Looks really nice. But wow you had to do the ignition lock thing. At least you got it sorted.

 

Having done it now I think it would actually be much easier going back in to replace one. It's not really at all complicated how it comes out. Just a pain to get to and you have to be precise with some cutting/grinding.

 

"Stage 0":

Next task was a full tune up, to make sure the car was running as well as possible before diving in to the main part of the build.

Fuel filter was an easy swap. Spark plugs were replaced with the correct non-resistor type plugs (I went with the NGK BP6EFS). I replaced all the vacuum lines under the hood with new silicone line and pulled the CIS fuel distributor assembly so I could replace the large intake boot under it and the rubber hoses for the idle air valve. While I had access to the intake I cleaned the throttle body and did a full EGR delete, pulling the pipe that runs from exhaust manifold to the intake and installing a M16x1.5 plug in it's place. I also simplified the vacuum system by removing all the lines associated with the EGR/air pump and capping the ports since they won't work with my planned turbo setup anyway. Last up was the distributor cap and rotor, which quickly turned in to another lengthy process when this happened:

No problem, I thought, I'll just pull the rotor adapter out of the front of the camshaft and replace it...

The car had other plans, so I broke the dremel out again, which eventually allowed me to get a slightly modified puller on the adapter and carefully back it out of the camshaft.

With that finally done, the tune up was complete and I was happy with how the car was running. So it was time to back it in the garage and get it up on stands so the real work can begin.

Ignore how dirty the 928 is, it's a much nicer car than it looks like in that picture... Fortunately the body and underside of the 190E are almost perfectly rust free. The only rust on the car all appears to be this little bit on the support under the radiator. I'm not quite sure how I'll tackle that yet, but at a minimum clean it up, rust convert it and get some type of coating on it.

Up next: Getting ready for the big brake swap and starting to work on the suspension install.

 

Looking forward to following along @kombatrok! I love the 190E performance variants and am interested in seeing how this turns out. Are you planning to do a manual trans swap as well or stick with the "autotragic"?

 

I've considered a manual swap. If I do go that route it will be down the road after I see how the car performs under mild boost. Ultimately this is just going to be a fun cruiser for the street, so if I'm happy with how it drives with brakes/suspension/boost I may just leave it alone and move on to the next project.

 

That makes sense. Good luck with the build and keep posting the updates. I'm up in the Triad area, so I'll keep an eye out for an EVO!

 

Rear Suspension:

Rear "coilover" install was very straightforward. I'm maxing out the ride height adjustment, but still worried the car will be too low without cutting the factory fenders. No way to know until the car is back on the ground.

I also replaced the sway bar end links while I was at it (plastic? really Mercedes?) and if you look at the top of the brake dust shield, you can see where I cut the stock shields to clear the oversized 400E brake rotors. It looks like the front rotors will clear, but if needed they will be modified too.

Up next: Front suspension overhaul.

 

Not a progress update, but I wanted to show you all something cool...

Correct EVO 2 style exhaust tip from Hedgehog Motorsport with the needed (somewhat unusual) size single to dual adapter from do88. I'll be running a single 2.5" exhaust from the turbo back and splitting it right at the tips.

 

Front Suspension:

Quick update to show teardown of half the front suspension!

Here's the passenger side with brake caliper and rotor removed to show what we're starting with.

The beginning of disassembly on the drivers side. Strut and spring are out, and the steering tie rod disconnected from the steering knuckle/hub assembly.

Original lower control arm next to the new replacement. I was originally just going to replace bushings and replace the boot on the ball joint, but I noticed that one of the studs that mount the sway bar on the control arm was snapped.

Here is the suspension completely torn down with the new parts ready to go in. Just need to pop the tie rod off and adjust the replacement to match, although the car will still need a serious alignment once its sitting on coilovers.

At this point I'm just waiting on a new bracket to mount the sway bar to the frame. The old one was badly bent, likely from whatever snapped the stud off the control arm.

 

Pre-Christmas Update:

Drivers side suspension is back together, everything has been going remarkably smoothly under the car...

Control arm, tie rod and sway bar mounts all went in with no issues.

From there it was on installing the steering knuckle/hub assembly to the control arm and test fitting the coilover.

The only other addition was strut tower reinforcing plates from Garagistic.

That's all until after New Years!

 

Post Christmas Update:

Suspension is done with the exception of torquing a few things once the car is on the ground, and making any needed adjustments to ride height. The passenger side went together just as easily as the drivers side.

The only real issue I've encountered so far is a rear brake line that decided it wanted to get cut off with the dremel...

Fortunately I have the correct metric flaring tool and some spare brake line which should be the right size.

 

Back in town after a few days away for work, so bending up a new brake line was in order.

Started off with the bubble flare on the caliper end

Tossed my little tubing bender in the vice and with some careful eyeballing got to bending.

Et voilà!

I'll get this installed in the car, then the next step will be rotors and calipers.

 

Minor update. Installed the 400E vented rear rotors and the newly fabbed hard line to replace the one that I broke.

My trim job on the dust shields was sufficient and they clear without any rubbing. I currently have two drivers side 400E rear calipers, so I'm working on a solution to convert one of them to have the correct bleeder setup for the passenger side, which I'll detail in a future post.

 

The caliper conundrum:

I had mentioned before that I had significant difficulty locating a rear passenger side caliper from a 400E to use as a donor for this project, ending up with two drivers side remans. So, I went looking for a solution.

The 400E utilizes a 278mm vented rear rotor, while the late model 6 cylinder W124s (with the M104) and early R129s use a 278mm solid rear rotor. The only difference I could find in the calipers is that the calipers for the vented rotor cars have spacers bolted between the halves. Armed with that "knowledge" I hit up rockauto for a cheap right rear caliper for a '94 E320 and crossed my fingers.

Here the calipers are on the bench. 400E unit on the left and E320 on the right.

You can see the bleed screw is on the opposite side... All that was keeping me from using the 400E caliper on the car.

I split the caliper and pulled the spacers from the 400E unit.

Installed the spacers in the E320 caliper.

and the end result is the needed right rear unit, setup for vented discs!

 

Beavering away there. You're doing a great job.

 

The brakes are done with the exception of bleeding. All rotors and calipers are on, and I installed braided stainless brake lines from Garagistic.

The 400E rear calipers fit perfectly, although if I was upgrading the brakes on another 190E or W124 I would be happy to just stick with the solid 278mm rotor and more readily available calipers from an early R129 or post facelift W124.

The front brakes were a little bit more of a puzzle. I had intended to use 400E parts there as well, only to find out that they require swapping to late model W124 lower control arms (P/Ns 1243303507 & 1243303407) in order for the rotors to clear the area around the ball joint. Having just replaced the control arms on my car, I ended up going with early (pre '95) R129 front brake parts. These do "bolt on" to 190Es/early W124s and gave me 4 piston calipers and 300mm rotors, a big step up from the stock 190E brakes.

The only adjustment that I ended up needing to make was to shim the calipers out slightly in order to center them on the rotor.

I have a power bleeder, so over the next few evenings I'll try to make time to get the brakes bled. The 190E master cylinder might be a little undersized, so we'll see how much pedal pressure and travel the brakes require once the car is back on the ground and rolling. If needed, stepping up to a bigger unit will be a straight bolt on affair.

 

A fairly unexciting update, but the brakes are bled. Did I open a bleeder without a line on it and spray brake fluid everywhere? Yes. Did I **** up the paint on one of my freshly painted calipers? Also yes, but fortunately on the back where you'll never see it.

Here is the bleeder in action. I found that rubber cap for the the fluid level sensor port on top of the reservoir was dried out and leaking under pressure, so I have it capped off for bleeding and a replacement on the way.

The only other thing to mention is a preview of the next project on the car...

 

Battery is in place in the trunk and some of the wiring has been completed.

I'm using the setup Hennes Design shows to facilitate swapping an EVO/W126 coolant reservoir to the original battery location with their mounting kit.

This should free up a little more space to mount the turbo.

Next up is pulling the rear seat and figuring out wire routing through the car, as well as removing all the old trunk mounted CD changer wiring. The car has a cassette player. I'm guessing it wasn't optioned for a CD changer, but maybe Mercedes installed the wiring/cable for it in every car?

 

Battery relocation is complete. Some minor trimming of the plastic trunk liner allowed it to go back in to place around the cable and 150A fuse between the trunk and passenger compartment.

I was able to run the cable through the factory wire run under the carpet and to the passenger footwell, where it fits neatly behind all the trim and heads in to the engine bay through one of the factory bulkhead penetrations..

I hooked the hot cable to the added fuse panel up front and test started the car with no issues. I'll run wire for electric fan relays out of the new panel prior to installing the coolant reservoir.

I'm happy with how the battery relocation all came together. I think with a slightly shorter battery I could easily install the factory cover over the spare tire well and maintain full use of the trunk if I wanted. So thats a nice upside.

 

I hope you're not done posting here, really enjoyed reading this and very informative.

 

I had been updating on some other forums. This one was the least active so I had somewhat given up posting here.

I'll drop an update though. Or if you have instagram you can follow along @hwmotorwerks

 

Ah OK, what other forum are you on? Doing up my 190 at the moment and it's great to see what other people are doing!

 

Mercedes 190E Built Thread (Another EVO?)

Mercedes 190E Built Thread (Another EVO?)

grassrootsmotorsports.com

 

It's been a while since the last update! I removed the radiator to get better access to the belt driven fan in order to swap in an electric unit (I can't stand belt driven fans, I'll go electric all day, every day). While doing that I noticed that the bearings in the water pump had a little bit more play than I liked, so I tore down the front of the engine to replace the pump and tensioner, as well as give everything a little bit of a clean up.

You can also see my completed coolant reservoir relocation to the original battery compartment. This frees up significant room for the turbo, whenever I get to that stage of the project.

I also had a bunch of hardware and the entire throttle assembly cleaned up and re-zincked. The car is never going to be a show car, but I do want it to be presentable, and little stuff like that is a nice touch.

While I had the easy access, and since the throttle bracketry was off the car anyway, I deleted the cruise control and the engine bay side of the AC. The AC piping was a nightmare to get out from under the engine and back of the compressor, and includes a fuel return cooler that I removed and won't be using.

With that done, everything started to go back together.

Everything cleaned up reasonably well and I managed to find the right belt size with a little measuring and guesswork. For reference the correct belt size for an M103 with the air pump and AC compressor removed is 6PK2275. Maybe that will save someone else a bit of trouble down the line.

From there it was easy enough to drop a new radiator in place! You can really see how much room there is now on the passenger side of the engine.

And this shows how little clearance there is for an electric fan on the 6 cylinder 190E, but a slimline Spal unit worked and should provide more than enough airflow in the factory shroud.

I also built a new control circuit for the electric fan, using twin relays, mounted out of the way and triggered through a BMW (E21/E30/E28) auxiliary fan temperature switch, that threads in to the cylinder head just forward of the factory temperature sensor on the Mercedes.

With that done the cooling system is back to 100% and ready for the next phase.

Which was... test fitting the wheels, where I ran in to a bit of an issue. The rear fit perfectly, as seen below, but the front wheels don't clear the R129 brake calipers without 3-5mm spacers. This wouldn't be the end of the world, but wheel fitment is looking like its going to be pretty tight up front with how low I'm expecting the car to sit. I have a set of W124 400E rotors and calipers that will clear the wheels, but the 400E rotors don't clear my non V8 lower control arms.

I'm not happy about it, but the right thing to do is to replace the lower control arms with the version that came on the 400E, so that everything bolts up properly. I could probably get away with taking a grinder to the LCAs that I have on the car, but even then I think I'd only end up with 1-2mm between the rotor and ball joint, and that's not enough wiggle room for me. So enjoy a picture of the wheels on the rear while I wait for new control arms to arrive...

 

Annddd the follow up... I replaced the lower control arms with the V8/late W124 version and fitted the 400E rotors and calipers up front.

 

Another mundane update, but another problem sorted... The factory power steering cooler was in the way of where I plan to mount the intercooler, so I replaced it with one pilfered from a Nissan 370Z.

 

Found your thread a bit late, but will follow with interest.
Btw, the late W124 coupes 320CE have aluminum calipers for the larger rotors. They occasionally pop up in self service wrecking yards. The booster would work as well.

 

Good info, I didn't realize any W124 other than the very early 500E had aluminum calipers.

I haven't been working on the 190 much recently. Decided to tackle some long overdue projects on the 928...