 3/4 ton with Cummins & six speed; I have had about 35 benzes. I have a 39 Studebaker Coupe Express pickup in which I have had installed a 617 turbo and a five speed manual.[SIGPIC]

..I also have a 427 Cobra replica with an aluminum chassis.