I am looking for ideas to make modifications to my '99 E430. I would like some feedback. Any help would be appreciated !

Power Chip ?
Upgrade Exhaust ?
Upgrade Air Intake ?
Larger Wheels ?, Currently stock
Body Molding ?

 

mr. rossi, here are some mods...taht would not break the wallet.

shift knob around 50 bucks at ebay
upgrade t0 17 sport wheels ( igot mine on ebay with new continental tires 700 total)
flat hood emblem 20 bucks (ebay)
debadge your car if you dont like the lettering and numbers
tint always help, around 170 at local shop
projector headlights clear around 400 on ebay with xenon like bulbs, or better yet upgrade to real oem xenon lamps ( i think there was going on the classified at 600 bucks)

others have done bilstein HD, ask Zam 2000, or other suspension options. Jimmydagreek is good one to ask, for wheels, whitey knows his ****z....



all of these items i mentioned, if you want pics, do a search .

i have these on my car , stock 97 E320 cant upload the pics, since i cant minimize to 640 to 320 to post in on the forum. should learn i guess.

 

oh yeah, and if you have the egg style taillamps, upgrade to the newer 2000 tailights.

get them on ebay total 200 i have seen them.

 

Thank you !

Do you think the "powerchip" is worth the money ?

I see it direct and at Eurosport for about $640.

 

Avoid the powerchip, it's just a waste of money, almost no change at all in performance. Even if it cost $200 or less, don't bother. Some people here have done it, and most regret the deal.

The E430 has more than enough power already, if you want more, save for the E55. Soup up power of the V8 is just a waste of money.

Order I would make change:

* New Style tailight (2000-later)
* 17" or bigger rim, the 16" stock rim are too ugly. If you can find the E55 18" wheels, that'll be best.
* New brake pad (PBR Deluxe) to avoid the horrible brake dirt
* Illiminated door sill.
* Wood & leather shift knob
* Chrome cluster ring
* Wood & leather steering wheel
* Bilstein HD or Koni shock (highly recommend upgrade, along w/ bigger wheel)
* Side skirt and bumper from the 2000-later sport model.


Here's the link to most of my mods

Pictures of my car & mods

 

I advice you to not mod anything. Save your money for future repairs brother !!

 

You could get lower diff gears. I'm saving up for 3.27 gears (15%lower). This and a E55 intake would make the biggest difference for you car.
Good luck
Mario

 

E55CENT how much are those gears run for.
Thanx

 

Most places are about $3300 to $5000 but I found a guy that will change out the bearings, ring and pinion and a new ETC module so the computer can read the new diff for $1800. I have a buddy that put gears in his BMW 540i and he was keeping up with a supercharged 540i with stock gears.

 

Here's something to consider when thinking about doing any gear change.

Avoid changing gears if you expect to continue driving much cross-country or on the expressway.

Going to lower gears (3.27s) from your current 2.82s will give you a little performance
edge, true, but you'll have to live with those lower gears all the time.
Gone will be your ability to cruise at any speed the way that the engineers intended, and gone now will be your relatively good fuel economy.
Putting it another way, with 3.27s, your direct-drive (fourth gear) will be almost the same as your overdrive (fifth) gear is now. (3.27 X .83 = 2.71 vs. 2.82 X .83 = 2.34.)
To get your rpm at 60 mph, multiply by 814, in my case for a 215/55-16 tire. If you have different size tires, you can get the overall tire revs per mile from charts available on the TireRack, So if you can live with the idea of driving your car around locked in fourth gear all the time, that's what it will seem like after you change. It is up to you of course, but consider that expensive move wisely.

I have 3.07s in my car, and I wish I could go to 2.65s. Why?
Because mine doesn't need to be turning 2500 rpms at 70 mph. With 3.27s, you'll be turning even more than that, say almost 2700 rpms.

The prices quoted are considerable for the slight gain in off-the-line performance,
and if you do not like the increased full time rpms, you're stuck.
It's not like changing tires and wheels, where one can easily and inexpensively go back to the originals.

Best as someone suggested would be to save your coin and one day perhaps upgrade to a later E-55. You could spend literally thousands and thousands of dollars and not even come close to the all over performance gains of the 2003 and later E-55s.

Save your money.

Hths

 

Rossi430,

You listed some engine upgrades as a possible start to updating/upgrading your car. I would agree with the responses here. The benefits of the chip, intake and exhaust are not going to add much to the performance. True, an exhaust may make the car sound better, but overall, it's a more for sound than fury!

Cosmetics in the form of wheels and body kits will definitely help in the appearance arena, however, you'll have to dig deeper and upgrade some of the components that have probably gone beyond their usefulness.

Think about suspension. Either shocks and or springs to get the ride back to either original or better. Think about brakes to help you stop quicker. Both of these topics are well discussed on this board.

Good luck!

-travis

 

I understand what you are saying but this will not be the first time I have changed gears in a car. Many of my friends have done lower gears in Vettes, BMW, mussle cars and trucks and all of them say it is the best bang for the buck. I have done the math and the trade off is worth it to me. Most of my driving is city and some freeway but I still will be able to go 80mph at 3000rpm, and that is fine with me. If I was worried about MPG, then I wouldn't have bought an E55. For $1800 I think it will be my best mod yet. I could spend $3000 on headers and get almost no gains.

Thank you for your concern, but I have done my research.

 

I would recomend multi functional steering and instrument cluster update.

 

Sounds to me like you are going into that modification with your eyes wide open,
understanding the pluses amd minuses.
I was merely trying to point out to Rossi430 who originally posed the question on modifications for his E-430.

I've done gear changes myself in years past. The very last modification done to my 1995 Supercharged 383 " SS Impala was changing the stock 3.08s to 3.73s. Talk about waking that car up! It took me awhile before I got used to having that big mill spinning at those higher rpms. It was worse than driving my LT 4 'Vette in fourth gear all the time (3.42 gears and direct drive) I loved the 50 % overdrive that car had when in sixth gear with and overall ratio of only 1.71. If memory serves, it only turned less than 1400 rpm at 60 mph.

It would do 30 mpg when driven correctly on the highway, true tank mileage, not just what the computer would say.

And yet it would go through the lights at Pomona in third gear turning 6900 rpm at 107 mph in third gear. Those Chevrolet people knew how to make an LT 4 perform. The only modification to that car was to have a tuner (Zimmer) install his program (flash it) into the ECU. Helped a lot, especially raising the rev limiter to 7000 rpm to where I could go through the quarter in third. I was not able to power shift it fast enough before to get as low of an ET when I was forced to upshift in the traps to fourth because of the stock rev limiter.

I guess with the Impala SS it was the supercharger noise plus the A S & M headers plus the LT 4 hot cam with the combination of the 3.73 gears that bothered me so much. I was always aware of the fact that this hot motor was there buzzing all the time. That's okay for a race car I guess, but I do not feel that is correct for a MBZ somehow. Because of all the changes I did to that car, mileage went down from 25 mpg to only 15 mpg highway.

We makes our choices, and we lives with 'em.

 

Green, Thank you for the info and from what you wrote, I can see you love cars. I was going to do a supercharger but it seems like there are some problems with many of the companys, plus they cost so much compared to an American car. To me the gears seem like good trade off for the 2mpg I will be losing. You are right about the rev limiter needing to be raised. I would love to have my limiter moved up 300rpm so I could do the 1/4 in third.
Peace
Mario

 

What would it be turning in third passing through the lights if you could pass in third gear?
Wouldn't that be way past the maximum horsepower?

I do indeed love cars, and have been into them pretty much constantly for the last 58 years.

Supercharging, when done correctly as the factory is doing, will provide
a person with a dependable car that usually will have no problems.
Going with an aftermarket company is a horse of a different color however!

I did that once with my '95 Impala SS, and learned many lessons the hard way. And I do mean the hard way.
Lost not only the original 350 cu. inch stock LT 1 but three other 383" replacememnts. These stroker motors were professionally built correctly by local shops that knew what they were doing, however, the problems were with the computer programmers who simply never seemed to "get it right."
All a "blown" motor has to do is run lean for a nano second, and there goes one or more pistons, and it doesn't matter how good and expensive those forged pistons are, for none of them can stand the pressures created by detonation. When your up over 10 lbs of boost and it goes lean, forget it.
The fifth motor was the charmer, as I set the blower aside, and because it took another 10 thousands to clean up the bores because of the damage done by the last destroyed piston, I wound up with a 385 incher with 11 to one compression ratio, and 52 mm intake throttle body, heads from a company in Pacoima CA with big valves and larger runners (state of the art at that time) A S & M Headers from AZ (bought 'em new off someone that couldn't install them himself for only $450!)

It ran like a charm, and when I would launch it properly which was very hard to do because it had too much low end torque, it would run 104 in the high 12s. Not to bad for a 4300 pound old Chevy. Traction was the bigggest problem, even with my 315/35-17s on factory widened 10 inch rims. That, plus I couldn't keep a tranny behind it either, and I'm usually easy on a transmission.

So there you have it. It cost me about $50K with all that messing around, and the car was not really all that dependable. Would have been much wiser to have left it stock, or to have bought a factory hotrod such as are being produced today (i e C-32 or E-55s.)
Oh well, that's called 20-20 hindsight.

Stick with your gears for good performance, and forget those aftermarket blower kits.
No one I know can build one that will bolt on to a stock shortblock and have that stock engine live for very long.
The stock engine simply was not designed for the increased pressures and stress that a blower creates.
That and no high octane fuel available at least here in California.
Best to allow the factories to do it, and you have a quarantee at least for a little while.

HTHs

 

I will be able to hit 62 mph in second and 95.5 in third this is with 19" wheels. I would like it to be 105 in thrid but I have only done a 1/4 mile a few times. I think with my new custom Powerchip, intake, exhaust, light weight pulleys and gears my car should be fine for a city driver and I'm sure it will be fine on road trips. Many stock 210 E55 are getting 13.3's to 13.9's in the 1/4's. I would love to be able to get a 12.9. I will have to take out the 12" subs and spare tire to lighten up the car.
Sorry about your 50k Impala.

 

We live and learn by our mistakes I hope.

That's why I'll never do mayor modifications like that again. It simply don't pay! :v

 

Thanks for your feedback ...

Bilstein shocks - I reviewed their website - they do not show anything that fits the E430.

 

Rossi,

I saw this in their app guide:
Series W210 (E-Class)
E300(T)D, E320, E430
99-02 Exc. 4WD (4Matic); Front Rear
From 07/99 HD B36-2156 BE3-A056-H0
SP BE3-A057-H0 BE3-A058-H0

HD is for standard springs, SP is for use with shorter performance springs (eg. Eibach, H&R, Vogtland)

-travis

 

Sure they do. http://www.bilstein.com/pdf/FullGuide.pdf

 

Thanks

 

While it's true there are possible problems, nothing is going to touch the performance/dollar ratio of a blower. To trade up to an E55 would probably cost you more than 10K, and you can get a blower for your car for less than that and outrun the stock E55. 'Course, if you're like me, you'll trade up and still want the blower for the 55.

 

For 96 to 99 W210

Bilstein Sport (Lowered)
Front: B36-2156
Rear: B36-2157

Bilstein Heavy Duty (Stock)
Front: B36-2154
Rear: B36-2155 __________________________________________________
__________
For 2000 to 2002

Bilstein Sport
Front: BE3-A057-H0
Rear: BE3-A058-H0

Bilstein Heavy Duty
Front: B36-2156
Rear: BE3-A056-H0

 

Approx. 11rwhp is what I gained with my PC on a dynojet, improved part throttle response is were the upgraded software shines. At the time of purchase in 2002 I believe it was worth the dollars I paid, just due to the limited performance upgrades available for the E430s.

I've yet to see a software tuning company successfully using a flash-loader type through the serial port and directly into the car's ME unit on a MB. This technology would suit our needs better and mean no more chipset soldering or swapping. The dealer can detect if the ME unit has been tampered, or at least on mine they did.