marlinspike

The 16 valve 190Es are coming into vogue, and then of course the Evo 190Es
Homologation cars

LT Texan

I do belive the E39's had a pretty restrictive electronically limited top speed of 125mph or something like that.

Maybe get that confirmed and consider it in what type of race to challenge him to.

marlinspike

130 (some years they said 127, some 129, some 130, but people with gps and confidence have discovered 130, some slightly beyond), unless it had the sport package or the manual trans, in which case it was 155.

hacker-pschorr

I have a 1983 380SEC packed away for a future restoration. The hold-up is what engine to use. The stock 380 is not an option, I was going to use a Euro 500 since it's the "best" motor to drop in with no other mods.
Now I'm leaning towards a more modern engine with a stand alone ECU. Few guys in the Benz forum have gone this route with newer 5 liter Mercedes engines.

Then the idea was tossed around to drop in a 928 engine.

blown 87

The SEC's are some of my favorite MB's, we seem to have a lot of them around here, kind of strange consideing how few were made.

How about one of the newer dual plug motors?
They seem to run forever.

hacker-pschorr

Depends on the core price of the long block. No need to get stupid with this build, just want 200hp or so more than the stock 3.8 unit.

marlinspike

Satish Tummala went and put a V12 from a W140 S600 in his. It's quite a project. Even the 5 liter from a R129, which is the easiest of the "modern" swaps is quite a project, and you lose that 80s character.

Do what I did - If you have the kind of money to buy all the things you need for those swaps (and make them work right), you have to money to get a euro 560 built for you...find some euro tri-ys (at some point, probably late this year, I'll be having tubular duplicates made of the cast euro tri-ys), get some cams made for it (if you want to keep your hydraulic lifters, but go too big on the cams to use the MB shims, I can put you in touch with someone who can get you longer stemmed valves).

The euro 560 swap is pretty simple, you can keep the old CIS (and in fact the old CIS is better than the later CIS-E if you want to do things like cams or supercharging - the latter is not recommended...though I believe that same guy who can get the valves can also make sleeves for you, and then you could boost) and the old ignition. Though you'll want to change the warm up regulator for either a Brian Leask unit or an UnwiredTools UTCIS-PT if you go to cams.

hacker-pschorr

This project is so far on the back burner, who knows what engines will be available once I get around to working on it. All started with a cam CHAIN failiure that smashed all the valves.

No thank you

blown 87

A 380 with a cam chain failure, surely you jest.

marlinspike

That's harder that it may seem. I still need to tune the ignition timing, and since the dyno run I have discovered that my throttle body was misadjusted and only giving me about 90% throttle. Really though, I should have gone bigger on the cam, I went with the lift because it let me used stock valves and keep my hydraulic lifters, but I should have done more duration.

The weird thing is I've seen euro 560 dyno runs, and their peak numbers aren't far behind (you have to remember, the 300hp MB quoted at the crank for the ECE 560 motor was DIN), but their curves aren't nearly as flat...you'd think with cams my curve would be peakier than theirs...who knows

http://davidson.smugmug.com/photos/7...22_uEtn2-L.jpg
(real redline is 6000, but we saw no need to run it that high since it already hit peak numbers)
Sorry to digress so much, but a 126 MB was mentioned and it seems like OP got his answer, so hopefully nobody minds.

marlinspike

I'm guessing a single row chain? Why was it still riding around with one of those? MB pays for the pre-emptive replacement of those (though I think nowadays they only pay the labor). Also, what's wrong with CIS? I love it - knowing how to work it is like knowing a dead language. Makes me feel special lol.

hacker-pschorr

If I find myself needing more power, there will be some kid of boost in this cars future.

50 post rule

Double
Did have over 200,000 miles on it though.

marlinspike

If you boost, and you are using an MB block, please sleeve it first.
200k is quite a bit, but I'm still very surprised to hear it broke without symptoms...or did they just go ignored? When I still had a 380 engine in mine I went through 2 chains (well, my dad went through the first one, he bought the car new when I was born with no intention of keeping it this long, but I started working on it when I was ~12 years old and the rest is history), and they all got so much slack in them the car couldn't hold timing and would barely run before replacing (actually the second one got to the point where you could stick a finger between the chain and the cog). Plus they normally give you the "whack whack whack" of death on startup when its time to not run the motor until you change the chain.

Going with boost over cam is lame...if you go with cams random people will hear it lope, stop you in a parking lot asking you to pop your hood, take a video of your car that you don't know about, and then a few days later you'll stumble across the video on a car forum.

The nice thing about using a 380 is they're light for their size. With an SE, once you have a custom exhaust made up and ditch the US-market air pump, you've got it down to <3700lbs. The 1986+ cars are much heavier.

To keep this mildly on topic, I saw young girl (don't get the wrong idea, I mean young as in really young, as in probably still in high school) in a cherry 944 (which is kinda sorta related...maybe) a few days ago and I gave her the thumbs up as I drove by, which I've never done to a 911, so there is something about these front-engined Porsches.

hacker-pschorr

Why? Is the MB block that much weaker than the 928 block?

If the MB needs that much modificaiton just for a bit of pressure, maybe the 928 engine swap idea isn't such a crazy one afterall. Assuming it would fit.

Fine, I'll do both.....

marlinspike

You can boost a stock MB block, but you better be a very careful person. The owner of the shop that built my engine simply said "been there, done that...don't do it." The younger guy who built the engine that went in my car said he can do it and make it last, but I have to be willing to have a few extra digital readouts in my cabin (they have since developed the ability to make sleeves in-house). Apparently it's not the pressure they don't like, but the heat. That said, there is a guy who ran 7 or 8 psi on his without doing those things for a few years until he sold it, but a few years is no measure of longevity when it comes to MB engines.

The block itself is strong, they've been known to take 800rwhp without any changes to the bottom end (keep in mind that when AMG was turning the M117 into a 6 liter, they did so purely by boring, so there's a good bit of cylinder wall there), and places like Koenig Specials used to run wicked amounts of boost on them, but even Koenig once told me that depending on how you drive expect to lose 20 to 50% of your engine life with their setup (though I guess 100k is plenty for a lot of people). You just have to keep an eye on the heat, and maybe retro-fit the oil cooler from a diesel onto it. But with a major MB engine rebuilder doing sleeves in-house now, why not just sleeve it and boost to your heart's content?