Hey Y'all,

My name is Jim Royston and I'm a newbie here but not in general. I have learned A LOT here in the past few weeks! I run a parts biz catering to VW TDI drivers and I recently bought an '82 300SD for cheap. My family had a '79 and '81 SD when I was in high school and so I really like Benzes. I had forgotten the King of the Road feeling until I started driving this car a coupla weeks ago. The car has been fun to work on and has needed many little fixes just to get it roadworthy. I have done motor mounts and shocks, adjusted the Garrett wastegate and Alda, fixed the power window lifters, and added a neat little boost gauge to the spot where the wonky clock used to go. I am gonna pull the injectors this week and have them checked and replace them if necessary. After all of the basics are done, I'm going to dyno the car to get a baseline reading since I want more power! I figure an engine this big can make 150/250tq to the ground EASY with just an intercooler and bumping up the boost and fuel enrichment. I have the intercooler already and it's an off the shelf salvage yard (cheap) part and is quite large in frontal area. It is sized for an engine in the 200hp range.

My question to y'all is this: If I come up with all of the little pieces to make this relatively common intercooler work on the '81-'85 126's and 123's, would anybody be interested at about $400 for the ancillary parts? This would be brackets, hardware, pipes but no intercooler. The intercooler would be sourced by you and I have two of them I bought for $75 each.

I wouldn't make a setup for the 603 engined 126 or 124, at least not initially. I love the 617's ubiquity, durability, and lack of hop-up parts aftermarket. If I blow one up it's pretty cheap to put in another engine and my CNC machinist has already told me that he could probably machine the stock used piston's combustion chamber for lower static compression for running big boost/fuel.

Comments/opinions? I know I'm new here but I can complete the project AND provide dyno charts to compliment the mods.

Jim
dieselgeek.com