Originally Posted by LarryBible

The cost would be the cost of the donor car or if you could find one in a wrecking yard, whatever you could negotiate with them, and then give them back the rest of the car and maybe your working automatic transmission. The problem will be finding the donor car. With only about 1,100 of them sent here as US cars, plus whatever few might have made it as grey market cars, it will be DIFFICULT to find. You might want to budget a new clutch pressure plate and throwout bearing while it's apart, but you might very well find these components in the donor in great condition and not have to spend this money.

As far as the projects complexity, this will be determined largely by the equipment you have to work with. I have a two post lift and a transmission jack. Without this level of equipment, it will be a much more time consuming and challenging project.

Changing the transmission itself is only part of the project. To do it right, you will need the driveshaft, clutch linkage, m/c reservoir, hydraulic lines,
master cylinder, shifter, shifter trim, etc.,

IF you have the donor car in your possession, and I wouldn't even dream of approaching the project under any other conditions, allow a day to strip everything out of the donor car, but DO NOT let it out of your control until the recipient car is COMPLETE. Then allow a day to put everything into the recipient. Then plan on some extra time to deal with whatever you might run into, such as the need to have the flywheel surfaced or something like that.

Doing this without a back up car to drive for the duration of the project is not something I would want to do. The smallest little thing could cost more time.

My 300E is pretty well ragged out. It still runs good, but it's a high mileage car and just generally not a really nice car. I have given thought to finding a nice low mileage car and extracting the stick out of my old car. That's the only way I would ever want to get another 300E. I just have no interest in an automatic transmission 300E. I'm just spoiled.