An introduction:

This all started with the itch for an old Benz... I was torn between a W124 or W201, but the plan was for a mild turbo M103 build with some kind of period correct body and wheels. I stumbled on a mostly running, but otherwise decent 1993 190E for $1000 and well... I couldn't resist.

The car had a few known issues:
-No keys
-Failed ignition (more on that later)
-Failed brakes due to a bad rubber brake line
-Running extremely rough

The car did come with a new set of Depo headlights (I know... but hey, they were free) and a full set of YellowSpeed Racing Super Low Coilovers. Those coilovers wouldn't have been my choice, but we'll give them a try and see how things work

Overall plan for the build is to throw big brakes from a 400E on it, drop it on the coilovers with Fifteen52 Super Touring Tarmac EVOs, then push about 7-8 PSI through it with a low budget turbo setup. Once it's running well enough to justify the expense I'll source an EVO 2 body kit and tackle the fun of fitting that to the car.


Here is the car after it was towed to the house (a keen eye will notice the lack of steering wheel and the instrument cluster torn out)




As mentioned the car had a failed ignition switch and was missing all the keys. No big deal, but what I didn't know was that the previous owner had attempted to drill the ignition out only to succeed in snapping off a drill bit deep in the cylinder.

What followed was a multi week saga of waiting on an ebay sourced ignition assembly, judicious use of a dremel, grinder and drill, ultimately leaving me with a running car, albeit with no key for the doors or trunk.


Rough running was ultimately sorted by bleeding the fuel injector lines at the injectors, however the fantastic guide HERE was an invaluable resource and I highly recommend anyone with an M103 read and bookmark it.


Next up was cleaning the interior and getting the instrument cluster and steering column back together.



Hey free cassettes and free coilovers? Not too bad!

Once the interior was cleaned up I threw a vintage Nardi wheel in the car and things were looking pretty decent on the inside.




The Depo headlight install was extremely straightforward using the correct Euro 6-pin connector (part # 011-545-50-28) and wiring diagram below. The connectors are only about $2 each from any of the big parts suppliers, and I'd highly recommend anyone going to Euro style lights use them instead of jumper wire, etc... I elected not to use a jumper from the turn signal plug for the "city lights" feature.


At this point I had a decent running and looking 190E, but with no brakes. Next step was a full tune up, before pulling the car in the garage to tear in to the brakes and suspension...

 

"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 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.

 

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.

 

Good luck with the build. You have quite a project in front of you. May the force be with you!

 

Thank you! Fortunately these cars seem reasonably easy to work on so far. The only thing I'm really worried about is the body kit install. That's something I have no experience with.

 

I have no intention of putting body kits on my original pre and post facelift W201's however I have read places that the aftermarket body kits never look right on the carr and hard to fit.
But I do not have direct experience with them.

Happy Motoring!

 

Absolutely, I expect it will be a lengthy and difficult process to fit the kit properly, that is the goal though.

 

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.

 

I suppose the rear molding will have to be cut to accommodate these. You will get a new kit anyway so you probably do not care that you have to.

 

I'm planning to remove the rear bumper completely, no desire to cut it up unnecessarily! I'd rather give it to someone else who can use it.

 

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.

 

What brand LCA's did you end up with? I had hear that there are ones in which the ball joint is not replaceable and with smaller knuckles to give you more room for larger parts like brake calipers etc.

Don't quote me on this, I have no experience with it at all. I'm an OE person but nowadays MB does not even sell the LCA's. So we have to be flexible.

 

These are the Vaico brand control arms from FCP Euro. At least visually they look pretty much identical to the original ones, including ball joint installation. Vaico stuff has some iffy reviews, at least from what I saw in the Audi world, but this is a low buck build and stamped steel control arms are pretty simple. I figured I'd give them a shot, as long as they are in spec I don't foresee much to go wrong.

 

From what I've read online is that most of the body kits are of very poor quality and they're very expensive. I also have no plans to put such a kit on my all original W201 either.

 

Yeah, they seem to be very hit or miss. We'll see how it goes!

 

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 to 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.

 

If the ride height is too low find out the ID (inner diameter) of springs, free length (i.e. spring length without load), and the spring rate (hopefully manufacture could provide info). Then look online with provided specs from a reputable universal spring supplier such as AFCO, eibach, vogtland, etc. for ones that are slightly longer. if my memory serves me right factory 201 rear coils are 2.5"id i am guessing those coilover rear springs are somewhere in that ballpark.

out of curiosity what is the wheel/tire clearance for the fronts with those coilovers on your setup? I eventually would like coilovers and was wondering what it would take to get 235 or 245 tires upfront. on the stock setup with sl600 springs and bilstein sports i used to use 225/50/15s and 215/45/16s fronts with minor rubbing under full bump.

 

also while you are doing suspension refresh check your rear subframe for cracking. from what ive seen not many people change out 4 subframe bushes that leads to the issue. along with the bushing under/ at the bottom of rear hubs that connects to the hubside of the rear control arm.

 

Thats a good tip. They likely are in need of replacement. Doesn't seem like to bad of a job with the car already on stands.

 

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!

 

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.

 

Good progress.

KOMBATROK>>>> 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.

This is what I was referring to earlier in one of my responses. People use a different LCA with a smaller knuckle that is not replaceable like the originals.

Just to emphasize for those who want to use E400 calipers in the future.

Cheers!