Car appreciation... the aesthetics, the engineering, etc

My neighbours brother is selling his 2010 Mercedes e-class, w212, E220, diesel, auto. Ex taxi though, 300k miles (all long distance in the north of Sweden though, very little city driving, unsalted roads), perfect service history and apparently runs great. I’ve seen photos and it looks really well looked after.

He’s after about £5k which is less than half price of one with more normal mileage.

I can’t help being really intrigued. Prob a really bad idea though?

I started trial fitting some bits of the wide arch kit today

3 Attachments

Hah, love the lights- that’s hugely evocative of proper 90’s rally cars. Are the night arrays so large these days now that light technology has developed so much?

In other news my helmet arrived- how do you stop your ears folding over when you pull these things on?

You can get LED light units that are much more compact but they look toss and I wanted to keep the 90s rally aesthetic, so I’m planning on finding some round LED units to mount in them

I wear a balaclava under my helmet every time, purely because otherwise it tries to rip my ears off when I take my lid off

how do you stop your ears folding over when you pull these things on?

Staples?

Hmm. Those ITB’s I posted- £3,750 plus VAT. Possibly per bank.

But, once you've seen them....

And that's less than the cost of two steering wheels.

#spendingyomoney

If that’s per bank then they’re £9,000 for a set.

What’s so special about them compared to a set of jenveys?

Shaftless, port matched, dbw plug and play

Hmm this seems expensive to just lose the shaft, even the dbw conversion on a jenvey isn’t that spendy

Are they roller barrel to loose the shaft? They don’t look like it

I don’t know tbh, they’re very shiny.

The promise is 17% increase in airflow over the stock system.

Is airflow in a limiter on performance as it stands or post new engine? I seem to remember you had the intake tested and it flowed very well?? Might be missing remembering though.

Marginal gains compared to a jenvey system is hasten to guess

It's around 4.5 times the price of Jenvey, I doubt it's that many times as good.

= I'll use Jenvey if I go this route I suspect. I need to speak with Mike about what that might look like, I like the idea of using the X51 manifold rather than the trumpets to take advantage of the balance flap and so forth - basically to smooth out the power delivery.

I may have read the email wrong and Mike is now pushing for trumpets, however.

Is airflow in a limiter on performance as it stands or post new engine? I seem to remember you had the intake tested and it flowed very well?? Might be missing remembering though.

The stock intake didn't flow as well as the head, hence we got the X51 intake - but now we're going to (lots) more revs we're swapping in larger valves as well as porting and flowing the head, so the intake needs to up it's game a further level.

I reckon we'll end up with the X51 exhaust manifolds, also, but not sure on that - potentially the M97 ones.

Ah, makes sense then.

Should sounds amazing too.

For the LOL's we worked out what the speed would be at max revs in the current gear ratios:

1st 60mph
2nd 95mph
3rd 130mph
6th 250mph

Stock final drive is 3.44, you can buy a 4, but that's still 112mph in third.

Ideally we need 5 - which I suspect will be custom. Anyone got any contacts in this area?

Wonder what they use in the Tuthill rally cars.

G96.50 I predict

Porsche supplied Sequential competetition gearbox in the Tuthill cars. Probably the same box as the RSR race car but with a different set of drop gears and final drive in it

That's a bit too money for me.

Alternative?

1 Attachment

1. That'll be the G50/G96.50 bolt pattern (the Mezger engine shares the same basic architecture as the older engines because it's an evolution of them) not the G96.0x of the M96/7 engined cars
   
2. I love (badly) heel and toe changing, with an H pattern box
   

You don’t necessarily loose the clutch or the requirement to toe heel with a sequential, unless you invest in a fairly advanced control system you still clutch in on the way down