A driver decided to play bumper cars with me on the road and so he ran a red light totaling my 1993 300SD. Luckily I wasn’t injured and I was at no fault.

I was struck on the left front corner of the vehicle, which caused his car to also bounce back and damage the rear left door. It needs too much body work, making it impractical to repair. On the somewhat positive side the engine is untouched and fully runs and the car still drives.

I’d hate to see this engine go to waste as it has been so reliable to me in all types of climates for the past 3 years. It has 170K miles and is leak free. It’s also so much more durable than the diesel engines that were brought into the 1994 – 1995 S350 models.

Now, I also have a 1992 400SE and came across the idea of putting that diesel engine into this chassis.

Am I thinking outside the box?
I’d love to hear as many comments and opinions from everyone.

Besides the engine & transmission, I’m trying to research was else I would need to carry over:
- Exhaust
- Radiator
- Computer System
- Instrument Cluster

Is this swap even possible?
Will the change over of the computers be overwhelming and next to impossible?

That's alot of wiring... ALOT of wiring. "Computer System" is probably way more than you think it is. Did iocry ever revive his w140? It was submerged and had to have everything taken apart and cleaned.

That's the only issue, seeing as you'd have both of them.

Better yet, ditch as much of the computer stuff as possible. Probably just a matter of homebrewing your own preglow/shutoff system. Assuming they don't have a fancy immobilizer system in these or something.

'will you live long enough to "Perfect" the "Transmifogration" UNLIKELY
All the Angst/Frustration will be your end.

Easier Project...get in touch with the Rutan Bros. about building a Mars Shuttle.

'Got to be more than a few of those W140 Diesel Chassis sitting around in need
of a "Fresh" engine.

__________________
'84 300SD sold
124.128

Agreed.

__________________

Gone to the dark side

- Jeff

If I was 10 year younger I might consider it but now that I'm pushing 50 I can only think about finishing up what I've started (which is way too much) and then going into maintenance only mode.

There's a lot to transfer and essentially you would have to put both cars side by side and just start moving stuff over, gut out the 400SE and start pulling and reinstalling the 300SD parts on the 400SE.

One would learn a lot from the process but it would also I'm sure be aggravating in many ways, a schedule would need to be established and then followed and / or adjusted as necessary to keep the project moving lest one start to forget things. My suspicion is that not all of the 300SD harness would need to be moved, that some of what's in the 400SE is the same but that underhood everything would need to be done.

I've done swaps before, converted a low mile 1989 VW Fox 2 dr from gas to diesel and switched to 5 speed manual trans. I became intimately familiar with the wiring in order to know what was needed and what wasn't, and then adapt what remained to satisfy the diesel engine plus add in a glow harness etc, all while keeping it stock, but the 300SD would be magnitudes more complicated.

There's a guy out in NY, Joe Tripp, who converted a late model S420 to OM606TD and it was clearly a lot of work. Last I knew he was finishing up work on the 722 gearbox.

Congrats if you do it and finish.

__________________
Steve A
92 W140 OM603
97 VW Jetta TDI
90 Passat variant TDI 6 speed MT
94 Chevy K1500 6.5TD
05 E320 CDI
+ others

I wanted to do this with a late 124 wagon, but unless you've got both vehicles and are willing to give up two garage stalls for an indeterminate amount of time to keep them side-by-side for comparison and swap (even the fusebox is wired differently), you might want to reconsider.

__________________

Gone to the dark side

- Jeff