400E to 500E engine swap
12-06-2011, 06:10 PM
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1992 400E
400E to 500E engine swap
* A long tale about the substitution of a 500E engine for a 400E. Really the tale of the creation of a rather completely tweaked 400E. The costs to do it right will shock most people, but more about that later.
It all came about due to finding a particularly fine 1992 400E back in 2003. For 120k miles it was nice and tight. Not as good as we thought but…we were happy.
We bought the car in 2003, as our only car, and managed to do very little maintenance until a year or so ago. I must say that we did do some stuff straight off. New driver's seat pad and springs, and a Sachs suspension kit - springs and shocks, and custom powder coated wheels. The low cost of maintenance in most of the following years was greatly appreciated. Really the ordinary stuff. Some people think these cars are very expensive to run but that is not our experience. Some work was done by myself, but at 67 years old now and lacking a lift, all the heavy stuff was done by good local tech.
Two years ago we started having enough money to start to bring the car back to more original condition. About this time an important thing happened by accident - I saw on the internet that the 500E was a very revered automobile. We don't much like most present day automobiles because their styling has ceased being elegant and they are way too complicated. And indeed intrude on one's driving experience. So while a friend's 2007 Maserati Quattroporte while elegant, and very expensive, it is little faster than a 500E. That gave serious support to our desire to make the 400E all it was meant to be and then even more to our individual taste as well. For a while I replaced door stops, a couple speakers, and a switch or so. We even sent the radio back for exchange so we could listen to cassettes - imagine anyone wanting to do that! The audio system is an entire story by itself.
Last year we had our tech rebuild the suspension so that the shocks and struts were new - Koni Sports - and all the rubber bushings and control arms were replaced including the sub frame mounts. Installed at the same time was a Mercedes LSD with 2.82 differential gears that I had put together thanks to the threads that talked about this in detail. And an ASR defeat (I despise ASR!) that is simply three pieces of tape. It all transformed the car! This was so nice that we then installed a Silver Arrow brake set, and yet larger wheels and tires.
A friend we met on a forum became the most significant facilitator of all this work. Knowledge and advice was forthcoming in great detail, and usually within hours via email. None of this great transformation of a good 400E to a great automobile would have happened without him. I can never thank him enough.
Once all this work was done we were certain that all was good and would last us a long time -- and then the car overheated dramatically one day. A steam of coolant 40 feet long and a foot wide - 60 miles from home! The worst news came later. There was combustion gases in the coolant, so it looked like a cracked head or block or head gasket. I had been planning that some day in the next 3+ years we would pop a 5.0L motor in the car, but with the existing engine at 210k miles, it appeared that the time was now. The labor alone to do a head gasket was onerous and then if it turned out to be something cracked, what then. One pleasant thing was that the car basically behaved, if not run hard nor idled in traffic in hot weather. Thank goodness we were able to use it until the engine change could be accomplished. Mind you we were always waiting for the disaster of being stuck somewhere with a dead engine.
In reviewing the used engine market it was clear that it seemed a den of thieves. Far worse than common used car salesmen. No one was clear about what came with the motor. They all talk about long blocks, but when questioned in greater detail, they could not be specific as to what that meant on each motor offered. So it looked likely that we would be stuck with the older engine accessories off the 210k mile 400E, old wiring harness, and then have to organize new pulleys for the later 93 motor we sought (6 rather than 8 groove pulleys). All those problems. All with potential deep costs. With considerable luck - through the 500E forum - we found a 52k mile 500E engine and struck a deal - more about that later as well. We thought that the cost of the engine - $3,500 - and our tech's labor were going to be the bulk of the total expense. With that being not too terrible we then also thought that we should replace the by now 212k mile old transmission at the same time saving the considerable labor that was bound to occur soonish anyway.
Just as that deal was struck, our tech seemed about to lose the lease on his shop and so we luckily had to have the engine shipped to our shop. I nearly had a fit when it arrived. It looked worse than the engine being replaced. The only good part was when I opened the oil filler cap and saw what looked like a new motor staring out at me! But that was when the real work started.
My forum friend had suggested a large list of things to be replaced as long as the engine was being changed, and this list proved enormously useful and accurate. I now had to clean everything up, and as it turned out, really dive rather deeply into the engine. There were lots of missing bits on the top of the engine. The fuel rail was loose. Most of the injectors had no bottom "O" rings, and the plastic pintle caps were missing off them as well. So in the end all manifolds, sump and cam covers off the engine. Inspect the cylinders for bits of plastic off the injectors, powder coat the exhaust manifolds and cam covers, glass bead the rust off the pulleys - it had sat for 5 years in LA - spend hours with the EPC and ordering thousands of dollars worth of tubing, hoses, fasteners - lots of corroded fasteners, in for a penny in for a pound - gaskets, and so forth. Then the WIS got a workout so I could see how to install all these things. Even the sump was dented upwards so bad that it needed replacing. All this took several months of my time and energy almost half a day per day. Plus weekends. I haven't mentioned half the details, like buying an engine stand (half a day), making room in the shop, getting work lights to light the normally dim area of the shop where the work was done. Making a pre-oiler to get some oil back in the engine that had sat for so long. Replacing the front crank seal which required loosening a bolt that was torqued to 300 ft. lbs. 18 years ago, and then having to make a seal installer that would position the seal back a few millimeters to avoid the rather premature groove in the front crank hub - standard MB practice - and re-torquing the bolt. On and on it went.
Then the smog pump turned out to be the wrong part - someone had removed the original during storage and replaced it with a different one. More money.
In the middle of this it turned out that the rascal we bought the engine from was not living up to his part of the deal. He was to send us the original low mileage throttle body (EA or ETA as some call it) and a good MAF sensor, and promised when we were in the job of actually installing the engine he would reprogram our LH module - even to account for the 400E EZL - on a one day turnaround. From the time he said he would send the EA and MAF, I never ever got a returned telephone call nor email answered. That was September 8th and it is now December! So added to the cost was a 500E LH and EZL, and we are stuck with the 212k Mile old throttle body and MAF. It's wires look good so I am hopeful. The rascal is Ralph Biase, an apparently highly respected LA area Mercedes and Porsche tuner. I am disgusted with him.
Thankfully the 500E engine wiring harness was fine, even with a 1993 date. In fact not just acceptable but fresh looking inside the covering. I opened up most of it and then resealed it with self-sealing silicone tape. The B+ harness or alternator harness was a total wreck. Almost no insulation left on the five or so small wires. I bought new connector bits and used new wire. It should last a long time with real PVC insulation! Well then it turned out at installation that the 500E B+ harness main cable was about 5-10" longer than the 400E, and one connector was different. On and on.
The reman transmission required the swapping of several parts off the older transmission which is highly irritating. One was the neutral safety switch (also gear position indicator, starter lockout, backup light) which is hopefully the cause of a remaining temporary limp home mode condition. Yet another $90 plus labor.
What with all the new parts that had never worked together before, we had a heck of a time diagnosing a bad remanufactured injector. It took several hours. The problem for us was why was there a misfire and where? We changed caps, rotors, ignition wires, LH and EZL modules and so forth. Luckily we had the 400E engine sitting right there to be cannibalized. An IR temperature sensor said it was likely to the #1 cylinder since that end of the exhaust manifold was 100 degrees cooler than the rest that could be checked. Very lucky it was at an end we could measure! Then a compression check, a check of the signal to the injector. Finally swapped the injectors 1 & 2 (last resort - these guys have a good reputation) and found out the problem was the injector.
So what did the total bill for all this come to? $11,000. Why on earth would anyone spend this much on a $4,500 (roughly the present value if only a maintained) car? Of course the main reason is that we expected it to be a little over $7k! But the way we see it is this. The car should be inexpensive to maintain for the next 10 years or so - at 10k miles a year - what with all the new bits. [The AC blower was replaced by me a year ago, the radiator 2 years ago thanks to an insured tiny accident. We'll pray for a long life for the AC evaporator!] Our total investment since 2003 including purchase price is about $32k (include the suspension, brakes, wheels, etc.). If we get that total of 18 years, our cost will be $150 a month, for one hell of a lot of car. We have never tired of driving it, and now it is so much more, as 500E owners know! And driving even $200/month leased cars is a dreadful experience!
It might be time that some of the guys on the Mercedes forums think about spending more money on their cars by realizing just how cheap these cars can be in the modern context. And the 500E owners owe it to themselves to get that suspension rubber replaced! And the seat pad and springs.
The pictures show in order, what the engine looked like on arrival, the inside with the cam cover off, and the finished article.
It all came about due to finding a particularly fine 1992 400E back in 2003. For 120k miles it was nice and tight. Not as good as we thought but…we were happy.
We bought the car in 2003, as our only car, and managed to do very little maintenance until a year or so ago. I must say that we did do some stuff straight off. New driver's seat pad and springs, and a Sachs suspension kit - springs and shocks, and custom powder coated wheels. The low cost of maintenance in most of the following years was greatly appreciated. Really the ordinary stuff. Some people think these cars are very expensive to run but that is not our experience. Some work was done by myself, but at 67 years old now and lacking a lift, all the heavy stuff was done by good local tech.
Two years ago we started having enough money to start to bring the car back to more original condition. About this time an important thing happened by accident - I saw on the internet that the 500E was a very revered automobile. We don't much like most present day automobiles because their styling has ceased being elegant and they are way too complicated. And indeed intrude on one's driving experience. So while a friend's 2007 Maserati Quattroporte while elegant, and very expensive, it is little faster than a 500E. That gave serious support to our desire to make the 400E all it was meant to be and then even more to our individual taste as well. For a while I replaced door stops, a couple speakers, and a switch or so. We even sent the radio back for exchange so we could listen to cassettes - imagine anyone wanting to do that! The audio system is an entire story by itself.
Last year we had our tech rebuild the suspension so that the shocks and struts were new - Koni Sports - and all the rubber bushings and control arms were replaced including the sub frame mounts. Installed at the same time was a Mercedes LSD with 2.82 differential gears that I had put together thanks to the threads that talked about this in detail. And an ASR defeat (I despise ASR!) that is simply three pieces of tape. It all transformed the car! This was so nice that we then installed a Silver Arrow brake set, and yet larger wheels and tires.
A friend we met on a forum became the most significant facilitator of all this work. Knowledge and advice was forthcoming in great detail, and usually within hours via email. None of this great transformation of a good 400E to a great automobile would have happened without him. I can never thank him enough.
Once all this work was done we were certain that all was good and would last us a long time -- and then the car overheated dramatically one day. A steam of coolant 40 feet long and a foot wide - 60 miles from home! The worst news came later. There was combustion gases in the coolant, so it looked like a cracked head or block or head gasket. I had been planning that some day in the next 3+ years we would pop a 5.0L motor in the car, but with the existing engine at 210k miles, it appeared that the time was now. The labor alone to do a head gasket was onerous and then if it turned out to be something cracked, what then. One pleasant thing was that the car basically behaved, if not run hard nor idled in traffic in hot weather. Thank goodness we were able to use it until the engine change could be accomplished. Mind you we were always waiting for the disaster of being stuck somewhere with a dead engine.
In reviewing the used engine market it was clear that it seemed a den of thieves. Far worse than common used car salesmen. No one was clear about what came with the motor. They all talk about long blocks, but when questioned in greater detail, they could not be specific as to what that meant on each motor offered. So it looked likely that we would be stuck with the older engine accessories off the 210k mile 400E, old wiring harness, and then have to organize new pulleys for the later 93 motor we sought (6 rather than 8 groove pulleys). All those problems. All with potential deep costs. With considerable luck - through the 500E forum - we found a 52k mile 500E engine and struck a deal - more about that later as well. We thought that the cost of the engine - $3,500 - and our tech's labor were going to be the bulk of the total expense. With that being not too terrible we then also thought that we should replace the by now 212k mile old transmission at the same time saving the considerable labor that was bound to occur soonish anyway.
Just as that deal was struck, our tech seemed about to lose the lease on his shop and so we luckily had to have the engine shipped to our shop. I nearly had a fit when it arrived. It looked worse than the engine being replaced. The only good part was when I opened the oil filler cap and saw what looked like a new motor staring out at me! But that was when the real work started.
My forum friend had suggested a large list of things to be replaced as long as the engine was being changed, and this list proved enormously useful and accurate. I now had to clean everything up, and as it turned out, really dive rather deeply into the engine. There were lots of missing bits on the top of the engine. The fuel rail was loose. Most of the injectors had no bottom "O" rings, and the plastic pintle caps were missing off them as well. So in the end all manifolds, sump and cam covers off the engine. Inspect the cylinders for bits of plastic off the injectors, powder coat the exhaust manifolds and cam covers, glass bead the rust off the pulleys - it had sat for 5 years in LA - spend hours with the EPC and ordering thousands of dollars worth of tubing, hoses, fasteners - lots of corroded fasteners, in for a penny in for a pound - gaskets, and so forth. Then the WIS got a workout so I could see how to install all these things. Even the sump was dented upwards so bad that it needed replacing. All this took several months of my time and energy almost half a day per day. Plus weekends. I haven't mentioned half the details, like buying an engine stand (half a day), making room in the shop, getting work lights to light the normally dim area of the shop where the work was done. Making a pre-oiler to get some oil back in the engine that had sat for so long. Replacing the front crank seal which required loosening a bolt that was torqued to 300 ft. lbs. 18 years ago, and then having to make a seal installer that would position the seal back a few millimeters to avoid the rather premature groove in the front crank hub - standard MB practice - and re-torquing the bolt. On and on it went.
Then the smog pump turned out to be the wrong part - someone had removed the original during storage and replaced it with a different one. More money.
In the middle of this it turned out that the rascal we bought the engine from was not living up to his part of the deal. He was to send us the original low mileage throttle body (EA or ETA as some call it) and a good MAF sensor, and promised when we were in the job of actually installing the engine he would reprogram our LH module - even to account for the 400E EZL - on a one day turnaround. From the time he said he would send the EA and MAF, I never ever got a returned telephone call nor email answered. That was September 8th and it is now December! So added to the cost was a 500E LH and EZL, and we are stuck with the 212k Mile old throttle body and MAF. It's wires look good so I am hopeful. The rascal is Ralph Biase, an apparently highly respected LA area Mercedes and Porsche tuner. I am disgusted with him.
Thankfully the 500E engine wiring harness was fine, even with a 1993 date. In fact not just acceptable but fresh looking inside the covering. I opened up most of it and then resealed it with self-sealing silicone tape. The B+ harness or alternator harness was a total wreck. Almost no insulation left on the five or so small wires. I bought new connector bits and used new wire. It should last a long time with real PVC insulation! Well then it turned out at installation that the 500E B+ harness main cable was about 5-10" longer than the 400E, and one connector was different. On and on.
The reman transmission required the swapping of several parts off the older transmission which is highly irritating. One was the neutral safety switch (also gear position indicator, starter lockout, backup light) which is hopefully the cause of a remaining temporary limp home mode condition. Yet another $90 plus labor.
What with all the new parts that had never worked together before, we had a heck of a time diagnosing a bad remanufactured injector. It took several hours. The problem for us was why was there a misfire and where? We changed caps, rotors, ignition wires, LH and EZL modules and so forth. Luckily we had the 400E engine sitting right there to be cannibalized. An IR temperature sensor said it was likely to the #1 cylinder since that end of the exhaust manifold was 100 degrees cooler than the rest that could be checked. Very lucky it was at an end we could measure! Then a compression check, a check of the signal to the injector. Finally swapped the injectors 1 & 2 (last resort - these guys have a good reputation) and found out the problem was the injector.
So what did the total bill for all this come to? $11,000. Why on earth would anyone spend this much on a $4,500 (roughly the present value if only a maintained) car? Of course the main reason is that we expected it to be a little over $7k! But the way we see it is this. The car should be inexpensive to maintain for the next 10 years or so - at 10k miles a year - what with all the new bits. [The AC blower was replaced by me a year ago, the radiator 2 years ago thanks to an insured tiny accident. We'll pray for a long life for the AC evaporator!] Our total investment since 2003 including purchase price is about $32k (include the suspension, brakes, wheels, etc.). If we get that total of 18 years, our cost will be $150 a month, for one hell of a lot of car. We have never tired of driving it, and now it is so much more, as 500E owners know! And driving even $200/month leased cars is a dreadful experience!
It might be time that some of the guys on the Mercedes forums think about spending more money on their cars by realizing just how cheap these cars can be in the modern context. And the 500E owners owe it to themselves to get that suspension rubber replaced! And the seat pad and springs.
The pictures show in order, what the engine looked like on arrival, the inside with the cam cover off, and the finished article.
12-06-2011, 09:26 PM
#5
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1992 400E
All is super grand, but we haven't had the time to change the trans switch so I don't know if the limp home is history.
I was going to say that I had never enjoyed a car more, but when a young mechanic I had the opportunity to drive the likes of Ferrari 275 GTB 4 cams, GTOs, and even a short moment with a Ferrari 330 P3/4. That was the maximum of possible street machines.
I was going to say that I had never enjoyed a car more, but when a young mechanic I had the opportunity to drive the likes of Ferrari 275 GTB 4 cams, GTOs, and even a short moment with a Ferrari 330 P3/4. That was the maximum of possible street machines.
12-07-2011, 02:37 AM
#7
MBWorld Fanatic!
Your perseverence and motivation is commendable. I'm glad you are pleased with the outcome.
"shameful" refers to the unethical supplier who mis-represented(?) the engine he sold you.
"shameful" refers to the unethical supplier who mis-represented(?) the engine he sold you.
