[Big Smoke]

Dude, those lights look fabulous, @mayurhuria! Please share the following details-

1. The brand & model of bulbs & led strips used.
2. The process of installing these led lights in the old tail light.

I wanted to upgrade the headlight & tail light of my Ford Aspire to a full LED setup (including good quality DRLs) for a long time, but I did not know how to go about it. Seeing the excellent job done by you has really got me in high spirits now. Please share the above-requested details so that I can try something similar too.

And I did check out the youtube videos. They look incredible and the amber DRLs truly lend a period-correct character to the car.

[mayurhuria]

Originally Posted by Big Smoke

Dude, those lights look fabulous, @mayurhuria!

thanks

Originally Posted by Big Smoke

Please share the following details-

1. The brand & model of bulbs & led strips used.

1. Answer:- These are custom chips from cree and a custom made inverter is used to control these. No "plug and play" setup.
   
   

   Originally Posted by Big Smoke

   The process of installing these led lights in the old tail light.

Answer:- Let me be honest with you, if you are a DIYer prepare for at least a few sets of lights to be wasted. Taillights are almost next to impossible to open cleanly. You either have to cut these open and heat will not work in their case as they are plastic welded.
Luckily, in case of w124 they are rubber and lock sealed so it's easy to open.

Led work on the other hand will require at least basic circuitry knowledge. So you have to plan the setup first and then decide on your led setup.

[mayurhuria]

Fueling System

As many of you already know, how important is fueling for power. The working principle of these engines is relatively simple and extracting power from these is thus easy. So which means we needed to take care of fueling system and upgrade it accordingly.

Fuel Injection Pump
Now call it the best part of these engines that they use (or can be made to use) a Mechanical Injection Pump, which means there are no fancy stuff like ECU programming is required. The Mechanical Pump just needs adjustment via screws and then an alda system is made on these which control the fueling as per the boost input. So it becomes super easy to set the fueling and thus power gains.

What exactly is done to these Injection Pump?
These pumps have elements which control the amount of fuel that has to be supplied to the engine. In stock form, they have 5.5mm elements in Mechanical pump setup and 6mm elements in EDC pump. The amount of fuel these provides is sufficient for stock power or say little more power levels. But if you plan to go beyond 250hp region you need to have the pump upgraded.

So the industry has, what they call is “LORD OF DIESEL TUNING”, the mighty DIESELMEKEN.
This is a company from Sweden & are leaders, when it comes to tuning of these diesel pumps. They work on latest Delphi DP210 to the old MF Tractor, from car to train pump. And have setups to tune up to 12 cylinders & 1000cc of fueling. When it comes to performance they have, in house, developed their upgraded fueling elements to provide the required fueling for the needs.

From their website
7,5mm element is in its 6 version where I'm constantly trying to change the element's performance, angles and more. Today we have a well-functioning pump element that will give you the fuel to over 400HK but with good driveability of the car.

8,0mm is more designed for racing and drifting, with its special design that delivers the fuel pump elements with an even and smooth variation of up to about 230CC max.
In case this is not enough we also have the 80LF element from a couple of years ago.
This element gives max at about 250CC

Now just to give you an idea of fueling and power relation,
Rule of thumb for selecting fuel level (depending on turbo setup).
• 160cc :- 500hp
• 145cc:- 450hp
• 125-130cc:- 400hp
• 90-100cc:- 300hp

The stock pump provides 40-60cc of fueling with 5.5 elements and 60-70cc with 6 mm elements, so simply for our power goal we decided anywhere 140-150cc setup with 7.5mm elements.

Well, there are other companies as well, which provide these upgraded pumps, but since we only want from the best, so we won’t be sharing any details about them.

Mechanical or EDC pump?
As discussed earlier, the manual pump is very simple and easy to control setup and it makes them so favorite among people. No fancy equipment or brain is required to control these. And since no electronics so no such things that could go faulty easily or have water/moisture damage etc.
Now, EDC on the other hand were introduced in w210, late w140 and are electronically controlled injection pump. Since these are electronic pump which means an ecu will be required to run these. For that there were two options
1). Take out all the wiring from a w210 along with its ecu. Customize it to use whatever required and fit in w124.
2). Get a standalone ecu from Baldur and custom made wiring for it.
Option 1 was rejected mainly it was too complex and leaves out a ton of options. So comes in
DSL-1 ECU and WIRING from Baldur.

Baldur is a great guy and has tons of products that he has mastered for various engine options.
The DSL-1 is such a great dedicated product for edc pump that helps to fine tune the electronic pump along with the ability to provide control over vgt turbo, glow plugs timings and many other things can be controlled via CANBUS. The interface is very simple and someone with basic knowledge of engines can make the setup work (of course for fine tuning you require a lot more knowledge ).
More can be found out about the products herehttps://controls.is/dsl1.html

So after months of dilemma finally got the
1). DSL-1 and custom wiring for the setup.



2). 160cc Dieselmeken EDC pump


3). Bosch 044 with an external FPR.

Image Courtesy:- https://strperformance.com/en/high-f...hanol-e85.html




Why Bosch 044?
The answer is simple the bigger cc injection pump requires a lot of fuel, but more important stable fuel supply from the fuel tank. You really don’t want your injection pump to be deprived of that, and thus causing air in the fuel line. The Bosch 044 is very famous among tuning community all over the world. I have even seen people using two of these in their setup. Now, the 044 provide abundance of fuel but at a very very high pressure. So to control that a FPR is what’s required. External FPR provides option to control Fuel pressure that will be going into injection pump, as to install 044 in system the stock feed pump has to be eliminated. So now the injection pump will receive a desired pressure, stable fuel from the tank. So for that, a custom mount is made



to mount 044 pump close to the fuel tank in a secured location and to eliminate pump noise entering into the cabin. And the FPR to be placed as close to injection pump in the engine bay so pressure regulation becomes easy.

[.HEM]

Your work looks fascinating. I have 3 x W124 OM606 E300, I'm planning to upgrade one E300 with higher HP. But I do not want to make too much of modifications.

[mayurhuria]

UPGRADING THE TRANSMISSION

W124 was offered with both auto and manual transmission.

4G Tronic Auto:- 4 speed, Mechanical, Torque Convertor
722.4
722.3 with higher output models
722.5 with a few later model only
More can be found here about this auto transmission
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merced...c_transmission

Manual:-
A 4 and 5 speed manual transmission was offered with w124

While the auto was a decent transmission for stock power level and are still comparable to present auto (even better than some of the current offerings), they will shatter like paper in high application. Our E300d came with 722.4 transmission from the factory. Om606 build even with a decent small turbo makes 500+ NM of torque. Our turbo on the other hand will make close to 900NM. So it’s a big concern.

Now 722.3 can still manage decent torque and has an aftermarket clutch kit option available that can make them withstand up to 1000NM as claimed by the provider
https://turbobandit.ee/ru/transmissiya/165-30102.html

But they are still decent to say the most and this option was not vital considering “output per paisa spent”. The manual on the other hand were about the same scene.

After calculating all our options we finally decided to go with
722.6, 5 speed transmission aka 5g-tronic

Reasons?
1). The car has to be an auto. It was an auto from beginning, it’s a Mercedes and it’s a classy w124.
2). The trans has to be from the Mercedes lineup only.

Why 722.6 transmission?

722.6 transmission was very sought transmission from Mercedes. It was a first electronic transmission from Mercedes, is a bulletproof unit, can handle lots of torque, fitment is easy. In fact, it was still used by Mercedes in some v12 applications, even when a newer 7 speed 722.9 aka 7g-tronic was already out for a long time, mainly because it can handle huge amount of torque. More details about the 5g-tronic transmission can be found out here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merced...c_transmission

The transmission came in two variants mainly
330NM rated
580nm rated (there were some 900-1000NM rated boxes as well, but they were produced in very less number as they were mated to v12 AMG units).

The good part about these units is they are underrated for their actual torque rating. Here is a rough estimate

The 330NM box can easily handle up to 550NM
The 580 NM box on the other hand can easily handle up to 1000NM (only if it is in decent condition)

In fact, the only thing that usually go bad in these boxes is the conductor plate and nothing else. Which again is cheap and easy to replace as no software coding is required, unlike the newer 7 speed.

Selecting a particular variant of 722.6

As we know Mercedes always had a huge line up. So the 5 speed was used in many chassis. Which leads us to the question as to which particular transmission will be a good choice for our application.
The turbo om606 in w210 comes with a 5g-tronic variant from the factory, which is rated at 330nm and it slips badly even with a not so big turbo, although still being a direct fit it made no sense for our build.
So after making our mind, we decided to go for W211 E55 AMG gearbox. The E55 makes huge of torque and people are running them over 800NM even without touching anything around the gearbox.
But the M113k engine in E55 has a different block as to that OM606 so to fit gearbox to the engine some work has to be done. Luckily, 722.6 has option to swap bell housing from another 722.6, so all we needed a bell housing from a gearbox that fits onto OM606. So we imported two gearboxes (one from w210 e300 and one from a low mileage w211 e55 AMG ) and took the bell housing and torque convertor from e300 gearbox and fit that onto e55 gearbox.
We were ready to rebuild the complete box as well, but when we inspected the e55 gearbox, in turned out to be in mint condition (the beauty of these boxes).

So as a preventive measure, we still changed the conductor plate , gearbox plug and changed the oil pan seal, new filter and oil (everything OE Mercedes). And in the end, we have a healthy gearbox that can easily handle 1000NM from the engine.

Making 722.6 Gearbox work in w124

Now, the 5 speed has way more torque handling capacity than the newer 7 speed. But its slow shifting box compared to the 7 speed. Also, the older 4 speed unit that came in the w124 from the factory is a mechanical box. So to take care of both of these issues we chose a standalone TCU controller. So in comes the OF-Gear TCU controller.

OF-Gear is a wonderful product to be honest. It not only helps to swap 722.6 in almost any chassis you can make it fit and whether its a petrol/diesel unit. It also provides heaps of tuning options. One can easily fine tune the gear shifts, shift hardness/smoothness. Shifting points, engine load. But also one can control the gear shift in accordance with the boost. In fact, a VNT turbocharger can be controlled with it etc.
Complete details about the TCU and its setup and working can be found out here.
https://ofgear.dk/Userguide2/User.html

Another requirement to make the box work is the shifter has to be electronic as well. So we chose the w202 gear shifter (from any model that has got 722.6 gearbox) as it’s a flush fit in w124 and looks OEM+



We also used E55 AMG front half drive shaft and customized it to fit in w124 along with gearbox mount customization.

End Result:-
A bulletproof transmission that can handle lots and lots of torque, being a torque convertor unit is buttery smooth in traffic unlike DSG/DCT boxes, so maintained that Mercedes feel. It is a trouble free unit. Yes, it is not as fast as a DCT but Ofgear still makes it way quicker than a typical torque convertor unit and is definitely faster than with an OE Mercedes factory TCU.
The real fun one can only get from an auto box is only when it has full manual mode where it can hold gears and not auto up shift until desired by the user and can be operated with paddle shifters.
Thanks to Ofgear both of these can be done.

Now, w124 auto never had paddles. And we wanted our build to be as period correct it can be by still having the updated touch. So we decided not go for any gaudy, huge paddle upgrades.
Firstly, we decided to customize the huge w124 steering wheel

and add paddle shifter from w204, as they are very discreet.

Outcome:-

Perfectly as desired (notice the well blended in paddle shifters)

[Micki9559]

Been a year now, any updates post the last post? Build completed? Eagerly awaiting pics!