Thanks for your reply. I know the 1999 C43 are rare, but this one achieved substantial damage hence the part out. The front wheel is in the passenger footwell, and the roof is warped.
I was thinking of transplanting this drivetrain into my W110 Finnie. Any reason why this shouldn't work? I'm not familiar with the MB ECU and anti theft systems. Is the 1999 systems easy (relatively speaking) to reprogram?
The seller is asking $4K for the whole car, which I think is too much. Any comments on that?
Yes, $4k is too much for a totalled C43. These days they're selling for that much without even being crashed. I paid 4400 for one and 2300 for the other with a massive oil leak.
There is no reason why swapping that engine into a W110 wouldn't work. Well, there two. Astronomical sums of money and so much labor you can't even begin to imagine. It would take a team of 10 professional MB techs a year to perform that swap. Any MB engine after 1992 simply does not swap easily unless its going into a car that had the same model engine. They run on 100% unmodifiable ECU's that also connect with the rest of the car's systems. You'd never in a million years get it to communicate with the rest of the car unless you were able to transplant many of the cars total systems into the W110: including security, windows, creature comforts, etc. The entire system on any C43 is completely combined at multiple points.
Example: C43's came with the 4.3l m113. CLK55's came with the 5.4l version with 100 more hp/torque. It is a popular modification to perform this engine swap into a C43 to get more power. But you can't use the CLK55's ECU, because you lose the ability to roll down the rear windows in the C43. CLK's have 2 doors and 2 windows. C43's have 4.
This is not an exaggeration: I found the crashed C43 you're looking at. It's black, right? It would cost you ten times less cash/labor to repair that car than transplant it's guts into any MB that did not originally come with an M113 V8.
That being said, there are still options.
The M104 straight 6 is a unique blend of old and new MB. There were some sold without the fancy ECU's and they can still be operated without being intertwined with the rest of the car. People are swapping these engines into older MB's but it still takes a bit of finesse. I can't speak to the specifics but it's definitely a MUCH more possible swap. There are several 190e cars with 3.6l engine swaps. Find out what they did, then find a C36 engine and transmission. You can even mate it to a getrag manual from a w201 or w124...
