Quote:
Originally Posted by HughO
Economically and practically, projects like this never make sense. We do projects like this for the interest and challenge. If you rarely tow you buy a used 20 or 30 yr old chev or F150 for a grand or two. You drive the MB the rest of the time. Both were designed for a specific purpose and repurposing rarely is worth the time or money and resale will be near zero. Just my two bits.
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I tow on a fairly regular basis and I have a Mercedes salvage yard and parts sales business. When I'm not towing there's a good chance I need room for large parts. I can drive my mountaineer and use it for both if I need to but like I said at the very beginning of this thread, it rides ****y and gets less than great mileage. I don't really pay for diesel most of the time and a great handling fun to drive car that does the same thing as my truck absolutely makes sense. So I have about $1600 total in the 4 speed swap from a beautifully restored but tragically wrecked 240d, the car, the fresh motor and the flywheel work. I'll be putting it together so I'm not worried about reliability. It runs on free(ish) fuel I make. How do you figure it's not economical? If it tows my drift car or my utility trailer it does the same thing my truck does so how's it not practical? My 300sdl did this job perfectly but had a clutch fan fail and it hurt the motor. If it wasn't a rusty mess I would've swapped that for the extra wheelbase and bigger rear doors.
Would it be practical for someone paying for work on thier car or having it built? No. My mechanical and fabrication skills are quite a bit higher than most tinkerers so I really can do just about anything myself with enough time. Plus learning to do anything just adds onto my skills list for the future.
Resale? Have you seen how worthless a w126 is lately? My 4 speed car will be worth way more than a stock beater level 300sd if I ever decided to sell it.
I have 10 different Mercedes I can get in and drive if I want to but one that can tow and rip down a twisty road or get a couple hundred pounds of crap throw in the back is what I want to drive every day. At least until my 300+hp 6 speed wagon is done.
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