This is great! good job on bringing the car back to its glory.

 

Thanks for the support guys. I have a little bit of work ahead of me. The serp belt needs replacement. Not a big deal right? Well the front underside of this car has had a minor scuffle with the ground at some point. The lower rad support is a bit wrinkled, and the radiator does not sit in it properly. It sits closer to the motor than it should. I noted this when I first got the car. The problem is that it's so close to the fan that the fan shroud can't come out. If I can't get the shroud out, I can't do the belt.

So a simple belt replacement has turned into; removing the radiator, banging out or replacing the lower rad support, I might as well locate and take care of my oil leak at the front of the motor (most likely the timing cover), THEN actually replacing the belt! I should probably do a coolant flush while I'm in there too.

I'm going to the junk yard in the morning to try to locate a good transmission harness, and look into possibly getting a lower radiator support too.

Bonus points- I have 6 days to get all this done, while balancing everything else I need to get done outside of Project: Amgie.

 

Not sure if you knew this already but mercedes has it's own blue coolant that you'll want to use when you do that radiator flush. The previous owner was running standard green and I had metal transfer to the coolant lines as well as pockets of missing metal in the water pump and thermostat housings.

 

I love threads like this one and 202s are my favorite cars to drive and work on

 

Well, the job wasn't as bad as I was expecting (which is better than the other way around). I went to the junk yard this morning and found a 202 with a good core support. No luck on the trans harness though. They were either all gone, or bad. Anyway, back to the core support-

I was going to grab the whole core support, but the JY wanted $50 for it, or $20 for just the lower radiator support portion. So I separated the lower rad support from the rest of the core support. Took it home and got to work. This happened- (pardon the blurry-ness, I was dying from heat stroke at the time, haha)



And a couple hours later, I had the rad, fan shroud, headlamps, BELT REPLACED (the whole reason for all of this in the first place!), and the old lower rad support out. After looking at the old one out of the car, I realized that the damage was not from a bottom out like I thought, it looks like someone tried to tow it from the rad support....

Old vs new-





I cleaned the new one up and gave it a quick coat of semi gloss black (I didn't take any pictures from here on out, I was on a roll and wanted to get it done). In everything went, flushed the coolant and refilled with some proper coolant for the car.

I did not take care of the oil leak in the front like I wanted to... I couldn't find it, because everything was coated in grime. So I wasted a whole can of brake cleaner getting everything clean so that next time I am down there, I'll be able to pin point the leak!

All back together!


Oh yeah, and I got a new grille for it the other day. It's actually out of a 210 that I found in the junk yard. I removed the insert from my car and the 210, placed the 202 insert on top of the 210 insert, then trimmed the excess off of the 210 grille to match, then stuck it in the 202 frame. It was a bit of a getto rig, but it was $10 at the JY vs $90 on ebay, lol.

 

Better pictures of the w210 grille insert in the w202 grille frame.

 

Wow that looks great! Got that sorted out with a quickness too.. Crazy somebody was towing on the lower core support. You would think that would just feel wrong to snap a big ol thick chain hook onto sheet metal and be like "yup that will do it"...

Makes you wonder of the other hidden gems you will discover over time.

But sure looks nice. Going to be like new soon.

 

florida heat is no joke in the summer so you get extra gold stars today!

 

After reading all of the manual swap threads that I could find, I have started collecting parts for the swap! One thing that I found interesting in my reading is that one person who was using a w201 as the parts car, and he noted that, obviously, the automatic front half of the 202 drive shaft was too short for the swap, but the manual front half of the 201 shaft was too long... turns out that the automatic front shaft out of the 201 is the right length for a manual swap on a 202...

My friend and I recently did a 5 speed swap on his w201 Sportline, and he still has the automatic front shaft out of his car. In addition to that he has the clutch and pressure plate that came out of the parts car which was a European Grey Market w124. He had already bought a new clutch for his car before we took the 124 apart, once we got it out, we realized that the clutch in it was almost brand new. It couldn't have had that many miles on it, because the car itself had 122k, and there was no way this clutch had that much, so it had to have been done fairly recently to when it was parked for the last time.

Long story short- the parts collecting has begun!!!

 

nice w126, too?

 

Nope, that's my friends 190E Sportline/5spd.

 

Your the man.. Thanks for the tidbit. I was going to have a shop make up a custom but sounds like a much cheaper route. Pretty much the last piece of the puzzle other than hard lines.

Which gear box are you planning on using?

 

For clarification, the thread that I found that info in, was a manual swap into an m111. I know that the m111 sits a little farther forward than the m104 by an inch or so, but he did mention that the auto 201 shaft was about 1.5" too short. It still grabbed the splines on the rear shaft just fine, but not all the way. My theory is that if it was 1.5'' too short for him, and the 104 sits about an inch farther back, we should be good to go. I'll take some careful measurements when I eventually get around to the swap.

I'd really like to have a Getrag dogleg (better for autocross fun), but i really need to be realistic, a normal 717 will be easier and cheaper to find, plus I daily drive the car more than I will be autocrossing it (MAYBE once a month) so a trans with overdrive would really be the best route for me to go.

This car really does need an over drive. Every time I drive the BMW, then get back in Amgie, I keep waiting for that last shift until I remember that there is nothing left to give, lol.

 

Ok good to know.. Actually now that you mention it I read that same thread too when I was sourcing parts. I ended up going with a 717.404 as from all the info I could get matched the 3.07 diff in the 97's. I will say this though the dog leg shifter was a damn hard find. Eventually I found one but had to pay top dollar for it an the rods. Also like you said no over drive. 5th gear ratio is 1:1

I'm pretty spoiled with the 722.629 5 speed I have now. That's why I'm still on the fence with the manual swap. : /

The 6 speed slk swaps look really interesting though.

 

I had thought about going 6 speed, however a little bit of custom work is needed. Not much; shortening of the sifter rod/bracket, enlarging of the hole in the tunnel for the shifter, crossmember, and possibly drive shaft. The custom work really wouldn't be too difficult, but I want something a little more straight forward. Also keep in mind that with the 6 speed out of an SLK or a w203 C230 kompressor, you'll be stuck with a dual mass flywheel, but with the older 717's you can go single mass.

 

Exactly. Plus I've read that box is weak on the second gear but can't confirm that. Sounds like your set on a 717. I could dig up some emails from past and put you in contact with a guy who makes delrin bushings for the shifter if your interested.

 

I watched my father for years, everytime he drove my 1994 C280 and got to cruising speed, he'd reach down and push the shifter forward thinking he went too far and wasn't in D, expecting it to gear up.

For ten. straight. years!!

 

Yes please!

Haha, that's me too... but not for that long. I only do that after I've driven the BMW previously.

 

Ohhhhhhhh. I may consider doing this manual trans swap thing. I hear great things about the 6 speed manual in the SLK. I wonder if this has been done yet..


My C36 has 206k on it and the trans has never been replaced or rebuilt. So I am thinking that day will come and when it does I too think it would be a good idea to have a parts list and parts stash ready to go....

 

So they guy you want to talk to goes by the screen name 16V4NRBRGR on rev190.net his name is Kyle. He sells the delrin bushing sets for like 60 bucks. They look really well made although I haven't made it to the point of tearing down the dogleg shifter and re bushing it. So can't speak to their performance, but I've read really good things from forum guys who have..

 

Thanks! I know exactly who you are talking about, I have spent a looooooooot of time over on the rev (previously owned 8 different 190e's, lol). His work is always good, and he is definitely a good guy to do business with.

 

Did a trans service today. I was trying to wait till I could get another pan from the junk yard, since the drain plug was stripped, but I was tired of having a puddle of trans fluid every night and constantly wasting expensive fluid. So I decided to just throw down a large tray and drop the pan. I waited till enough of the fluid had leaked out so that I knew that it was low.

Made a mess, but thats ok. The filter was definitely needing replacement. Fluid looked fine, but that's moot, since I was continuously topping it off anyway. I didn't worry about draining the torque converter (see previous comment). The old pan gasket was toast, which is where my leak was coming from.

Car shifts a little better now. I knew it wouldn't help much, I know this trans is on it's way out anyway, I was just tired of the leak and I need this tranny to last as long as it takes me to get a 5speed swap together.

Before it would only leak overnight. It would take more than several hours to see even a small amount on the floor. So far, it's been parked for 6 hours, and not a drop! tomorrow morning will tell the final result on if the new pan gasket did the trick.

 

Sounds ****, but I like to cut my trans filters open and see what it's been catching on the inside.

Caution: May lead to a wtf is that?!?? Moment..

 

I thought about that but I decided that I would rather not know... lol.

The new pan gasket did not help my leak. I discovered that the leak is actually coming from farther up on the trans... not sure where from. So that was all fairly pointless, though it does shift a tiny bit better and no longer slips at high RPMs. Manual swap will come sooner than later. I refuse to put another auto in there! lol.

In other news I got a really good deal on some aluminum Brembos off of a CL600. Not sure if they'll actually work, but they were cheap enough to give it a shot.

Thats really it for updates right now. Things will be a little slower to progress not that it's running well and reliably and I have shifted my focus from maintenance to modification...

 

Great work on putting back the c36 back together!