"Don't change the operating parameters" - a 190E build

I guess it's time for an update...

I upgraded the turbo. 19T billet 11+0 compressor, 9 blade "L" turbine, VSR balancing, etc...

MAC valve for electronic boost control:

Bosch 550cc injectors:

DIY manifold parts:

I also got the flanges, but I didn't take pictures. Then I bought a VDO boost gauge. Then thought about intercooling... no real way to package air to air in this car. The rad blocks all access. I envisioned a slick water-to-air setup with a tank in the trunk where the spare tire currently resides. Then I bought a clutch. Spec stage 2+, rated at 309 lbs-ft. Received it yesterday. Up until then, I had dreams of 15 psi and a massive wall of torque at 2000 rpm moving the little 190E with the gusto of an AMG Merc... 

Last night I received the clutch. I bought it because on Spec's website it said it was streetable and smooth. I thought it was a full faced disc. In fact it's a kevlar full face on one side, and 6 puck on the other side. No Marcel spring. Then I started digging reviews on the internet; a lot of people were reporting noises and chatter at like 2000 km.  

Then it hit me. All of this does not make sense.

Now I'm having serious second thoughts on this turbo thing. Feel free to enable (or disable!) me, but yesterday it hit me. All this spending isn't grassroots. It's not what got me into cars. I don't get satisfaction from buying new stuff and bolting it on the car. I get satisfaction by finding cheap E36 M3 in the JY, refurbishing it and making it work. This is how this car is built and this is how I always built my stuff. I feel like I will install all of this, then go through a long tuning and shakedown phase again, which might be even years from now.

I feel like the car is almost sorted now. The MS works well, it just needs a bit more tuning. The car isn't fast, especially with 2.85 gears, but the manual transmission works well, and the whole car is just a few touches from actually looking great. I don't want to win races, I just want to cruise around in a cool car I built. So I think the best course of action is to fix the little annoying things and just put kilometers on the thing. I might sell the turbo parts or keep them for a rainy day maybe?

Apart from the turbo stuff, I also did other things.

A new pad for the hood:

Now, about the RacingDiffs LSD conversion kit... The LSD part worked fine. It locks the wheels. But this coupled with the larger bars made the car somehow twitchy. Maybe it's just me not being used to this. I lived with it for the summer. But at some point, I started noticing oil drips under the diff on my parking spot. The diff was leaking quite a bit. There was so much oil on the outside of the diff that I couldn't tell if it was leaking by the axle stubs or the cover. I tried putting gasket maker around the cover to stop the leak, but it didn't work. So in January I removed the diff once again...

The gasket maker on the cover wasn't in the best shape. At first, I thought maybe I torqued the bolts too fast after applying the gasket maker (ie, not waiting one hour).

But then I pulled the stub axles, they were loose! On the stock open diff setup, the axle stubs go through the side gears and you put a snap ring to hold them. But with the LSD blocks installed, you cannot put those clips in. The kit comes with circlips to put on the axles. The circlip is supposed to clip in the space between the side of the LSD block and the chamfer on the side gear. In practice, it doesn't really work. I tried one circlip, two stacked circlips, small, medium and large diameters and nothing works. The circlip is either too big to go through the side gear or too small to clip and hold the stub in. 

Frustrated with this (pull the diff twice, pay the part, etc...), I pulled the LSD blocks out and went back to open diff.

Now, the sway bars. The W202/W208 rear worked well. The front W124 4-Matic one doesn't. It's not located right. I thought about making new mounts to fix this. But considering that the diff will go back to open, I decided to go back to stock bars. Another mod from last winter that gets undone. Not fun to go through all this and remove it. But I guess this happens sometimes when you work with a platform which has little support and you decide to change the operating parameters...

I removed the remnants of a clear bra that was most likely applied 31 years ago:

It's a little detail, but it always bugged me!

I wanted to paint the rear bumper since it's a junkyard bumper which came from a car that was more faded than mine. The bottom half of the car is color code "700 Alto grey", which is a color that was only used on body cladding I believe. It is not gloss, it's more like a satin finish. I went to the local NAPA C-Max to get cans mixed. Apparently you cannot get this exact finish in a can, it will be glossier. I don't know paint enough to explain why, but I tried a few different paint stores and only this one wanted to mix a can. The guy was cool and agreed to modify the formula to flatten it. I painted the bumper using only the color, no clear coat. I know it won't be as durable, but if I apply the clear it will be glossy. But now the bumper paint was different than the rest of the cladding...

I removed all the cladding to paint it! It will look great when done I think. The cladding had 30 years of scratches on it.

Of course, a lot of the clips were broken in the process...

One painted panel next to old panels

Bumper and panel painted

Currently, the whole kit is in primer. I got 4 more paint cans with the same formula as the first one. I will paint the rest of the kit in the next few days. I will also do the front bumper, which is very damaged from all the road pebbles. The black plastic part on the bumpers will get refinished too.

The turbo thing is something I can somewhat relate to.

Forced induction grin is real and it is addictive. Like any addiction it can take you too far, too soon, too fast.

The first one is not "free" however...

But, my point; if you can stick to a relatively low boost and really make it a nice driver, you don't have to go crazy on things like clutch and intercooler. I bet a low-ish boost would give you a true 230-250 bhp at least and over 300 Nm of torque. Compare that to the power levels of a 190 2.3 16v and you will see it is not a "slow" car. Not "fast" by todays standards, maybe "brisk" but also 100% useable.

You have a nice turbo already, I'd use that, stick a reasonable intercooler in front of the radiator. Done deal :-)

Gustaf

I'd hold onto the turbo stuff and pick away at the things you can to get ready for it in the future. Spring is almost here, enjoy the car once the roads are clear the way it is continuing to improve the tune and the car but keeping it on the road. If you get bored and need to wrench you can jump into that project or start into it in the fall over the winter for next season. 

There's nothing wrong with new parts either, especially if you end up buying them in the end because a junkyard part failed or isn't delivering how you hoped.

I often think about going turbo for my 190e but I love the NA drivability, especially being a 3.0 inline 6. I just hate ke-jet so much so I'm looking at MS. 

It's not really the turbo that puts me off. It's really the clutch vs reliability and drivability thing. I built a turbo setup previously in my old ABA-swapped Mk2 VW. It was fairly easy and doubled the power. The car was super fun, easy to drive and reliable. But there was no tuning involved. You bought the C2 chip for 440cc injectors, you installed said 440cc injectors and a VR6 MAF and that was it. Also, the manifold was found on eBay for peanuts. For the clutch, I had a Clutchnet kit with organic disc which held the 10 psi from the little T28 turbo. I was 21 and not as skilled as I am now. Today, I don't mind building a manifold and tuning the thing for it to run right. The thing is that the Mercedes has a small 8.5" diameter clutch. You want that to hold 250 lbs-ft of torque, it needs to be beefed up quite a bit. This is why I got the Spec stage 2+. But after reading more reviews (I should have done that research before buying), it looks like this clutch is kinda harsh on takeoffs AND noisy AND doesn't last for long. Of course it's hard on takeoffs, it's a 6-puck on one side, which I didn't know before purchasing. Mind you, Spec was the only company making a performance clutch for this application. Clutchnet/California Clutch quoted me for one, but it was also some sort of hybrid disc. Sachs said they could modify the stock unit, but only for 30% more torque. There is a 9" flywheel available, but it's rare and $$. I could swap to an SLK 6-speed box, but that's more $$ and custom work.

So here's the thing. I don't want to install the turbo and be stuck with a car that lost a good bit of drivability because of the clutch that I didn't have a choice to install for the drivetrain to hold the torque... Or maybe I'm imagining a problem which hasn't occurred yet. Maybe the clutch is good and out of the hundred sold, the only reviews on the web are the guys complaining.

But for now, the plan is only to get it looking good.

The 98-99 SLK 5 speed can be bought very cheaply and is the last Merc 5 speed manual.  It is rated for a m111 supercharged engine so it is a good deal stronger than your set up.

The C230 hatchback 6 speed is in my C36 swap.

In reply to ccrelan (Forum Supporter) :

Is the transmission behind your c36 swap a 716.624 transmission? 

Update: I am now living in France. I left Canada back in July. I got this opportunity to come here for a while, so I took a break from car stuff and regular life. Feels good, but I miss the garage and my tools!  I will be returning home in January and I will continue the project.

Here's what I did between the last update and my departure.

First, that's the Spec clutch I was whining about. I gave it some thought, I'll run that for now. It's not complicated: if it's so unbearable or the 5 speed explodes, I'll just swap in the newer SLK 716 transmission. There's even a 6-speed version that would give me a lower 1st, which could help with the current gear ratio. But for now, the "stock" transmission should work. After all, I dailyed a turbo ABA VW with a 020 behind it with a HD clutch for a while and it miraculously never grenaded. Maybe I learned to be gentle!

Then I finished painting the kit. Since I was painting 2-3 panels at a time, I made sure I used exactly the same products, technique and number of coats on all the panels. They all came out even, except for the front doors! Seems like I layed the paint lighter. I was probably moving the can too fast, because I didn't want to run out of paint or something. Doesn't matter really. It looks 100 times better than the old faded and scratched paint that was there before.

Before taking the car out, I replaced the PS return hose, and I gave a good clean and a coat of Chemical Guys VRP on all the interior plastics. I wasn't a believer in such products before, but this one works. It seems to have hydrated the plastics and didn't really leave an oily residue. I even did the engine bay.

Then I drove the car out of the garage and took it to the self-service car wash. It looked good with the painted body kit, the painted hood and the polished wheels!

Then I drove it like 5 times and put it back in the garage because I had to leave!

Speaking of the garage, it received a few additions over the winter!

Sometime back in March, my Grandfather calls me and asks me if I wanted a mini metal lathe. He lives in a retirement home and they had a little shop for the residents to use, but apparently the last guy who was using the lathe stopped using it and the administration decided to close the shop and sell the tools. So I got the little lathe for a few dollars! It even came with some carbide tools! I got the machine home, cleaned it and made it cut steel. The finish needs improvement, I'll have to play with the settings, the tool alignment, and maybe do a few improvements to the rigidity of this machine. But overall, I am stoked to have a lathe now!

But, I needed a place to put it. The workbench I had was too small and not sturdy enough. So built a new one to supplement the old one. I built that thing super solid. 

I put it in the corner of the shop where I had a bunch of stuff just thrown there like an engine crane, the engine support, the metal bin, etc. The new bench also allowed be to store the toolbox. So now that the lathe had a place to go, I shuffled everything around to find new places to put stuff. I took advantage of having exposed wall studs and put things "inside" the walls. I built a little metal bin with plywood scraps I had laying around. Overall I gained some valuable floor space.

Next update sometime in January!

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Signed up just to keep tabs on this thread. Really well done. Enjoying following along. 

Patiently waiting........

You can get Clear in satin. Kind of surprised they didn't have it. Not sure if they have Wesco Automotive Paint in Canada or not. They do mix batches of paint and will put it in spray cans. Works great for the little projects like what you did. 

Sorry guys, there won't be substantial updates for a while. I lost the shop I was renting last week. I had just removed the header to fabricate the turbo manifold when I got the news. I have to move out by the end of March. Since I am planning on buying a house (hopefully with some sort of garage) this year, I decided to spare myself the trouble of finding a new shop. I already rented a storage unit to put my tools in the meantime. Got winter tires for the car and sprayed it with Rust-Check in case there is still snow at the end of March when I will drive it out of the shop. So once again, the turbo setup gets postponed...

I repainted the valve cover and replaced the exhaust manifold gaskets with Remflex. I'll update a few pictures once the job is done.

This is why I'm afraid of renting shop space

Yes, it sucks now. But the way I see it is that I got four years of shop space, which is something I never had before that. It was dusty as hell but beats working out on a gravel driveway. The shop was in the basement of an industrial building, where I could make as much noise as I want. It was heated at 20C in the winter. For most of those four years, the neighbors in the other units were almost invisible. 

As for the small progress made in January:

I started fabricating the turbo manifold. This is a design I did like 8 years ago, when the headgasket went in the car. I disassembled the cylinder head in my kitchen. Since the head was next to my computer, I thought it would be a good time to measure the port spacing and the flanges, just in case I wanted to go turbo one day. I guess the day is now (or soon). It's just weld-els with a reducer fitting to do the transition to the Volvo inlet flange.

The Volvo turbo inlet flange has this pocket machined into it. A Volvo manifold has the corresponding shoulder. Not sure on the exact purpose of this feature, but I decided to replicate it on my manifold.

I chucked the reducer pipe fitting in my mini-lathe and machined a shoulder. It took like 100 passes because the lathe isn't the strongest, but I got it done. The finish isn't the greatest either, but here it doesn't matter.

This made the outside diameter of the machined section exactly the inside diameter of the pocket on the turbo. I simply slipped the flange on and did a test fit with the turbo:

Then it's just a matter of using an OEM Volvo gasket. It should seal properly.

I had planned to fab the manifold first and position the turbo in the car. I had removed the header to do so. Got the news about the shop the next day. For a while, I thought about sprinting my way through a quick turbo install, but I changed my mind. Would just be useless stress for nothing. I put a quick coat of VHT on the header and slapped it back on with new Remflex gaskets. The valve cover paint was chipping, so I said why not do a quick respray on that.

This valve cover is magnesium. I first painted it in 2015. I used regular paint stripper to remove the OEM finish (the type of paint stripper you would use for wood... maybe it was a bad idea).Since I was a broke kid fresh out of school then, I might have used regular paint. It lasted like 1 year before chipping. Then, I sprayed it again sometime in 2018. This time, I used yellow zinc chromate primer and engine paint. It chipped soon after too. To strip the paint off this time around, I simply used a scraper and removed the paint without any chemical. It's like if the zinc chromate primer didn't stick to the magnesium at all. Since it will probably last only a year again, I just laid 2 thick coats of engine paint and called it a day. I might just polish or brush it next time. Here's a picture of the cover being stripped. Next time I'm at the shop I'll just install everything back on. Won't be fast yet but at least it'll look decent.

I'm still shop-less and it seems like it will stay this way for at least another couple months. I decided to do the little things I can in the meantime. 

First thing I did back in May: I dusted off the used PC7424XP polisher I bought on eBay years ago and never got around to use. I started by spraying the paint with Sonax fallout remover, then I clay bar'd it. I never did any of these 2 things before on this car. Needless to say, the paint was heavily contaminated! I had a bottle each of Meguiar's Ultimate compound, polish and wax, so I used that. I applied the compound with a yellow pad on the roughest surfaces and orange pad on the rest, polish with white and wax with black. It came out nice, it really brought back the gloss in the paint! But there were still deep scratches. I don't know if I was not agressive enough with the polisher. I was kinda scared to burn the paint. Here's a few of when I finished wiping down the wax:

With the paint done, I also hit the wheels with the aluminum polish. I don't think the car ever looked that good since I bought it 10 years ago. If the plastic cladding on the bottom was all the same color, it would be pretty much perfect for a driver. I will definetly redo that eventually.

One project I wanted to do was to fabricate misalignment spacers to convert the rear camber arms to rod ends instead of bushings.  Back when I installed the adjustable camber arms, I just assumed that the stock arm's bushings axis were parallel... I just replaced the stock arms with some that I assembled with parts I got on Speedway and drove like that for a while.  It's only later that I noticed that I had to force the knuckle in place pretty hard after removing and installing the arms a couple times. When I measured the stock arms, I found that the bushings axis formed a 7 degree angle. It's funny because I just found out that when first installing the adjustable arms, I took this picture of the stock part next to the then-new adjustable arm and it's blatant! I probably thought it was an optical illusion!

I found out that there is some sort of DIY shop nearby that you can become a member and have access to all sorts of machines and equipment for various project. One morning, I went to check it out. They have a metal shop with a lathe, mill, press drill, welders, etc. Not super heavy duty shop equipment, but enough for hobbyists. I signed up on the spot. Over the course of a few nights and Sundays, I managed to remember how to operate a lathe and I made a few spacers. I got QA1 5/8" rod ends from Speedway.

Those allow me to use a standard 5/8 rod and with M12 bolts on the inner joints and use the stock  sleeve and M9 bolt on the outer joints.

I went to a buddy's house to install. It went well.

I don't really see a difference when driving, but now I know it's done the right way. The old bushings were compressed and starting to crack too.

Also, I sold the TD04 turbo I built to a guy who wanted to put it on his S60. I wasn't really motivated for this project anymore. Small turbo, small power gain, high boost pressure, boost spikes, heat, etc. 

But hey, go big or go home. A Holset HY35 from a Ram 5.9 Cummins will surely be a motivating project. It will spool later, but will make the engine spit out 300 hp while sounding like big rig diesel turbo, because it is almost a big rig diesel turbo. It will probably be easier to keep the IAT's in check. I Got that for a few hundred on eBay:

It seems to be in great shape with no shaft play. More later, I'm tired.

What year is the hy35, they have different versions with different comp maps. And what size housing does it have?

How much boost do you plan to run?. I remember back in my DSM days, the 2.0 4g63 didn't do well with these when running low-boost (under 10-12psi).

It's from a 00-02 truck. It's got the single scroll 9 cm^2 turbine. I think all HY35s had that same turbine. The HX35 got multiple sizes of twin scroll turbines, starting at 12 cm^2. I'll run 12 to 15 psi.

In reply to Rocambolesque :

Should be interesting to see the m102 with such a turbo. Lets go!

I had a couple ideas for the exhaust manifold. As I was scrolling at the very bottom of Google's "M102 turbo manifold" image search, I found this picture:

Sure enough, that's the bolt pattern for the M102 8V. Looks like someone, somewhere, one upon a time, made a tubular equal lenght piece for this engine. With a bit of searching, I traced down the image to a company in Finland making turbo setups for various cars. Their website looked abandoned and last updated in the mid-2000's. But that picture was indeed from a turbo Mercedes project they did. I found out that their Facebook page still looked semi-active, so I messaged them about it. Unfortunately, they never replied.

I figured fabricating one of these must not be that difficult, just time consuming. So I used CAD (that is, the real "computer" CAD) and made up a design with approximate dimensions:

Unfortunately, I couldn't get perfect equal length runners. They're all between 15%-17% though.

But ultimately, I think I will do a simple log design. Sometimes it's best to go with the solution that gets you on the street in the shortest time.

I have all the parts for this one already, and we have 1/2 plate at the community workshop that I can use to make a T3 flange. I will start working on that next week.

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Have you seen these turbo manifolds for the 8v m102? Looks really close to what you designed lol. Pretty cheap and from a company with good reputation. I'm sure they won't mind doing a t3 version like they have for the 16v manifolds. 

8v cast manifold

Edit: Oh I forgot Hedgehog has an 8v manifold too 

Hedgehog manifold