zach1328

I didn't really want to make a whole new thread for this, but i just thought it was wierd so ive got a question to ask.
After watching some videos of other 300e 2.8L with the m104 24V engine, i noticed they all shift at completely different speeds from my car. WHY?

My car holds 1st gear until a little over 40 mph
2nd gear until 72ish mph
3rd gear until 110-115 mph (its marked slightly over 115 on the speedo)

All the 2.8Ls i saw on youtube were shifting about:
37 Mph 1st gear
Little over 60 2nd gear
And about 100-105 for 3rd gear.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBvYZRO-k14


I'm confused, do i maybe have different gear ratios from all the videos i saw on youtube? In addition my car seems to be notably faster than most of the 2.8L videos i watched on youtube.

Maybe I have a special edition 300E 2.8L

chlippo

I dont beleive there were any special edition that were performance related.

i assume you have the 4 gang automatic gear box.

maybe you have a shorter rear diff?

what year is your car

zach1328

1993 300E 2.8L 24V DOHC M104. And yes it is the 4 spd gear box.
So its not the 94-95 model with the facelift and all that.

And I was kidding about the special edition. But maybe i have a 3.4L AMG like you and it was badged as a 2.8L and made to look like a sleeper.

zach1328

BUMP.
I wouldn't bump so soon, im just really interested to find out why mine holds the gears so much longer than the other 2.8l 24V DOHC.
I thought all of the 90-93's came with the 2.65 rear differential? Do I maybe have like a 2.47 or something like that? But then again i thought only the 500e came with the 2.47

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGlbc8yGC9s
There..same model same year, WTF?
Also in the time it takes that car to cover 100kph to 140kph I could probably easily do 100-160kph.

chlippo

in the last video...notice that the driver didnt hit the limiter so the car shifted earlier

zach1328

Yes i did notice that..BUT, look at the dash marks on the speedo.
The second one is at slightly over 100kph(65mph), mine is at 72mph.
The third one is at about 170kph (105mph), mine is past 115mph on the speedo.

Also in both those videos ive posted up, there speedometers only go to 240 kph (150 mph) and mine goes to 260 kph (160 mph). But that could have to do with the fact i have my speedo in MPH and those are in KPH

RBYCC

Did you ever first consider how inaccurate an aging speedo gets and second, the potential difference in tire sizes on the cars in the vids you are comparing ?

chlippo

I think the op is pointing that his speedo have different gear marks than the other cars...

RBYCC

Yes... and I'm pointing out that an aging 124 speedo can have 10% + variance...
Also the overall diameter of the tire effects the speedo reading.

Nothing is "same-same" looking at different speedometers unless they both have been calibrated and the tire diameters are identical.

If you then have a variance it would point to the final drive gearing

chlippo

you are absolutly right about aging speedos, on my W124 M103 it is way off ... maybe more than 10%.

zach1328, the attached picture is your main problem right?

if so post a picture of your speedo

zach1328

Yes that is what I am trying to point out. And an aging speedometer shouldn't have a single thing to do with the gear markings.
They don't just start sagging down over the years haha.

So how on or off your speedo is shouldn't affect where these gear markings are. Mine clearly came from the factory with gears that hold much longer than the ones on most of the 300e 2.8L's ive seen.



Ok so looking at your picture compared to mine, you can tell there is a huge difference in the marked gear changes. My 2nd gear hold till about 120 kph and in your photo 3rd gear is held until about 140kph.
Thats obviously a significant difference. My 2nd gear almost lasts as long as your 3rd gear.
Then my 3rd gear goes to about 185kph, over 40kph more than your car. So basically my car holds 3rd gear for about an extra 25MPH if not slightly more.

And YES my car really will hold the gears atleast that long. Sometimes it revs past the redline especially in 1st gear. And it will usually hold 2nd a little past the redline.
The 300e 2.8L's are supposed to top out at like 137MPH I think, but if mine can reach 115mph in 3rd gear i would imagine it can break 140.

chlippo

same cluster as your car
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8PAvKhSt2E&NR=1

actually while having a quick look on ebay and some other webs, it apeared that W124 1994 24V have this cluster...maybe yours is a late 1993 production?

Anyways thats all i know and thats the video ive found...ive found many others too. search a bit on youtube and you will find it

zach1328

Ok thank you very much
Only difference is that the 300ce there has a 7000 redline and mines got a 6400, so if i had a 7k redline too then mine would hold the gears even further, so its still a little different.

And maybe its a later production 93 model but i don't have the facelifted edition for sure. So unless they changed the engine specs and stuff in the later 93 models then i dont see why it would matter.

I guess its just because there are so many different variations of W124's out there. Theres almost no 2 W124's out there that are the EXACT same thing.

chlippo

have you posted a picture of your car somewhere here in the forum? i want to see

i want to see a picture of your engine bay too if possible. post or pm me (Y)

zach1328

Here's a picture. As you can see by the grille that wraps over the hood its definately not a facelifted model. And i wanted BBS LM's but they are about the same price as the car, so that didnt seem to practicle. Also I didn't have 4 grand to spend on rims/tires.
And I'm planning on lowering it as soon as i get the time to sit down and order all of the parts and then drive into the city to get it all installed.
I'll see if i can find a quick picture of my engine bay.

A

ZedStyle

keep treating the ol' girl this way, and the only question you'll be asking is 'should i junk it or part it out'?

zach1328

Haha I take great care of my car. Pushing it around occasionaly is perfectly fine for it. I don't think im the right person to be saying that to. More appropriate comment for any forced induction W124's or W124's with NOS. As a matter of a fact, it seems to run better after i push it around a little bit.

Anyways here is a picture of my beloved engine bay

RBYCC

Considering that the North American spec 124's were imported fully outfitted, there are probably many thousands that are identical....only major factory option was Sportline, any minor options were P.O.E. or dealer installed.

You have a nice clean car, fairly common color combo, but nothing special, just the lowest priced W124 in your model year

zach1328

Then explain why its almost impossible to find ANY W124's with the same exact speedometer as me.
The one that i did find with the exact same cluster was a 1993 300ce brabus edition. Im guessing the Brabus edition doesn't have anything to do with the engine though.

And are you sure they all come fully optioned? I don't have heated seats, and my neighbors across the street have a 300e 3.2l and it does have heated seats.
But i do have to disagree with the common color combo. White seems to be pretty rare for W124's, maybe its just me, but i don't usually see many white W124's.

RBYCC

What you must keep in mind is that dealers ordered the models fully optioned in the colors that would move quickly out of their floor plan.
Silver, black, white were fairly common as they were desirable colors

Very few buyers ordered their cars.
If you did order there were few option boxes that could be ticked off.
Even if the dealer didn't have the color you wanted they would check the regional dealer network which indicated what was in the USA and what was inbound from Germany.
Typically the ordered cars would have a color that was not so common in the USA.

There was another thread about a Signal Red / Black leather Sportline W124 which is a fairly rare color/option combo.

I bought a signal red/palomino C124 new in May of 1988.
There were less then 200 of this color combo produced worldwide.
The coupes and the cabs were the lower production numbers.

The 2.8L was less optioned then the 3.2L.

You mention "Brabus" which is a tuner, the same for pre-merger AMG.
The tuner cars were indeed unique as the owner purchased the mods ala-carte.

The Continental and UK cars were a different story.
Most didn't come with leather and A/C, even power windows.
You'll see more manual transmissions which are rare in the USA.

The Euro version of your car was basically a stripped down version and oft times saw taxi duty.
You had 4 cylinder and diesels that were not available in the NA market.

The speedometers match the drive train.
You weren't able to grasp what I previously posted about the innacuracy of an aging speedometer.
It may appear that your needle moves beyond the noted dial shift points but that doesn't indicate exceeding the redline.
Difficult to exceed the red line on the tachometer with an automatic transmission as you should have a rev limiter which cuts off the fuel supply.

You have a very clean car as I previously stated, but not wanting to break your ballon it's not anything special, limited production or collectable...
It's just optioned like evey other 2.8L that was imported into the NA market

ZedStyle

let's not get dramatic...

personally, i'm with him:

i don't have my car today or i would go out and check my dash, but i'm pretty sure my 95 has the same markings.i think the later models have the different speedo layout, it's definitely far from being anythng unique to your car..


yours:


57 seconds on google:

zach1328

Oh when i was saying its a special edition i was just kidding, which is why i put a sarcastic face by it when i said it.
Just a lot of them have different gear ratios. Some have 2.47, 2.65, 2.82, 3.07 etc etc..I was just wondering what kind of gear ratio i would have with those speeds in the gears.
Main reason i wanted to know is because the gear ratio affects top speed/0-60 times/ 1/4 miles times and so on. Also i did find plenty of them that had the same markings as mine, they just all appeared to be coupe's.
Im assuming that i have a 2.65 gear ratio while most of the other models seem to have maybe either a 2.82 or 3.07.

RBYCC

My 1994 E320 Cab also has the very unique speedometer...
Why?
Because it has the 2.65 gear which is what you also have.

The 3.07 and the 3.27 were used in the M103-12V early 124's.

This will help you better understand...
The early cars used a smaller housing, the later used the larger housing.

http://www.w124performance.com/docs/...ferentials.pdf

Saijin_Naib

And then there is the ever confusing 90 m104 300ce with the 3.27 final in the 210mm housing :P W124s are a fun mess, are they not?

zach1328

Ok thank you for your good answer, would have saved a lot of trouble if someone just told me that in the first day or 2 of this thread.

But you have an E320 and i have the 300e 2.8l so if your engine is bigger then shouldnt yours hold the gears even longer than mine?? Because with more power you should get more MPH per 1k revs than i do. Thats the thing that was confusing me.

Took a video of my 0-60 quickly. The video was taken on a road with a 60MPH speedlimit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxVbYD5C6nw

I didn't go foot to the floor off the line because it was a little bit wet where i started so i was making sure I didn't get any wheelspin.
If you pause the video when i first start going its about 8s into the video, when i hit 60mph its exactly on 16s.
So an 8s 0-60 time without even going all the way down off the line. Not bad for a stock 0-60 time. (And it wasnt really 44 degrees out, it was probably mid 60s.)

I forgot to turn my stereo off when i started going so you can only hear the engine at over 5k revs.