RE: Pardon my abreviations
My fault, not yours on the TD confusion. I have to be careful around REAL MB people. [

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I went by and started the engine this morning. It was about 15 degrees out, and before sunrise here in Golden at about 5400 ft. One glow cycle and it started right up. Idle took maybe 2 minutes to smooth out fully, but that's not bad considering it was just sitting there. There's some light white haze at cold start, but my old LR used to do a LOT worse than that, and it was running clear after driving about a block. I can't actually "drive" this one because the trans is NG. But anyway, I'm going ahead buying this motor.
I think I have the best of all worlds here. Mark is keeping the car, but he says I can have anything and everything associated with the motor including all belt-run accessories, block heater wiring, tach trigger box, all the wiring junction blocks, glow circuitry and relay...any anything else we're forgetting. He said if I think of anything else I want, to just let him know and come by and take it.
And as for the oil pan, I think I'm again getting the best of all worlds again. The engine is a 79 (617.950) and pre-EGR, which I like. The later 617.951 motors came with the beefed up oil pan, but they all had EGR (not a big problem to rip it out, I know). Well, I mentioned to Mark this morning that I was trying to find out if the 300GD's came with a strengthened oil pan on their normally aspirated motors, and if they did I was going to try and swap mine over to the strengthened pan from the 617.951 motor. To that he says, "Oh, I've got pans like that on scrap motors, you can have one." So I'll get the nice simple '79 motor with the beefier (but still 2-piece Al+steel) oil pan from the '81+ motors.
I'm really reading the signs that this was meant to be. I just know I'm going to get this motor in and go, "Why did I wait so long?!?!" The answer is of course I was chicken when too many things were unknown to me. Getting to look at and drive Brian T's conversion, and talk to Dennis about parts really sealed the deal.
One more cool thing for us geek types. Mark still had the MB "introduction manual" from when they first brought the 617.950 engine to the USA in the 300SD in '78. He said at that time MB would send out these "here's what's coming, and how it's different from what you've seen" manuals to the techs prior to introduction of a new model. It's really interesting to read. They tell all the little things that are different, and why it was necessary to change them. Those were the golden years, man. He loaned me that manual as well as the 617.95- engine manual to keep as long as I need them.
It's going to be fun to document this swap.
-Dave