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+--- Thread: Euro 240TD gets a 617NA and a 4 speed...eventually. (/showthread.php?tid=2688)
Euro 240TD gets a 617NA and a 4 speed...eventually. - milesw - 06-07-2011
I just found this board a couple days ago and it looks like it is more up my alley than most of mercedes forums.
My saga begins about 9 years ago with 79 300d NA wagon with supposedly 180k on the clock. I bought it and drove it for 6-9 months until I got sick of the automatic and and I happened to spot a complete 4 speed 77 240d at my local salvation army for a mere 400 dollars. The 240d had a bad starter and extreme low compression a pretty beat interior and a pretty clean body. After getting the attendant to push me around the parking lot about 5 times it started and I limped it the 10 miles home.
I started by yanking the tranny from my wagon and then began stripping the 240D for the needed parts (tranny, flywheel, pedal assembly, driveshaft etc) and found a local place to shorten the drive shaft and shortened and rethreaded the shift linkage myself. I bolted everything up with some adapter plates to use the 240d manual crossmember because I didnt know that I should just find a 240d automatic crossmember at the time. I drove it that way for a year or so until all the power windows died and the hydraulic suspension started to act up on the wagon. I begin to ponder swapping everything back into the 240D which was just sitting at my parents place untouched. I eventually decided I didn't want to deal with the power everything on the station wagon anymore and swapped the drive train into what was originally my donor 240D. So now I have a 240D sedan with a NA 617 wagon motor with the pump hole blanked off. I drove it that way for the past 6 or 7 years and 60k or so with relatively few problems.
Fast forward to about 2 years ago and a chance google search for a euro wagon and I find a 1982 grey market automatic 240TD wagon in SF which is basically my dream car; short bumpers, manual windows, manual sunroof and manual heater controls. The downside is that it's an automatic and has pretty bad white repaint over the stock blue. Also from the first minute I test i drive it I can tell the auto is not long for the world and it needs new pneumatic compensators. Picked it up for 2k replaced the compensators and drove it for stock for the past two years.
Now fast forward again to last month and the auto in the wagon starts to completely fail. Also around this time while I am out of town for work a small tree falls on my 240D not destroying it but putting a giant dent in the c pillar. This combined with it needing a new interior REAL bad and that I really don't need two cars (and a truck) and the wheels start turning again. So 2 weekends ago both engine/tranny combos from the 240d and the wagon come out. Sunday I dropped the NA 617 and 4 speed combo into the euro wagon and swapped over the shifter, pedal assembly and drive shaft. Yesterday I went to the windsor, ca picknpull and found the throttle linkage bits I needed to make it work. Today I hit the richmond and oakland picknpulls and found the glow plug harness and relay that I needed so I don't have to modify the wiring in the wagon very much. Should have it on the road sometime this weekend.
RE: Euro 240TD gets a 617NA and a 4 speed...eventually. - willbhere4u - 06-08-2011
Sounds like a cool project!
There is a euro wagon here in Colorado waiting to go into one of the pick and pulls I tryed to see if they would sell it and no luck!