I purchased a 92 300E (M103) back in January and found it was much faster than my 89 300TE. In the TE I had replaced the timing chain in December, as well as the valve seals, head gasket, de-carboned and lapped the valves. I was surprised to find no difference in performance afterwards. The '92 E starts out in first gear and the '89 TE starts out in second, but even with the TE set to first gear there was just no comparison. The E had ample power through the entire range of RPMS. The TE was very sluggish until it got to about 2200 RPM. Above that it had much more power. On the highway it was marginally slower than the E.

After resetting the cam timing the TE is just about as fast as the E from a start. It is now alot of fun to drive. The fuel milage is better, around 20mpg (50% town, 50% hwy).

Checking the cam timing is relatively simple. Remove the valve cover, set the crank at TDC. Look at the camshaft just in front of the #1 rocker arm carrier. If you don't see a small hole in the cam then turn the crank 360 degrees. The lobes on the cam should be pointing down at #1. Get the hole in the cam perfectly aligned with a casting mark on the #1 rocker carrier, but only turn the crankshaft clockwise (pulling the plugs makes this easier). Then take a look a the timing mark on the crankshaft. If it is more than a couple degrees off then I recommend adjusting it. This is about as involved as replacing the timing chain, so maybe a little more work than replacing the U gasket.

On a related topic, when I checked the cam timing on my '92 E I was shocked to see the timing was off by about 30 degrees. I couldn't beleive this so I double checked that the engine was actually at TDC by inspecting the piston in #1. In fact the diagnostic timing marks were way off so I used the piston as the guide. I suspect that if I had believed the engine was that far out of spec and recalibrated the cam timing that I would have had a piston-valve collision. I would guess that somebody replaced the harmonic balancer and didn't put it back on properly. Funny thing is that I purchased it from the original owner who had tons of documentation - all service and repair history was at the MB dealer.

I found that eliminating vacuum leaks made the tranny perform better also.

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89 300te 222,222
92 300e 190,000