Mercedes Engine Swap King Matt Kwiek

Matt Kwiek is the owner of Kwiek Classics, a shop focused on updating the powertrains of chassis ('70s, '80s, '90s, '00s) Mercedes. From V8 upgrades to V12 shoehorns, it's anything but a simple process. Matt tells us how he left Apple to start wrenching. https://www.kwiekclassics.com/ https://www.instagram.com/kwiekclassics/?hl=en Recorded June 22, 2026 ZocDoc Stop putting off those doctors appointments and go to https://Zocdoc.com/TIRE to find and instantly book a doctor you love today. Factor Head to https://Factormeals.com/tire50off and use code tire50off to get 50 percent off and free daily greens per box, with new subscription only, while supplies last until 09/27/2026. (See website for more details). Quince Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to https://Quince.com/tire for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too DeleteMe Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to https://www.joindeleteme.com/tire and use promo code TIRE at checkout. Use Off The Record! and ALWAYS fight your tickets! For a 10% discount on your first case go to https://www.offtherecord.com/TST Want your question answered? Want to watch the live stream, get ad-free podcasts, or exclusive podcasts? Join our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thesmokingtirepodcast Instagram: https://www. Instagram.com/thesmokingtire https://www. Instagram.com/therealzackklapman Enter to WIN our AMAZING 2025 Porsche 911 Turbo S!! https://www.dreamgiveaway.com/tickets/porsche?promo=SMOKINGTIRE Promo Code Offer: Get 4X bonus tickets with any donation of $25 or more. With every donation you are helping benefit some wonderful veterans' and children's charities. Podcast Promo Code: SMOKINGTIRE

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Matt Farah?

  What up everybody, welcome to the Smoking Tire Podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by Off the Record. As always, we love Off the Record and so do you. Not a week goes by, not a week that I hear from one of you kind folks out there saying, "Off the Record absolutely saved my backside." Usually that comes up with a full dismissal, but frequently the points are taken off the record because Off the Record has qualified attorneys in nearly every jurisdiction in the US fighting for you. If you get a moving violation, big or small, don't plead guilty, get Off the Record. They will represent you on your behalf and you don't have to do much of anything besides

• 0:43Matt Farah?

  submit the ticket, a little explanation about your version of events, and they go to work. And I love sitting back waiting for that text message that says, "Your case has been dismissed." Man, it's a good feeling. Go to offtherecord.com/tst. That's offtherecord.com/tst to get 10% off all legal services from Off the Record. Download that app, keep it in your pocket, and you are good to go if you get that ticket. You don't have to sweat it. That's offtherecord.com/tst. All right, folks, on this episode of the show, I have taken a flight to Nashville, Tennessee

• 1:23Matt Farah?

  to visit Quick Classics and talk to Matt Quick, who is doing the powertrain swap on my Mercedes E320 project. This is a really interesting show because I believe these Mercedes are a hidden value when it comes to a resto modding, a classic design to drive in the modern era. Matt Quick is on the Smoking Tire Podcast. Guys, the Smoking Tire is giving away a 992.1 Turbo S. In partnership with Dream Giveaways, we're giving away a $275,000 car with some slick choice mods. The proceeds benefit charity and you don't have to buy any merch.

• 2:08Matt Farah?

  It's a straightforward entry process. So hit the link in the show notes and get entered to win today. Thank you for making the time.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:18Matt Farah?

  Not just for me, but for my somewhat fairly heirloom car.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23Matt Farah?

  Do you know the story of this car?

• 2:26Speaker 01

  I have heard that it is your wife's aunt's car.

• 2:29Matt Farah?

  That is correct. It's now ours. I have signed the title.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  That's good.

• 2:33Matt Farah?

  But my wife's aunt Liz is a legendary Hollywood publicist. She was Cher's publicist, Madonna's publicist, Michael Bublé, like a lot of artists from the 80s and 90s. Aunt Liz, Liz Rosenberg was huge.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:53Matt Farah?

  And do you remember, like, did you ever watch Saturday Night Live?

• 2:55Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 2:56Matt Farah?

  Do you know anything about Saturday Night Live?

• 2:58Speaker 01

  I know of it.

• 2:58Matt Farah?

  Well, there is a legendary sketch that I will not reenact from the 80s or 90s with Mike Myers in it called Coffee Talk, where he plays like an old Jewish woman.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:10Matt Farah?

  So even people who don't know fucking Saturday Night Live know Coffee Talk.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  I know Coffee Talk.

• 3:15Matt Farah?

  Coffee Talk, the characters were based on Aunt Liz, whose car that was.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 3:20Matt Farah?

  And when Madonna was on Coffee Talk, she called her character Rose Rosenberg, which is Hannah's grandmother's name, my wife's grandmother. So there's like, she's all over Hollywood in that era. And so this is her car. And it was a real publicist's car, a 95 red Mercedes convertible.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  A 124 cab, yeah.

• 3:41Matt Farah?

  Fabulous car. But yeah, so you know, when they gave it to me, I was like, well, we have to keep this car alive and do something awesome with it.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:49Matt Farah?

  So here we go.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:50Matt Farah?

  And you came, you know, when I talked to Shant at CMS, who was my neighbor.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:56Matt Farah?

  And one of the great bodywork guys for this mark. He was like, look, there's a couple of ways we can do this. The way we're like, we figure it out, like, or we just send it to Matt.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:09Matt Farah?

  And I was like, who is this Matt guy? And why would we go this? And he was like, because he's just the guy.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:18Matt Farah?

  And so. I wanna know how how you became the guy. So who the who the fuck is who is Matt Quick? What is Quick Classics?

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Alright, so um, man, I guess I should go back.

• 4:28Matt Farah?

  Yeah, what is your background?

• 4:31Speaker 01

  My grandpa owned a truck repair shop. Um, my mom did the books. Uh, so when I was little, I grew up in the shop.

• 4:37Matt Farah?

  Here?

• 4:37Speaker 01

  In the office. No, in uh, Grand Rapids, Michigan. So I'm from Grand Rapids, Michigan. In that shop, there were a bunch of mechanics that were gruff and vulgar and smoked a lot of cigarettes. And uh, one of them was her brother and she didn't want me to end up like those guys. So my parents actually tried to keep me away from cars as long as possible. Yeah, so I didn't even get my driver's license until I was literally going out of state for school and needed a form of identification. Um, and so I went to school in Chicago um, for sound engineering of all things. They dropped the program. And I was like, okay, well, if I can't do that.

• 5:12Matt Farah?

  While you were there?

• 5:13Speaker 01

  While I was there, in the first semester. And so I was like, alright, cool, bye. Um, so I went home and uh, I got a job for Apple because I'd gotten an Apple certificate at one point.

• 5:25Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  And so I was working for Apple Care. So I was working from home and had decent money and.

• 5:29Matt Farah?

  Work for Apple Care, like repairing computers or like?

• 5:32Speaker 01

  No, phone support.

• 5:33Matt Farah?

  On the phone? Okay, yeah, phone support. Okay, yeah.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  So fun fact, I'm autistic and I could not talk to people. But then I spent five years on the phone for eight hours a day and that's how I learned how to talk to people.

• 5:43Matt Farah?

  You seem just fine at it. How about that?

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:46Matt Farah?

  They call that on the job training.

• 5:48Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 5:49Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah, that's crazy. Okay, yeah, you seem fine at it now. Problem solved.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  In that time, right, I bought my first car. It was a one ninety E. Um, it broke down the day after I bought it. And uh, this was before I worked for Apple and I had to get to my job, but I hadn't even gotten a paycheck yet. So it was like, alright, I guess I'm gonna learn how to fix it. So I started with that and within a year I'd replaced the engine, the transmission, the suspension, the brakes, basically everything. Um, and just kept going. The better I got at it, the more fun it was, the more fun it was, the more I wanted to do it and so on and so forth. And um, the thing was, I have no formal training in any of this. I'm entirely self-taught, but because of that.

• 6:26Matt Farah?

  Yeah, but you're autistic. That's like having formal training. No, I'm just, I don't.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  No, it works. It works.

• 6:31Matt Farah?

  It helps with studying.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, if I'm actually interested in it, I'll figure it out. And yeah, so it's in during that period, this was like 2011 or so. Resto mods doing anything like this with Mercedes was not accepted, right? So, um, anybody who was formally trained was told you don't change anything. You don't take the engine out, you don't do any of this. And because I didn't have anyone to tell me that, I just started doing it.

• 6:58Matt Farah?

  Why do you think that was? Because it's not like Mercedes at that time, 2010. It's not like people were modding brand new Mercedes all over the place. I mean, there was, there was two dozen tuners that'll give you 800 horsepower in your five and a half liter bi-turbo. CLS, whatever from that period. So like, what's the big goddamn problem?

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Something about the classics. Um, there was just so much respect for classic Mercedes and so much of this mentality that they built them to be perfect. Cost was no object. This, they already designed the perfect car, we can't change anything.

• 7:35Matt Farah?

  Remember they used to say that shit about Porsche? And then Singer was like, actually, I can charge three and a half million dollars for one of these things. That's so much better than what Porsche is actually selling. You know, so yeah.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  I mean, that's kind of the thing is I got so fed up with.

• 7:49Matt Farah?

  It's kind of a cute attitude, isn't it? You know, to be like, oh no, this, this car that is made of parts that are not, you know, were designed by humans. Is to a price is somehow, you know, sacred.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  They didn't really, that's the one thing about Mercedes is they didn't really design it to a price back in the day.

• 8:11Matt Farah?

  That's actually quite a good argument, isn't it? That that, that's why it's so good is that it wasn't designed to a price.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  And that's where they fell. Yeah. When, you know, Daimler Chrysler merger, you know, the, the accountants came in and, and started, uh, started telling them how to do things.

• 8:27Matt Farah?

  You know what? I'm not just going to concede this. I think, I, I, I think they were a business to make money and they were designed to a price. They were just interested for a long time about long-term durability and serviceability as more of a virtue. And, and less padding of the cars with profitable things that weren't going to last a long time.

• 8:56Matt Farah?

  Which happened later. I I would you come on.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that happened in every industry.

• 9:00Matt Farah?

  The one twenty four was built to a price. It was just a price higher than today's industry would probably bear.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  That's right. Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. And obviously I had to stay under the S class, too.

• 9:11Matt Farah?

  So just like the varying levels of Porsches. Right.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, no, but um, the the other thing is in during that era, they were using the technology that they had, the best that they had at the time, which turns out wasn't that good and really doesn't hold up that long. So all of those CIS K jet, all that stuff from the eighties, like that that's it's all failing now and you can't get those parts anymore.

• 9:37Matt Farah?

  Is it really that hard to find parts? Because with with Porsche, with Ferrari, with Lamborghini, you can get those parts, actually. Is it this weird uncanny valley of the cars aren't quite valuable enough where it's worth? Yeah, someone supplying those parts.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 9:55Matt Farah?

  It's weird. There's a lot of them. I mean, think about how I I where I live in Los Angeles.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:59Matt Farah?

  The number of SL roadsters, seventies and eighties, all the way through, you know, two thousand and three. Like, pick your one oh nine or one twenty nine. Dude, they're everywhere. They're everywhere. They're driven by old people. They're driven by young people. They're driven all over the place like. Though it seems like it just my vibe is there's got to be a market for this.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  There is, but the what kind of what happens is um, those cars, because they were built so well, they will run poorly forever.

• 10:29Matt Farah?

  That's a good point.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Like, you can just keep driving.

• 10:32Matt Farah?

  Slowly decline.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:33Matt Farah?

  And then hit a floor of like, kind of works.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:37Matt Farah?

  That's when it will become like a cab in Botswana.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:41Matt Farah?

  You know, there's like, I used to think there was a life cycle of the Mercedes uh three hundred class. And it was like luxury car in Paris. Taxi in Paris, you know, luxury car in Cairo. Taxi in Cairo and then it was just taxi further and further down the continent where there's still taxis today.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  And then they go to Mauritania and they live forever.

• 11:05Matt Farah?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  That's more or less.

• 11:08Matt Farah?

  The LS four hundred is the next one of that.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:11Matt Farah?

  When I went to, it was, this was now 10 years ago, but my friend just went back. We went to Oman in 2016. And like 50% of all cars on the road were like 1993 to 2003 Lexuses.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Oh shit.

• 11:24Matt Farah?

  Like 50% of all cars.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 11:26Matt Farah?

  Um, like the number of Lexus LSs and LXs that are just rolling in the Middle East.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:33Matt Farah?

  Is, yeah, it's crazy.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  I mean, you're a testament to that.

• 11:36Matt Farah?

  Yeah, it's a very durable car. It cost me a goddamn fortune to keep that thing running, but it was a very good, but I mean, if you don't let it get that bad.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:45Matt Farah?

  Bad. So, so, okay. So that it's a good place to, to jump in. So you, you, you, when did your hobby? Flip into, I think this is a business.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  So probably about 2015 is when I quit working for Apple and was like, everybody's told me not to go into automotive full time. And I said, screw it. I'm gonna try it. I'm gonna see if I actually end up hating it. If I do it full time as well as as a hobby. And I didn't. And then, um.

• 12:16Matt Farah?

  But was it like, was it like, did you have a friend? That saw your car and was like, hey, will you build me a thing for money?

• 12:23Speaker 01

  So that was later.

• 12:24Matt Farah?

  Alright, so it wasn't, that was, that's kind of a lot of people I talked to is like, my hobby became a business the first time someone offered me money for my hobby.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, that happened in, uh, COVID.

• 12:34Matt Farah?

  Okay. So you were consciously of, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make this a business. Guys, support is coming in hot today from Factor. And I mean, hot, like hot after two minutes in the microwave. Because Factor is the jam and I will explain why. For me, uh, eating healthy, it's not about, uh, willpower. Right? I have the right kind of willpower. It's actually a scheduling problem. I get busy and I somehow forget to schedule time to eat, mainly lunch, lunch breaks. That's really the problem, right? I come off the mountain, I'm filming, or I'm doing shows, or I'm running the shop, and I have meetings and calls and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I forget to put that time in to eat.

• 13:19Matt Farah?

  And so by the time I get to eating, I make bad decisions because I'm hungry. And like, that's what happens, right? But when I've got factor in the fridge, it solves this problem. I've got a fully prepared meal, designed by a dietitian, crafted by a chef, it's delivered to my door, it's waiting in the fridge. The second I get hungry, I am two microwave minutes away from handling that. So I'm eating right, I'm not overeating, I'm making the right choices, and that way, all the time I'm spending in the gym is actually worth it, right? And my goals are different than yours, right? So factor has meals built around anyone's goals, whether that's weight loss, overall nutrition, protein, GLP-1 support, and on and on.

• 14:00Matt Farah?

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• 14:45Matt Farah?

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• 16:49Matt Farah?

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• 17:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had worked for myself a little bit before COVID and then I moved out to Seattle. Uh, I worked at an Alpha race shop and that's where I learned to like fabricate and all that stuff.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  Came back to Michigan early COVID, built a car, built another car. Uh, but a shop in Atlanta had convinced me to close down my shop. I just had a little repair shop in Grand Rapids. And then moved down to Atlanta to work for them. Uh, and when I made that move is when people started finding out about those cars that I had built.

• 17:42Matt Farah?

  What was the shop in Atlanta doing? You don't necessarily have to plug them, but this is.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  Pre-merger AMG stuff.

• 17:47Matt Farah?

  Okay, alright, cool.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, yeah. And then when I was there, people started finding out about the cars that I had built. And people started coming to me, asking me if I could. And I'd say, well, you could talk to the shop owner, but you know, that's probably not his focus. And then when things went downhill there, um, my neighbor here is actually, he was one of my customers. I built him one of those cars. And he said, come up to Nashville, build me another car. I'm sure by the time you get done, uh, you'll have more people. And that's exactly what happened.

• 18:15Matt Farah?

  That's pretty cool. I like that. And, and but now your customer base comes, I mean, I shipped a car here from California. I imagine a lot of people aren't doing that, but are people sending cars in from all over?

• 18:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, like only one of the cars out in the shops local.

• 18:29Matt Farah?

  Yeah. How many cars did it take you to the, to become the guy that people call? Cause you said you've done like, what, 40?

• 18:38Speaker 01

  So we are finishing up 21 and 22 and 23 through 26 or 27 are in progress in the shop right now.

• 18:46Matt Farah?

  And when you give numbers to these cars, you're talking about full powertrain swap type cars. And what came first, that or manuals? Are they just hand in hand?

• 18:57Speaker 01

  I mean, I've been doing manual swaps since my very first car.

• 19:00Matt Farah?

  The 190? You did a manual swap?

• 19:02Speaker 01

  That was a 2.6, then it was a three liter, then it was a three liter dog leg, then it was a 3.6 six speed. And then it rusted out because Michigan. And then the drivetrain went into a 124 wagon. And then that was a 3.6 and then that was a 5.4 and then that rusted out. So the drivetrain went into a C43.

• 19:16Matt Farah?

  This is the fucking dirtbag school of car building for sure. This reminds me, shout out to my homie fellow who I used to call. The E thirty six Whisperer who had two E thirty six chassis, or excuse me, three E thirty six chassis and two powertrains.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:35Matt Farah?

  And he would swap them around dependent on his plans for that weekend. Like shout out, shout out to fellow. He's out there somewhere drifting in E thirty six. The guy was, guy was, but that's what it sounds like. This is the dirtbag school of car fabric.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:49Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  I mean, I grew up poor in Michigan, right? Like, we didn't have a lot. I didn't ever even think I would own a Mercedes until I found that cheap one ninety. And then I like my entire education comes from junkyards.

• 20:00Matt Farah?

  Yeah. So wait, what was the time period between purchasing that one ninety? And having like the third powertrain in the second car? The wagon, by the time you got to like the third powertrain in the wagon, how much time had elapsed?

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Uh, so I bought that car in twenty eleven.

• 20:20Matt Farah?

  Uh huh.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Um, twenty twelve, I did the first swap. Twenty thirteen, I did the second swap. Twenty fifteen, I put the AMG motor in it and did standalone EFI. Uh, twenty sixteen, it went into the wagon and then I did a hundred twenty thousand miles.

• 20:35Matt Farah?

  Okay. And then when did you open this shop? Twenty twenty one?

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Uh, in, I started in Michigan in twenty twenty and then closed down in twenty twenty one.

• 20:43Matt Farah?

  Alright, so you had like.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  And then opened here in twenty two.

• 20:45Matt Farah?

  So like nine years of practicing.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:48Matt Farah?

  There's your ten thousand hours, probably, at least.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  More than that, oh yeah, definitely.

• 20:51Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 20:52Matt Farah?

  Okay, ten years of practicing before you had brick and mortar business with like real customers sending their, so that's, that's fucking real.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:01Matt Farah?

  That's hard knocks practice. That's fucking cool. Alright, so what? Um.

• 21:08Matt Farah?

  You, you obviously have twenty twenty, over twenty of these powertrain swaps. Mine is what? Twenty one, twenty two, whatever you said.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Twenty five.

• 21:16Matt Farah?

  Is mine, oh my, you're not counting progress. You've, you're only counted finished ones. Okay, so. Uh, what is it that, that Mercedes gets really right? That allows you to do this? Let's start with that before you can list all the things they fucking fuck up that you have to fix, but, but what, what do they get right? That gives you a great base on which to do. Put 400 horsepower into a car that's 30 or 40 or 50 years old.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, cars from the 60s through the 80s from Mercedes were truly engineered to last forever. Right? They were not engineered to break after 100,000 miles. They were engineered to just keep going.

• 21:53Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  They built the stuff strong. They built it very well. Yeah, it's just the chassis will stand up to basically anything you can throw at them. Even the 60s cars that look like they would be flimsy, they're not.

• 22:05Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  They're super strong.

• 22:06Matt Farah?

  This is why I think, you know, there are so many companies that can successfully rest them on 911s. It's not that that's an easy thing to do. It's it's an easy thing to kind of conceptualize and a hard thing to nail. But it's much easier to do a 911 than to do a DeLorean, you know, or a Lotus. Or a Jeep Wrangler, or a Chevy, a fucking Bronco, or a Scout. You know, or something where you have to truly, what I say, unshitbox, you know, something. That's way harder than making something just go fast.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:45Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, these cars are, the bones are already there.

• 22:47Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  They're built remarkably well, and the issues they have are really just that the powertrains have not held up to the test of time.

• 22:53Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  So we're taking the golden era of Mercedes chassis engineering. Where if you give the suspension and the brakes and everything a little bit of tweaking, upgrade it here and there. They drive fantastic. They'll keep up with modern cars on a track. And then you just put, what we're using is kind of the golden era of Mercedes engine engineering. Right? The mid aughts when they really figured it out. But before all of the emissions bullshit came in and choked it and made it super finicky and unreliable.

• 23:23Matt Farah?

  Yeah, and we're, I want to, at the end, I have a lot more background. We'll end with why we did with my car what we did.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:32Matt Farah?

  And that's a pretty good example for the business as a whole. But so aside from the powertrains not necessarily aging well. Is there anything where it's like, ugh, we have to do this other thing in every car we do?

• 23:49Speaker 01

  I mean, we upgrade the brakes. It's mostly honestly just maintenance. Everything that's rubber. Everything that hasn't been touched over all these years, everything gets replaced and or upgraded. But.

• 23:59Matt Farah?

  It's amazing how many people think they have an old car.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:03Matt Farah?

  And they go, I need like motorsport bushings because this car is so soft and they don't realize that what they actually have no bushings. What they really need are just bushings, just any, any bushings will be fine. And the car will feel like incredible.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Right? Like that's one of my, one of the things I really enjoy is setting up 190Es because right, that's where I started and I did so much with my first one and now I've got four of them. But everybody's like, oh, I'm gonna put poly bushings on them. But like, the way they engineer poly bushings now is different from the way they engineered the original bushings, which actually were spherical joints. So if you put a standard poly bushing in the five link in the back of like a 201 or a 124 or any of that, it won't articulate correctly and you'll end up snapping the control arms.

• 24:47Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Yeah, that, that sounds bad.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:51Matt Farah?

  Every, I put poly bushings in one car when I was younger. And I immediately regretted it. And I said, I'm, I am absolutely never doing this again. And, and anytime a friend tells me they're going to do it, I tell them not to.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:05Matt Farah?

  And anytime a friend tells me they have done it, I go, how you, how you like it now? And they're like, ugh.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  You're gonna take it back out.

• 25:13Matt Farah?

  Yeah, it's not good actually.

• 25:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:16Matt Farah?

  Just like new bushings are like, huh, you know, it's like seeing the light.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  I use poly bushings in exactly one place and that is the rear subframe on all of these cars because the rear subframe mounts, the factory bushings are hydraulic and they have enough given it that when you put 400 horsepower in it, you would introduce rear steer. So you'd replace those with poly. It drives a lot better.

• 25:39Matt Farah?

  Yeah, that's, well, that's a, that's an engineering solution to a specific issue brought up by the powertrain swap.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:47Matt Farah?

  That's not a failure of Mercedes.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely.

• 25:51Matt Farah?

  Or a poor choice thing.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  If I could use the factory bushings, I absolutely would.

• 25:56Matt Farah?

  Sure, sure, sure. What, are there, are there, you know, a lot of people, particularly in the Ferrari community, we're talking about manual swaps, who, you know, you can't get factory parts anymore. So it's who makes the best parts. I imagine Mercedes parts are not so limited.

• 26:17Matt Farah?

  But can you do a, a, a powertrain swap and/or a manual swap? And you can feel free to separate these questions, using factory Mercedes parts? Folks, one more break because support is coming in from Zocdoc. Now raise your hand if you've been putting off a dental cleaning, an annual checkup, or honestly, any kind of doctor's appointment. Yes, my hand is up too. I have put off things. Sometimes I'll look online and see what my symptoms mean. Sometimes I'll self diagnose, which you really should not do. I'll, I'll vent to Hannah, I won't do anything about it. Or I'll wait for something else to happen, right? Sound familiar? We need to do things differently.

• 27:00Matt Farah?

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• 28:25Matt Farah?

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• 28:55Matt Farah?

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• 31:03Matt Farah?

  Go to www.joindelete.me/tire and enter code tire at checkout. One more time. www.joindelete.me/tire, code tire. Can you do a powertrain swap and/or a manual swap? And you can feel free to separate these questions. Using factory Mercedes parts?

• 31:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:30Matt Farah?

  Fully?

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Almost.

• 31:32Matt Farah?

  Almost. So what, I mean, you don't have to, you know, give away the formula entirely, but where are we getting gearboxes if we're doing a manual?

• 31:40Speaker 01

  From Mercedes.

• 31:42Matt Farah?

  And what is that gearbox?

• 31:43Speaker 01

  So Mercedes, a lot of people will say, "Oh, we use the Crossfire gearbox."

• 31:48Matt Farah?

  I've heard that before. I drove one before like that.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's the early 6-speed that Mercedes developed. And like, it's fine, it's a strong gearbox. I put one behind a 600 horsepower, supercharged V8 and did 20,000 miles, track abuse, everything. It was totally fine.

• 32:04Matt Farah?

  It's fine. Okay, that's good.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  But they... Changed it, they modified it, they updated it in about 2005 and the newer version is considerably better. Um, so that's what we use. They're available in a few models in the U S and they actually kept using them up until 2015 or so in Europe. So at this point, I just buy them new from Europe.

• 32:22Matt Farah?

  So you can, you can buy a, is it new O S or is it new new?

• 32:26Speaker 01

  It's new.

• 32:27Matt Farah?

  It's new, yeah. So a new gearbox in a crate, just showing up.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've got four of them on the shelf.

• 32:32Matt Farah?

  And then what are we using for clutches? Just the same OEM stuff that would go with the C-Class? What do we need for that?

• 32:38Speaker 01

  Depends on the power, right? If you're under, say, 300 horsepower, sure. Um, if you're over 300 horsepower, you're gonna have a hard time with the stock stuff because it's, they just never meant it for that.

• 32:49Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Um, so I worked with a Uni-Clutch out of Australia a while back and put together a package to work with the factory flywheel.

• 32:57Matt Farah?

  Oh, cool.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  So that it will hold 6, 800 horsepower and still feel like factory.

• 33:01Matt Farah?

  Oh, that's pretty cool.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  And so we've done 10 6.2 manual swaps now. Uh, and that's what we've used in all of them and.

• 33:09Matt Farah?

  That's what you'd use in like the black series, right?

• 33:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:12Matt Farah?

  Yeah, we have one at my store, the silver one.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Which one? We've done five silver ones.

• 33:18Matt Farah?

  I'm not gonna tell you the VIN, but it's, it's one you did and it's a silver one. And it, I, I haven't driven it, driven it, but I've driven it around and the clutch feel and the gearbox feel are very nice.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:31Matt Farah?

  Um, the manual swapped, it, it, it, uh, early 2000s Mercedes are, it is fucking remarkable how much more instantly fun those cars get.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 33:45Matt Farah?

  I mean, because the stock gearbox was such a shit pile. I mean, it's, it's, it holds power and for a cruiser, it's fine. But in terms of fun, it's just trash.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:56Matt Farah?

  And you've got these beautiful cars. They ride and handle great. They're built well. They're fast. They sound good. And then they have this slushy garbage gearbox.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:06Matt Farah?

  And you just go, God, even a half-assed manual would be an improvement. And I drove one, the Crossfire one. It was kind of a half-assed manual. I drove a C L K 430, a 4I1. Beautiful car, actually.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  208 chassis.

• 34:19Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Stock engine, four, a four point three with a manual, lovely.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:25Matt Farah?

  Made a nice sound. I mean, it was engaging to drive and I drove a SL fifty five that was kick ass like oh three, oh four.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 34:32Matt Farah?

  Good times.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 34:33Matt Farah?

  They, these, this really wakes up the fucking cars.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 34:38Matt Farah?

  Is there a ton, uh, from the consumer perspective? Is there a ton of value in finding? A decent car or a great one? Cause if, what is a great oh four SL fifty five, twenty five grand? Thirty grand?

• 34:55Speaker 01

  I mean, those cars are miserable. Honestly, they've got so many other issues to deal with. But yeah, I mean, I wouldn't do it to one of those, but like a CLK fifty five.

• 35:05Matt Farah?

  Uh huh.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  Right. One of my guys picked up a nice CLK fifty five, a hundred twenty thousand miles for six grand. Manual swapped it in a weekend and that's his daily driver.

• 35:13Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:14Matt Farah?

  Yeah. So would you say that there is an enormous amount of value in those cars?

• 35:21Speaker 01

  I mean, in terms of experience, yes.

• 35:23Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I mean, if you want a car that is, uh, comfortable, quiet, bulletproof, fast. And also you can put a manual in it and it's not gonna feel like something that's hacked together, like it's all factory parts. It feels like it should be there.

• 35:37Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Then, yeah, absolutely. It's a fantastic daily driver and to get that experience in any other mark, you're gonna spend a lot more money.

• 35:45Matt Farah?

  What do you have to do? Software wise to make that setup work in a, in an early two thousands car?

• 35:52Speaker 01

  So it depends. Um. It depends. There is, there's a few different, right? So like there's. Mercedes used one generation of ECU up to two thousand one, two thousand two. Those ones are. Impossible to get into, but you don't really have to, as long as you don't mind to check engine light. And then the like two thousand one to two thousand eight or so, those ones are super easy. I can just go in and tell it it's a manual. Um, there are a few tricks. This is the AMG ones especially.

• 36:19Matt Farah?

  You just like use your old Pentium processor to log, to log in and go click for manual.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:26Matt Farah?

  And it's just, that's it.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  Basically, I mean, you've got a mirror, the reverse lights and the clutch switch.

• 36:31Matt Farah?

  Yeah, but like it's pretty, if you know what you're doing, let's just say plug and play and not, not a challenge to overcome.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  As long as it's naturally aspirated.

• 36:40Matt Farah?

  Aha, because, well, we'll circle back. There was a bunch of people who were like, well, why didn't you get the supercharged engine? And you and Sean were kind of like, we don't really fuck with them.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Oh, no, I do. I do a bunch of them. Uh, the problem is, it's just, the thing I tell everyone is, you don't actually want the supercharged engine. You don't want 500 and some horsepower in these cars. They're small, they're light. It's not like a modern car. If you put 400 horsepower in a 60s to 90s Mercedes, it is ample. I promise you, you don't need more than that.

• 37:10Matt Farah?

  It is a lot. No, I mean, the, when, when my car was built, it came with like 206 horsepower. And the S600 with the V12 was like 370. Like, so we're gonna, we're gonna have more than that. Yeah. I, I, I didn't personally think I needed the supercharged engine anyway. Um, I wouldn't have asked for it. I certainly wouldn't have paid extra for it. It gives me nothing that I need, but I imagine if you're gonna spend the money fucking swapping, a lot of people will say, if I could spend 18,000 bucks and have 400 horsepower, or 22,000 bucks and have 500 horsepower,

• 37:54Matt Farah?

  I'll just pay the difference just to say I have it. But there are reasons not to, you're saying.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. And yeah, no, I have a lot of people that say, I want to do the 113K. And I always tell them, you don't really want to do that. And, but every once in a while, I get someone who says, yes, no, I do really want to do that. And then we do it and

• 38:13Matt Farah?

  It's because when it goes

• 38:16Matt Farah?

  they get an erection, that's why.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  Well, uh, did you see Sean's black SEC that I did?

• 38:21Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. So like, I was driving that on Angeles Crest. That's one of my, that's like my loaner car when I go out there. And, uh, and I was coming through that tunnel, uh, coming back from Good Vibes and, um, I was like, I'm just gonna floor it through the tunnel and just to hear the exhaust. But it just lit the tires up all the way through the tunnel. And I'm like, great, now I just heard the tires.

• 38:41Matt Farah?

  There are people, I agree. There are people, myself sometimes included, that think too much is enough. I, I'm not against too much. Um, I just usually won't pay extra for it for myself. But like, uh, like I used, I used to have a fucking. A replica Cobra that had a NASCAR engine in it like I'm not, I'm not, I'm not holier than thou when it comes to too much.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  So that's basically the pagoda.

• 39:07Matt Farah?

  It's just that I've been there. Yeah, a pagoda, a pagoda with an M one thirteen and it is effectively a sunbeam tiger.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  We did that, yeah. It's, uh, it's actually going up on bring a trailer probably this week, yeah. Uh, it had the five point four, six speed, five link rear end. Yeah, no, I put six thousand miles on that car.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  It was fantastic.

• 39:28Matt Farah?

  Really?

• 39:28Speaker 01

  I loved it. I'd like, I don't wanna sell it, but like, you know, we gotta move on to new things.

• 39:32Matt Farah?

  Is it here?

• 39:32Speaker 01

  It's out in California.

• 39:33Matt Farah?

  Oh damn.

• 39:34Speaker 01

  O T S is selling it for me.

• 39:36Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  So, um, they, uh, yeah, I shipped it out to them, but before that I took it on the Overcrest Rally. I took it on Breakfast Club Rally. I took it down to Amelia. Like I just drove it everywhere and there are companies in Germany that will do basically that conversion. But they only use the four point three or the five point O. They don't.

• 39:55Matt Farah?

  Cars. There's one in LA, uh, that's owned by a pretty famous collector who I saw. Parked it in a fucking handicap space at a coffee shop and it yelled at by a cop. Um, it was sort of a loser move actually, but, but, uh, but the car was nice. It was, it was a very clean, uh, clean car. It was, it was a five hundred engine.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, but now I understand why they didn't use the fifty five in it. You don't need that.

• 40:21Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Well, if you, I mean, if you, there are, I've driven a lot of cars. Where I go, you can't sell this to people. You're gonna fucking kill people with this. And they go.

• 40:36Matt Farah?

  They never listen. I've said it to four or five people right up into, until the CEO of McLaren. I told the CEO of McLaren, like, it's irresponsible to sell this car to people. You have to make them do driving school or something. And he said, would you, have you ever? Asked a billionaire to do anything, especially when they're writing you a check like, no, they won't, they just won't do it. So.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:59Matt Farah?

  Anyway, um, the, um, but, but you said your, your, your buddy, oh no. My camera mount, my camera, uh-oh, hang on, stop down. One second. Holding for fixing camera mount. That's what I get for choosing such an unstable thing as a fucking hipster ass bicycle like this. That's what I get. This is what I get. But it's okay. Change up the shot. Little more stability. It's on.

• 41:34Matt Farah?

  Make a note to tell Zach that at thirty one minutes.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  The bike fell over.

• 41:41Matt Farah?

  At thirty one minutes, our shot got messed up, slate two. It's okay. You know what we'll do? We'll put in ads there and then you come back, people don't even notice. Um, but people, uh, you just said that your buddy who presumably had some kind of, um, mechanical ability, was able to do a manual swap in that CLK over the weekend. So I, I, and my friend Vinny did in a Ferrari three sixty over the, over a weekend, did one himself as well.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:06Matt Farah?

  So, so.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  That was one of my employees.

• 42:09Matt Farah?

  It was one of your employees. So it's not, so it's not something that is just totally straightforward and people can be doing at home or, or is it if you are adventurous?

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Uh, it really comes down to whether or not you have the ability to code the ECU. Right? Like if you have an old school Mercedes star diagnostic system, or they make, uh, cheap knockoffs nowadays that will do it like, yeah, you can do it. Um, I know plenty of people that have. I know a guy in Atlanta that's done, I think, four of them now. Yeah, uh, just in his garage.

• 42:37Matt Farah?

  Okay, so it is, though I drove one in LA that where a guy did it himself.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:42Matt Farah?

  Uh, I, I drove another one from Vegas that, uh, somewhat, uh, someone who was more of a professional did. And, uh, they were both fine, actually. The crossfire one, the shifter feel wasn't quite. Exactly what I wanted.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  That's the big thing with the crossfire box is it does not have an internal reverse lockout. The reverse lockout is built into the shifter. And those shifters are garbage. Um, so when you go to the newer style one, you, uh, the reverse lockout is built into the transmission then. So you can run any shifter you want. So you can get a nice aftermarket short shifter and there are companies that sell them that bolt into the older Mercedes chassis.

• 43:21Matt Farah?

  That's, yeah, that's a good move. Yeah. Is there, what is, what is a car? Uh, where if a, if a customer calls you or someone calls you from off the street and says, hey, I want you to, to do a powertrain swap in, into this car? Is there a car where you just go, oh, God, please God, no?

• 43:42Matt Farah?

  Or where you have to charge a pain in the ass tax for doing it.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  So there, there are two. The one that I say no to is the 114, 115 chassis.

• 43:52Matt Farah?

  Well, you're, I'm not quite as nerdy as you, but go on.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Late 60s to mid 70s Mercedes E-Class.

• 43:58Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Um, the, their 300Ds or 220Ds, you would know them as.

• 44:04Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  The one, the precursor to the 123 that everybody thinks of as the, the early E-Class.

• 44:09Matt Farah?

  Uh huh.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Uh, those cars underneath, it's the same as a 107 SL, you know, 72 to 89. But the frame rails and the engine bay are narrower, so you can't fit a V8 in it.

• 44:20Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  Like it just doesn't fit.

• 44:21Matt Farah?

  Okay. So it's not a problem where this is a structurally unsound car, just, it's literally just, sorry, bro, you want to put an engine in there that doesn't fit.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:33Matt Farah?

  What can people do with 3.6, an inline six?

• 44:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. Or an OM606, if you don't mind a diesel.

• 44:39Matt Farah?

  Uh huh.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Right? Like I've done a bunch of those.

• 44:41Matt Farah?

  A modern, a more modern diesel swap.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or yeah, you can even go up to the OM648, the common rail one from the aunts.

• 44:48Matt Farah?

  Oh wow.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Those are fantastic engines.

• 44:50Matt Farah?

  The CDI?

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 44:51Matt Farah?

  That's a CD, 320 CDI?

• 44:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:53Matt Farah?

  Right? Yeah. Okay. So, all right. So, so you, you could still work with it. It's just not, you're not going to get the V8.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:59Matt Farah?

  Um, what is, when you're doing a project like this, me as a customer, you know, I got some, I had some choices to make. Not a, not a ton. It was pretty, pretty much like, you're going to do the thing. But like, clearly based on the cars that are out there, people do have some kind of choice. What is the biggest waste of money that customers ask you to do? The, would you say that the using the K, the supercharged engine is the biggest waste of money a customer could request in a project like this?

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Probably, yeah.

• 45:34Matt Farah?

  Like least return for investment?

• 45:36Speaker 01

  The return for investment is, um, burnouts on demand.

• 45:40Matt Farah?

  Sure, well, yeah, no, that could be a desirable thing.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you just want something to drive, uh, that is going to be your daily driver or road trip or whatever. Um, yeah, just use the naturally aspirated engine. It works great. It's awesome.

• 45:55Matt Farah?

  So that's the biggest waste. What's the best?

• 45:59Matt Farah?

  Thing that's kind of expensive to do while you're in there and you kind of have to convince people to do it, but that it really is important?

• 46:08Speaker 01

  Limited slip.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  Yep, cuz I mean, we do end up probably 70% of the cars get a quaff limited slip and, um, it just makes it that much more usable.

• 46:20Matt Farah?

  Yeah, that makes sense. It's surprising, I mean, on the one hand, it's surprising how many of these rear wheel drive sedans don't have them. On the other hand, 200 horsepower, fucking mommy car, like whatever.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, Mercedes put limited slips in three cars, uh, up until like 2000 ish. You've got the 450 SCL 6.9, you've got the 190 2.316 Cosworth, and you've got, uh, the 500E was available with a limited slip, but most of them didn't have it.

• 46:50Matt Farah?

  What about the R129?

• 46:52Speaker 01

  No, none of those got.

• 46:53Matt Farah?

  None of the R129 SLs had limited slip?

• 46:55Speaker 01

  I've never seen or heard of one with a limited slip from the factory.

• 47:00Matt Farah?

  I guess I, no, I guess I just assumed it had it. It never would have occurred to me that they wouldn't have.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  Some of them have ASD, which is, um, a hydraulically actuated limited slip.

• 47:09Matt Farah?

  Is that brake vectoring?

• 47:11Speaker 01

  No, it, it's an actual clutch, clutch style LSD that uses wheel speed sensors and then a hydraulic system to actuate it. So like that was more, much more common in Europe than it was here. It's super hard to find here in anything. But over in Europe, they figured out a way to hack those so that you can use like a drift handle to actuate the diff to lock it up.

• 47:30Matt Farah?

  Yeah, like the new Mustang has.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  I have no idea about that.

• 47:33Matt Farah?

  You know, the, the new Mustang has a drift, electronic drift handbrake. Like when you put the car in it into drift mode, the handle that is normally the parking brake and it's an electronic handle, it's not, it's a joystick, becomes the drift brake, but it works. It does work. It's, I mean, it's like.

• 47:52Matt Farah?

  I almost said it's gimmicky, but like it isn't. It does. It does exactly the thing they say it does like it's not gimmicky. It works. Gimmicky is like the all the hatchbacks that have a drift mode.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:05Matt Farah?

  The all like the Focus RS and the Golf R and shit because it can. It's more like a donut mode than actual drift mode. If you like lift a little bit off the floorboard like you can't like modulate a slide. It's just, you know, anyway.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cars newer than like 2005 just don't exist to me.

• 48:24Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Funny. Yeah.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  The newest vehicle I own is that 2003 G55.

• 48:29Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I roll up outside. He's got a fucking manual swapped uh G55, which is actually pretty sweet.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  I bought it, right? It was dirt cheap with a blown engine um and I had another engine sitting there. And when I pulled the engine transmission out, the other engine had a manual bolted to it. So I was like.

• 48:47Matt Farah?

  Do the transfer cases still work and stuff?

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Well, it's a divorced transfer case. So, yeah.

• 48:52Matt Farah?

  Oh, it's at the back? You just did a different drive shaft and it knows no difference?

• 48:57Speaker 01

  So the hard part was actually the pedals and the shifter because they redesigned the chassis and the cab on those in 2002. And they very obviously designed it in such a way that it would never have a clutch pedal or a manual shifter again. So I had to go in and take the whole dash out, modify the firewall, then mount the clutch pedal and the same with the center console to mount the shifter.

• 49:15Matt Farah?

  Oh, yeah, that's.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  But like, oh, yeah, it wasn't.

• 49:18Matt Farah?

  But.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  But now that it works.

• 49:19Matt Farah?

  You have a manual G-Wagon and the transfer cases work, which is really cool.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know, the lockers work and everything. I've put a ton of miles on it. I took it up in Michigan in February and went out in the snow on the seasonal roads.

• 49:31Matt Farah?

  Yeah, that's pretty sweet, actually. Same gearbox.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:34Matt Farah?

  That's the same, the same. So.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 49:36Matt Farah?

  The, the fact that you're now using it for off-roading in a heavy ass, no problem.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  I had one of those behind an OM606 in my 73 F250 Highboy. Uh, and that was my tow rig for 50,000 miles. I went wheeling with it. I towed all across the country.

• 49:53Matt Farah?

  You put one of these Mercedes gearboxes in your truck to tow with it?

• 49:56Speaker 01

  With an OM606 turbo diesel.

• 49:58Matt Farah?

  What is an OM606?

• 50:00Speaker 01

  Okay, so the OM606 is a 2JZ of...

• 50:03Matt Farah?

  I assume it's some kind of truck motor or something?

• 50:04Speaker 01

  No.

• 50:04Matt Farah?

  Oh, what is it?

• 50:05Speaker 01

  99 E300 turbo diesel.

• 50:07Matt Farah?

  Oh.

• 50:08Speaker 01

  Twin cam, six cylinder, indirect injected.

• 50:11Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  You can, they have electronically controlled injection pumps, like a P pump for a Cummins, and you can backdate it to the mechanical injection pump.

• 50:20Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  And they're just absolutely bulletproof.

• 50:22Matt Farah?

  And what truck did you put that in?

• 50:23Speaker 01

  A 73 F250 Highboy.

• 50:26Matt Farah?

  You still, you use that truck still?

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Uh, it's up in Michigan now.

• 50:29Matt Farah?

  Oh wow, that's pretty rad.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  A friend of mine has it, and yeah, no, he still uses it.

• 50:34Matt Farah?

  There are probably not many Mercedes diesel powertrain swap 73 F250s out there. That's...

• 50:41Speaker 01

  Not that I know of.

• 50:41Matt Farah?

  That has to be...

• 50:43Speaker 01

  There are at least two Mercedes diesel swapped Ford Falcons still running around that I did like 15 years ago. Like, yeah.

• 50:51Matt Farah?

  You did more than one?

• 50:53Speaker 01

  I did three of them.

• 50:54Matt Farah?

  What? Who sees a Ford Falcon and is like, "I need a Mercedes diesel"?

• 50:59Speaker 01

  My second car was a Ford Falcon.

• 51:01Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  Um, and, God, I don't know why, so I, I think this was all spurred on by the Roadkill Takes America trip back in 2015.

• 51:10Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  Um, I found a 67 Falcon wagon in Oklahoma, drove it back to Michigan, pulled it out of a bar and got it running, drove it to Michigan, ripped the six cylinder out, took a junkyard Mercedes OM606, bolted a dog leg 5-speed to it, and stuck it in there and did the whole trip in it.

• 51:28Matt Farah?

  That was like Roadkill's power tour, right?

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:31Matt Farah?

  I have a vague recollection of that being a thing.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  It was fun.

• 51:34Matt Farah?

  And yet, and you sold fucking Falcons off of that?

• 51:37Speaker 01

  No, I mean, I just did these for shits and grins.

• 51:40Matt Farah?

  That's crazy.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  And I had a thing for a long time where every spring I would buy some 60s Ford and do something dumb with it, and then sell it in the fall. Uh, and two of, three of them were Mercedes diesel swaps.

• 51:53Matt Farah?

  All right, all right, cool. Um, I, that's a, I, I've seen, I'm not, it's not that I haven't seen cool diesel swaps before. Although I guess during this period, this, that would have been 2015. That would have been, well, 2014 was Diesel Gate, but I thought, that was, that was around peak fever pitch for diesels. 2012, 13, diesel was real hot shit. That was gonna be, clean diesel was gonna be it.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, these are not 80s, 90s.

• 52:19Matt Farah?

  No, these are very dirty.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:21Matt Farah?

  Oh, yeah. But.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  Rolling coal.

• 52:23Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Um, so let's talk about my car for a minute. Um, we, we've talked about where it comes from. Um, the concept, of course, is to build something that is, is, was like a 500E that Mercedes never did in a Cabriolet, which they probably should have. That would have been sweet.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:40Matt Farah?

  Um, we, uh, everyone in my, in my comments, it's why aren't we using the M119? I didn't see a single fucking M119 out here in your shop. You are not necessarily about the M119.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  M119 is a fantastic engine, but like everything else that Mercedes did through the last century, it was at the forefront of what was, what they were able to do at the time, which meant that it was kind of inherently flawed. Um, when I first got into doing this, I started with the M113 because you can bolt a manual to it. The M119 does not have a manual that bolts to it. Now, there are adapters available now, but then you also run into the issues of, uh, it's wider. It doesn't fit in the engine bay. The 400E and 500E have a different engine bay than your car does.

• 53:27Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  Um, and so we would have to change the firewall. We would have to change the cross member underneath.

• 53:33Matt Farah?

  And like, why?

• 53:34Speaker 01

  It's not worth it.

• 53:35Matt Farah?

  What, have you driven, just out of curiosity, of, uh, uh, an M119, uh, which has a manual to it on it?

• 53:44Speaker 01

  Not yet.

• 53:44Matt Farah?

  Okay. So we don't, so that's still, I mean, it exists somewhere, but that's as of, uh, it's an unknown what it feels like, how it works.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  So like my 500E, the one out front, that one, um, I got it supposedly running and driving. It didn't. And, uh, 565,000 miles on it. So I ripped the M119 out and I put the M156 in it because it feels like the spiritual successor. It's the next Quadcam V8 that came out of Mercedes, even though it was actually AMG. So I took that 6.2, put a manual in it, put it in the 500E. Nothing was fantastic. That same drivetrain is in my wagon now.

• 54:18Matt Farah?

  Hmm.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  But again, it's like, man, this is, this is too much. I don't need something that revs to 7,000 RPM in my daily driver.

• 54:26Matt Farah?

  Yeah, well, I mean, that's for me, um, I, I have a crazy sports car, my Spyder. It's as fast as I ever need to go. I, I have, I have a bunch of little niches, but uh, what's interesting is like, as I get older, um, and partially because of where I live, which is in the middle of LA, um, I'm starting to care more about having a garage full of cars that I can use in my like everyday life.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:57Matt Farah?

  You know, like, I, I don't need a whole bunch of 600 horsepower manual gearbox sports cars.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:03Matt Farah?

  I, those are for me to have fun on the weekends.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:06Matt Farah?

  If I try to drive those in my errand running, I would blow my brains out. Like, it, it's just, it would be miserable and I'd, okay, why do that? So I have this little dumb Myers Manks with the airplane engine in it that is like an amazing fucking city run around when it's nice out.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:23Matt Farah?

  And I'm like, I think we need a, a dope cruiser. And so it's gonna be automatic, right? We have a, we have the five speed.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 55:33Matt Farah?

  Uh, and did you, did we, did you rebuild that? Or did you have to do anything to it?

• 55:37Speaker 01

  Um.

• 55:37Matt Farah?

  Service it?

• 55:38Speaker 01

  You, service it.

• 55:39Matt Farah?

  Just fluids and whatever and it seems fine?

• 55:41Speaker 01

  Uh, conductor plate, right? That's what always fails on those.

• 55:44Matt Farah?

  What, uh, I don't even know what a conductor plate is. What is a conductor plate?

• 55:47Speaker 01

  This is when they went from hydraulically controlled transmissions to electronically controlled transmissions. They did that by, uh, you still have a valve body, but on top of the valve, uh, the valve body is a plate with solenoids and sensors and stuff on it. It has a plug that goes into the side of the transmission. And what happens to that is the speed sensors, um,

• 56:06Matt Farah?

  crack.

• 56:06Speaker 01

  And fail. And then it doesn't have a speed signal from the output turbine and then you, then it just stops working. You get stuck in second.

• 56:13Matt Farah?

  Got it.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  Fairly common. It totaled a lot of Mercedes 20 years ago, but now, you know, it's a few hundred bucks in parts. Takes a few hours. Not a big deal.

• 56:21Matt Farah?

  Cool. Okay. So, and, and actually we saw the, the new shifter is installed, which is from the E55. It's not.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  It's not.

• 56:29Matt Farah?

  Oh, I thought it was.

• 56:30Speaker 01

  The E55 shifter is too tall. It would stick out of the center console.

• 56:33Matt Farah?

  Oh.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  So we use one from a 202, well, actually a 208 chassis, the CLK, the four.

• 56:38Matt Farah?

  The CLK one?

• 56:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:40Matt Farah?

  Oh, okay.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  So that's the right height, and then we have an adapter so we can mount it so that it sits correctly with all the wood and it matches.

• 56:47Matt Farah?

  Oh, that's neat. And the only way, I mean, that you can tell is, is it's got a little, the little plus minus bit at the bottom. So if you have to do a little manual control, you can sort of side slap it.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:58Matt Farah?

  Do they have, or have you ever done an aftermarket paddle shifter solution? Or updated a steering wheel to include one that had paddle buttons on it?

• 57:08Speaker 01

  I did in Seattle about six years ago.

• 57:10Matt Farah?

  Did it work?

• 57:11Speaker 01

  It did.

• 57:12Matt Farah?

  Did you use a newer OEM wheel, or did you get aftermarket paddle shifters?

• 57:16Speaker 01

  It was an aftermarket wheel, just like a standard Momo with paddles, the bolt behind it.

• 57:21Matt Farah?

  Really?

• 57:22Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 57:23Matt Farah?

  It's kind of, and it did work?

• 57:25Speaker 01

  It worked, yeah.

• 57:25Matt Farah?

  Hmm.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  It's, yeah, it's from the same guy who we get the kit from that controls the transmission.

• 57:30Matt Farah?

  Oh, interesting, yeah. It's, it's not something I want for my car, but like, that would be cool.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:36Matt Farah?

  I mean, it would, it would.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  So like.

• 57:38Matt Farah?

  Certainly you can't shift fast, but for a fucking car from the 90s, it would be way better than whatever you had.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  We did a 124 wagon for a local guy that takes it on a lot of rallies.

• 57:49Matt Farah?

  Uh huh.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  And when we first talked about it, he was like, I want it to be a manual. And then I found him the green over tan wagon up in Rhode Island. He flew up, he drove it back down, and he gets back and he's like, what if we kept it automatic? And so we changed the whole plan. We put the automatic in it. And like he does, he takes it on rallies. He took it on my rally. He uses the Tiptronic. Um, but you know, here we are eight months later and we have a manual sitting out back.

• 58:12Matt Farah?

  Now he wants, now he wants a manual. Yeah, well, you know, learn by doing.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 58:17Matt Farah?

  I, it's not, you know, a five-speed Mercedes slush box with paddle shifters is not ideal, but it's, it's better than the side slap. And the side slap's better than nothing, so.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:26Matt Farah?

  My car is for cruising around.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:28Matt Farah?

  But, um, you know, with this engine, uh, we do have to do suspension. We do have to do brakes. So what is the plan there?

• 58:37Speaker 01

  Suspension, we've basically just gone through the whole thing. H and R is Bilstein V8s, Furger shocks and springs. You're getting an upgraded front sway bar, just because it makes a massive difference in handling.

• 58:50Matt Farah?

  Okay. Is this suspension basically what you would do if you were just refreshing a tire at E500? Are the geometries the same as the E500?

• 59:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:00Matt Farah?

  They are?

• 59:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh yeah. The suspension on basically all 124s is the same. There's a little variance in the hubs and there's an early control arm and a late control arm for the front. And obviously springs and shocks are different between different models. But the whole idea that the 500E is some bespoke special Porsche, whatever. No, it's just a Mercedes that got built in the Porsche factory.

• 59:23Matt Farah?

  It was assembled by Porsche. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They, they, I like the lore, but they get a little more credit for the actual engineering of the car than they did.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:34Matt Farah?

  And plus, you know, if you're around enough cars, you know, cars aren't sacred. They're made of parts. Some of the body panels are prettier than others, but they're, they're all just made of parts.

• 59:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:46Matt Farah?

  But, uh, so when you're doubling roughly the power output of a two plus two or a four seater Cabriolet, do I need to be concerned about structural issues? I mean, I'm not going to be doing drag launches or, or really ripping on it. It's a cruiser, but.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  You're gonna have cowl shake.

• 1:00:05Matt Farah?

  I'm gonna have cowl shake.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  Those cars had cowl shake from the factory.

• 1:00:08Matt Farah?

  Yeah, but like not, not more than I had, right?

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, yeah.

• 1:00:12Matt Farah?

  Is there any kind of, if I had more money, reinforcement that you could or would do? Have you done it before or is it, is it literally just, it is what it is, man, live with it?

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  I mean, so I've never had to, right? Because everything else has been so stout that it's just never even been a concern. With the 124 cab, that might be a concern, but like, nobody's ever asked me to before, so I've never really looked into it. Yours is the first one we're doing.

• 1:00:35Matt Farah?

  Oh, mine's the first cab you've done?

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:00:37Matt Farah?

  Oh, well, happy to be the first.

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:40Matt Farah?

  I mean, Sean, um, cause I asked him the same question. He said, absolutely not. He said, these cars, the cabs in particular, were handmade cars that had, that were structurally over engineered. He said, there isn't any way around the cowl shake.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:00:57Matt Farah?

  If you got a, honestly, if you got a 20.

• 1:01:03Matt Farah?

  Eighteen Bentley GT. It would have cow shake.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:01:07Matt Farah?

  You any seriously, if you got a, if you get a Mercedes, BMW eight series Cabriolet. It has cow shake. The only. Four seat convertibles I've ever driven that don't. Are. The Rolls Royce Phantom drop head and dawn. The nine eleven.

• 1:01:27Matt Farah?

  Uh, and that's a two plus two, not a four. The. Current generation Bentley GT.

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:01:35Matt Farah?

  And even then, only the soft ones, not the sporty ones.

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:41Matt Farah?

  Uh.

• 1:01:42Speaker 01

  Well, in that case, yeah, there's nothing to worry about.

• 1:01:44Matt Farah?

  Yeah, it just is what it is.

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:45Matt Farah?

  Yeah, it is what it is.

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:47Matt Farah?

  Um, but, but it's not like, uh, you're, you're going to twist the thing like a pretzel. Yeah.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 1:01:53Matt Farah?

  Do we, I mean, and I assume because. Uh, is there like airflow or cooling issues or anything with doing this swap? It just all good, just all runs in.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  Super cool.

• 1:02:03Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  Uh, and we use the modern fans as well. Yeah. So any aftermarket fan you can get, uh, usually flows between like. Three and 5,000 CFM. Whereas a factory Mercedes fan will flow like 13,000 CFM, fully variable. Um, PWM controlled from nothing all the way up to a hundred. And I control it using a different module so I can. Create a nice ramp angle. So you never even know it's there.

• 1:02:31Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. Cool. And is it difficult to make the engines work with old school gauge clusters and stuff like that? How does that process sort of shake out?

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Um, I get a lot of questions about that. It's like, how do you, how do you keep all the factory gauges? What are you doing to them? Are you modifying? No, I'm not. I'm just giving them what they want to see. Right? Like.

• 1:02:51Matt Farah?

  So the quote modifications happen somewhere else in the wiring harness. It gets, the signal gets converted or something?

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  Generally the signal gets converted.

• 1:02:59Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  There will be a signal converter that lives behind the gauge cluster that. Converts the signal. Um, there is a, a speedo drive box that will take the electronic speed signal from the transmission computer. And then spin the cable that spins the speedo.

• 1:03:15Matt Farah?

  Got it. Um, and what is your recommended upgrade for brakes when you've got one of these V eights?

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  Uh, the cheap and easy go to is, uh, W two 20 S class, like 2002 ish.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  Pick a model, right? They've all basically got the same brakes. Their big four piston Brembo's, three hundred and thirty millimeter rotors.

• 1:03:38Matt Farah?

  Yeah, for a thirty two hundred pound car, that's fine.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:41Matt Farah?

  Yeah. And then if you want to spend a little more, we would do six hundred stuff, stuff from a six hundred?

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  Well, the six hundred stuff is the same as the four thirty stuff. I just say six hundred because it sounds fancier.

• 1:03:50Matt Farah?

  That's hilarious, really?

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:52Matt Farah?

  They don't, I, I thought the six hundred one, I guess the one twenty nines had bigger brakes.

• 1:03:58Speaker 01

  Not bigger than these.

• 1:03:59Matt Farah?

  The, the, the, the later S class, and this would be the two thousand and one to two thousand and six S class.

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  Yes, two twenty chassis, ninety nine to six.

• 1:04:08Matt Farah?

  Yeah, four thirty, five hundred, fifty five.

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  So the fifty five's got big eight piston calipers. Um, and like, we've got them laying around because they're, you gotta run eighteen's. And nobody wants to run eighteen's.

• 1:04:22Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:04:23Matt Farah?

  So this, so that's really your limitation is the seventeen inch wheel?

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:04:27Matt Farah?

  Yeah, okay. So this is the best Mercedes brake that will fit in a seventeen?

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, and this is, uh, a lot of people will throw too much brakes at a car. A lot of people will throw too much tire at a car. Uh, like you were saying about twisting the chassis, like you would have to have three hundred and some with tires and a limited slip to even worry about that. But I have a, my ethos is like, there needs to be a fuse somewhere, right? You can have the fuse be somewhere in the drive line where it's going to break and it's going to be very expensive. Or you can just run a little bit narrower tire.

• 1:04:59Matt Farah?

  Yeah, and then you'll lose traction before anything bad happens. I mean, that's a, that's a lot of people's philosophy. It's not a terrible philosophy, actually. It's probably better than the, than having such wide tires that the diff explodes if you, you know, if you do a launch.

• 1:05:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, and like my Pagoda.

• 1:05:18Matt Farah?

  There's worse things in life than burnouts.

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  The, the red Pagoda that's, that's going up for sale, that's got. Uh, 205 tires on it that are like 800 tread wear.

• 1:05:29Matt Farah?

  In the rear?

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  All around, yeah.

• 1:05:31Matt Farah?

  That's gonna, that's probably loosey goosey.

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  It's hilarious. It is so much fun. And the thing is, right? If you lose control in that thing, you are doing a manageable speed where you can recover from it easily. If I had 255, 200 tread wear tires on there, by the time you lose control, you're dead.

• 1:05:47Matt Farah?

  Yeah, sure. In a pagoda, certainly. That's mad shady. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I kind of agree. I used, I'm, I'm friends with a guy, uh, who worked on the Ford Raptor. Um, all the generations of Ford Raptor. And when they first came out and people started like really like jumping them a lot. And they were bending the frames. And they were going, well, this is a poorly designed thing because we're bending the frames. And I called my friend, who was the chief design engineer to ask about that. And he goes, look, first off, if you're jumping the truck that high, you've done something wrong. Okay, but it's got, it's gonna fail somewhere.

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:25Matt Farah?

  He goes, if you bend the frame, you can drive the truck home.

• 1:06:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:30Matt Farah?

  And you can actually put it on a frame straightening machine and fix it.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:34Matt Farah?

  If you make the frame strong enough to withstand that type of impact, you will probably explode at least one, if not more shocks.

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:06:44Matt Farah?

  And then you're not getting home.

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:06:46Matt Farah?

  You know what I mean? Then you're stranded wherever you are. So we had to make a choice of which thing would go first.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:54Matt Farah?

  And we decided that the thing that should go first is the thing that you could still get home, even if it's broken.

• 1:06:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:00Matt Farah?

  Which is a choice.

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 1:07:03Matt Farah?

  You mentioned a bunch of, uh, the road rallies. You said you put your own on?

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:07:08Matt Farah?

  What's that called?

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  Um, it depends on the year. It's, uh,

• 1:07:11Matt Farah?

  Oh, you just change it? Just your customers and stuff?

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  Uh, just my friends, really. The, so like, it's usually the quick regional rally or some variant of that, the slow regional rally.

• 1:07:20Matt Farah?

  Is it always around here, Smoky Mountains?

• 1:07:22Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, Kentucky, uh, North Carolina, yeah.

• 1:07:25Matt Farah?

  Good roads.

• 1:07:26Speaker 01

  Kinda hard to go wrong.

• 1:07:27Matt Farah?

  Good roads. Yeah, except right outside your shop, which looks like the road from... It looks like Balboni's Road. He go- his, his test road outside Lamborghini where you test suspension because the tarmac is so terrible.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  It is. That's exactly what I use it for.

• 1:07:39Matt Farah?

  But the, uh, you, I, you just got back from Overcrest Rally, which I have heard of. I've heard it's very good.

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  It's a lot of fun.

• 1:07:45Matt Farah?

  And what car did you bring on that?

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  So I brought my Rosso, which is a 190e Avant Garde Rosso. It was kind of a, like a final edition model that they sold in Europe.

• 1:07:55Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  And they sold 2,000 of them. They have this crazy technicolor interior. It's, uh, the pattern is called Arcade, um, which I haven't shown you yet. You'll be allowed to see it.

• 1:08:03Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I haven't seen that. Yeah.

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  So they never sold them here and I'd always wanted one. So last year I was like, why don't I just import one? So I found one in Southern Germany that had air conditioning and I got it over here and, um, I put a C40.

• 1:08:16Matt Farah?

  It's a 190, uh, Cosworth or just a regular 190?

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  It's a 190e.

• 1:08:20Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 1:08:20Speaker 01

  Yep. Um, and I had imported a 98 C43 wagon a couple of years ago. Sean currently has that car. He's putting a DTM kit on it.

• 1:08:28Matt Farah?

  Oh, I saw. I've seen that car. Yeah.

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  So I put a 55 motor and a manual in that. So I had the old 43 motor sitting around. So I took that, put a manual behind it and stuffed it in this 190.

• 1:08:38Matt Farah?

  That's pretty cool.

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  Um, it's, it felt like cheating. Uh, the thing is, right, it's 300 horsepower, six-speed manual, quayf limited slip, KW coilovers, good brakes, right? The, and my handicap was the tires. I had terrible tires on it. And, uh, and it was kind of the perfect combo. It did great.

• 1:08:55Matt Farah?

  Where is that rally?

• 1:08:56Speaker 01

  Uh, it changes every time, right? So this time was in Wisconsin, which is, the guys who organize it are from there. But like last year was North Carolina and then Arkansas and then Oregon before that. And that's, that was the first one I went on.

• 1:09:08Matt Farah?

  You drove there and drove back?

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  Yep. So that one I did in a 55 swapped 190e and, uh, because I wanted something that was fast, would fly under the radar, would handle well. So I took a 190e and put a 5, 5.4 in it.

• 1:09:22Matt Farah?

  So you're always doing 190es. Your customers are bringing you other, your other stuff, but you're always doing 190es. What do you know that the rest of us don't know? Or is it just going back to your first car?

• 1:09:33Speaker 01

  No, yeah, it really is. I just, I'm in love with them.

• 1:09:35Matt Farah?

  It's not that you know that the 190e is actually the best car and the rest of us are just waiting to figure that out.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, it is though.

• 1:09:43Matt Farah?

  Why is it the best?

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  Um, I mean, think of everything that's good about an E30 M3 and then think of everything that's bad about an E30 M3 and the 190E does it well.

• 1:09:55Matt Farah?

  Well, I've, I mean, okay, I suppose I've driven, uh, I've driven 190 Cosworths.

• 1:10:02Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:10:03Matt Farah?

  And they're very slow.

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

  I have one of those. It's not slow.

• 1:10:06Matt Farah?

  Well, they're slow stock.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:10:09Matt Farah?

  They're slow, like in the same way E30 M3s are slow stock.

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:12Matt Farah?

  But I drove an E30 M3 that has like a S54, like a 2005 and it ripped.

• 1:10:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:19Matt Farah?

  It's, is that what we're talking about here?

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  So like my 16 valve is a Euro one that I've warmed over and Altech'd and did all that. It's, it's not slow and it's very much a momentum car. Um, and you can carry a lot of speed with it. Uh, but yeah, once you put a V8 in a 190, then yeah, you're talking your S whatever swapped.

• 1:10:36Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  Uh, but it's quiet and it's comfortable and it handles incredibly predictably and you don't have lift off oversteer. You don't have trailing arm issues like you do with an E30. Um, good air conditioning.

• 1:10:48Matt Farah?

  Is it worth building one into a race car?

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would.

• 1:10:52Matt Farah?

  Like that seems like a pretty sweet race car, like a 4.3 with a six speed.

• 1:10:59Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:10:59Matt Farah?

  That seems like a pretty bitchin' like champ car.

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:11:04Matt Farah?

  Right? What does that car weigh?

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  Probably about 3,000 pounds. I really need to get a set of scales.

• 1:11:09Matt Farah?

  You should have a set of scales.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:10Matt Farah?

  I feel like that fucking would rip.

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  It does. You can drive it. It's out there.

• 1:11:15Matt Farah?

  I would like to drive it. Yeah, we should do that.

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:18Matt Farah?

  That's amazing. Okay. So what are, uh, when you, uh, took the engine out of the 2002 donor car to put into my car, you sent me a photo of something and you said, we found the, there's a thing wrong with your engine that's wrong with a bunch of engines.

• 1:11:38Matt Farah?

  Do you remember what I'm talking about? Do I have to get my phone out and find a text message?

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  The seals in the front cover.

• 1:11:44Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  Uh, where the timing cover meets the block, there are two coolant passages to go through there and they're just rubber O-rings. And, um, yeah, they swell and fail in time, right? So if you have one of these engines where you're getting coolant in the oil.

• 1:11:58Matt Farah?

  That's probably what it's from. Okay, but it didn't cause any like catastrophic damage?

• 1:12:02Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:12:02Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  Uh, oil in the coolant more than, yeah.

• 1:12:05Matt Farah?

  Yeah, but like, once you took the engine apart and cleaned things and put it back together, like, fine, right?

• 1:12:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:10Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 1:12:10Speaker 01

  No, it hadn't actually failed yet. It was just like, the rubber was swelling and cracking and it's like, mm, that's, we're gonna, we're gonna take care of that.

• 1:12:17Matt Farah?

  Alright, cool. And you didn't find any other like terrible surprises in there? Like, no rust I didn't know about or anything?

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 1:12:24Matt Farah?

  Okay, so, Sean, who is out of his mind, he says he would like to drive this thing to Car Week.

• 1:12:32Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:12:32Matt Farah?

  Which is in fucking August. And for the record, today is June 22nd.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  Yep. Along with two other cars that are in stock.

• 1:12:39Matt Farah?

  That are here?

• 1:12:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:12:40Matt Farah?

  That are, okay, at least we can ship them back together, maybe. Uh, what, the en- the engine, uh, is physically in the car.

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:12:49Matt Farah?

  Gearbox is physically in the car.

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:12:52Matt Farah?

  But that's kind of it right now.

• 1:12:54Speaker 01

  The suspension is all done.

• 1:12:55Matt Farah?

  Oh, okay. So where, what do we have to do, do in the next, I don't know, couple of weeks before that car can be sent back?

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  A whole lot of wiring.

• 1:13:04Matt Farah?

  Wiring?

• 1:13:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:05Matt Farah?

  Okay, tell me, I, I, I don't know anything about wiring. I know I don't want to know about wiring. So, what do I need, what do I need to know about wiring in order to make a 2002 powertrain work in a 1995 Mercedes?

• 1:13:19Speaker 01

  Alright, let's see, we've got the ECU, which-

• 1:13:22Matt Farah?

  Did I have the biodegradable wiring, by the way, in my car, the original? So, you throw all that in the garbage anyway?

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:13:28Matt Farah?

  Okay. Ran one part, though.

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it, it's, so the nice thing is, in, in cars that came from mild climates, the, the biodegradable wiring doesn't fail as quickly. It's really the climates where it's, where it's harsh, where it gets really cold and really hot.

• 1:13:43Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  And you have engine temperature sub-zero, engine temperature sub-zero multiple times a day, that's what kills them.

• 1:13:48Matt Farah?

  Sure, okay.

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  Um, so California cars, Florida cars, they usually survive longer.

• 1:13:52Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 1:13:53Speaker 01

  But, you don't have to worry about that anymore. We have your engine computer that is getting a module put in. We get them from Europe. Basically, we can go in and set up this module so that it acts like the ignition switch, the electronic ignition switch.

• 1:14:08Matt Farah?

  Uh huh.

• 1:14:08Speaker 01

  And then it will take a signal from your physical ignition switch to then emulate the electronic ignition switch and tell the ECU to start.

• 1:14:16Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 1:14:17Speaker 01

  Um.

• 1:14:17Matt Farah?

  Cause this car, the O2, has the weird, the chunky.

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:21Matt Farah?

  Yeah, that nobody likes.

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:14:23Matt Farah?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:14:24Speaker 01

  So we get rid of that. And then the transmission, the otherwise, the engine computer is factory, the transmission computer is factory. We have another module in there that's like a mill spec module that runs a program that emulates your traction control.

• 1:14:40Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  So it takes all of the information from the drivetrain that it needs and then gives that to the engine and transmission computer so as to make it think everything is fine. Right? Like it takes your wheel speed and then figures.

• 1:14:55Matt Farah?

  But is it traction control?

• 1:14:56Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:14:57Matt Farah?

  Okay. So if I lose traction, I don't have traction control?

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  No, you don't.

• 1:15:01Matt Farah?

  Okay, that's fine. I'm okay with that. I just wanna know.

• 1:15:04Speaker 01

  I figured you would be.

• 1:15:04Matt Farah?

  I just wanna know what I have.

• 1:15:06Speaker 01

  No, there was a minute there where I was like, what if we took the entire traction control system from the E55 and put it in Matt's cab?

• 1:15:12Matt Farah?

  No, no, no.

• 1:15:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, no.

• 1:15:13Matt Farah?

  Do I have ABS?

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:14Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, all that still works.

• 1:15:16Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 1:15:16Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:15:16Matt Farah?

  And like you said, I have full HVAC as well.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:15:19Matt Farah?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:15:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, everything works the way it should.

• 1:15:22Matt Farah?

  All right, cool.

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  And.

• 1:15:24Matt Farah?

  Are there, okay, so once you figure out this, not figure out, because you've done it before, you know what to do, right?

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:30Matt Farah?

  This isn't to figure out, it's just.

• 1:15:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh yeah. We 3D print our own ECU housings and everything, hide back in there, make it all look factory. And it holds, you know, the ECU, the TCU, the PCS, the K40, right? We utilize the power distribution relay from the E55 to distribute power to all of the modules and everything, so it's all factory parts.

• 1:15:52Matt Farah?

  You were very, when you were showing me around the shop earlier, you were very, you said it a few times, that it has to look factory and the outside has to look factory.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:16:02Matt Farah?

  Is that, is that just a you thing?

• 1:16:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:05Matt Farah?

  Why, why does it, I mean, it's, it's nice that it looks factory, I think, but that's, it's certainly, it's, it's a, it's a choice that you, but like, have you ever had a desire to go, I could probably do that better?

• 1:16:19Speaker 01

  Sometimes, yes, on those things, you know, yeah, that's what we do.

• 1:16:22Matt Farah?

  Have you ever had it not work, just outright, have you ever had a model you couldn't make work?

• 1:16:27Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:16:28Matt Farah?

  Okay, well, that's good.

• 1:16:29Speaker 01

  I mean, that's, back to the autism, right, like, if I have a problem, I'm gonna work at it, I'm gonna bang my head against the wall until I find a solution.

• 1:16:36Matt Farah?

  What about, do any of the, what, any of the cars have like the fucking LCD screens in the middle, nothing that new, right?

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 1:16:43Matt Farah?

  The CLK didn't have that yet?

• 1:16:45Speaker 01

  Um, so, I mean, like, that stuff, we just figure out how to make it work. Um, that, thankfully, though, that era of car has the canvas that already talks to all of those modules. So, it's just not really that much of an issue, it's just, it's mostly just coding.

• 1:16:59Matt Farah?

  And are getting, or, if you're doing a manual, can you just buy a three pedal pedal box from Mercedes and mount that? Or are you having to figure out where to put a third pedal?

• 1:17:11Speaker 01

  The only car that we've had to figure out where to put a third pedal in is that G55.

• 1:17:15Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  Apart from that, yeah, you just buy the pedal set that goes to that chassis.

• 1:17:19Matt Farah?

  Which, and you have, with a G55, you have the benefit of like, nobody expects the ergonomics to be good in G55, like, you know what I mean? Like, it's a truck, like, a truck manual gearbox, and like, you're not heel toeing, like, yeah, it's fine.

• 1:17:34Speaker 01

  But also, I was still able to buy the pedal bracket from Mercedes that crossed to a different chassis that fit and bolted up. I just had to modify the firewall around it to make room for the pedal.

• 1:17:44Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:44Speaker 01

  But, like, it's still bolted up.

• 1:17:45Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Is that gearbox used in other stuff, not Mercedes, or do they make the gearbox? Is it like a Getrag or something?

• 1:17:52Speaker 01

  No, it's a Mercedes.

• 1:17:53Matt Farah?

  It's a Mercedes gearbox, so, all right, so it's not in anything else, it's not Mercedes. Oh, so you, you, you having it in a Ford truck might be the first person to ever put that thing in a non Mercedes of any kind.

• 1:18:04Speaker 01

  Nah.

• 1:18:05Matt Farah?

  Who's putting Mercedes gearboxes in other stuff? I've never, you hear of people buying Tremex and Get, you've never heard anyone buying that.

• 1:18:12Speaker 01

  Well, no, with the Mercedes engine too, but those guys over in Europe are crazy, they'll put anything in anything.

• 1:18:18Matt Farah?

  I guess Sweden, I'm not thinking about Sweden.

• 1:18:20Speaker 01

  The Swedish drift scene from 20 years ago?

• 1:18:22Matt Farah?

  Sure, yes, they, they must have, that's true, that's true. Okay, what have, what have, what do I need to know about any of this that you haven't told me yet? I mean, I, I feel pretty educated on the customer side art of the M113 swap business.

• 1:18:40Matt Farah?

  That that's pretty much, I mean, from what I gather, the M113 swap business is effectively your entire business. It seems like it's like 80% of your business.

• 1:18:48Speaker 01

  80% of my business.

• 1:18:49Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:50Speaker 01

  But like, we've got one out there that's getting the M120 quad cam V12. And that one's gonna get Haltech and it's gonna get Uco length headers and it's gonna get an annual and like the 90's SL600.

• 1:19:01Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:02Matt Farah?

  Is that worth it?

• 1:19:04Speaker 01

  If you want Formula One sound, if you want 12 cylinders. But from a like, cost benefit analysis, no.

• 1:19:11Matt Farah?

  I didn't think so.

• 1:19:13Speaker 01

  And then we also do, like, my wagon has the 6.2 quad cam in it. Uh, I'm doing another 6.2 quad cam for another guy in a wide body SEC.

• 1:19:23Matt Farah?

  That's like the, the modernish one, right? From like 2005?

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  Uh, 2008.

• 1:19:29Matt Farah?

  2007, 8, 7, 8, 9.

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:30Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, the 63 engine.

• 1:19:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, the actual one before it got turbo.

• 1:19:34Matt Farah?

  So you can put, you can put those. And, and, and what is like the cost difference to do that engine versus like my 113? How much more are we talking about?

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  So generally, the way it shakes out is like, if you are doing a 113, it's in today's dollars, right? This fluctuates a lot with parts availability and stuff, but like a 113 stop.

• 1:20:00Matt Farah?

  You're not quoting a customer on the podcast, just range me out.

• 1:20:03Speaker 01

  70 ish for the full, everything, engine, transmission, suspension, brakes.

• 1:20:08Matt Farah?

  Turnkey.

• 1:20:09Speaker 01

  Turnkey, yeah, you send us a car, you get the car back and stuff.

• 1:20:11Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:12Speaker 01

  Everything works. That's for a 113, it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 70. To do a 113K, you're adding 15 to 20 because the engine is considerably more expensive. And then you have coolers and you have lots of coolers and, uh, the computers are more expensive.

• 1:20:30Matt Farah?

  Sure.

• 1:20:30Speaker 01

  All of that stuff. So that adds just a lot of labor and a lot of extra parts. Uh, and then the 6.2 is probably another 15 to 20 on top of that.

• 1:20:40Matt Farah?

  Beyond that.

• 1:20:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, because basically any engine we get, as soon as we get the engine, the first thing we have to do is tear it down and redo the whole thing.

• 1:20:48Matt Farah?

  Yeah, head studs, right. But that's, I mean. Well, it's easier if it's already out of the car. Is it, is that the servicing of that motor is what adds that? So is it more complicated to swap a 6.2 than a supercharged 5.5?

• 1:21:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:21:06Matt Farah?

  It is. Okay. Because of the wiring and the even more advanced.

• 1:21:11Speaker 01

  That moves on to the next generation of, of engine computers?

• 1:21:14Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:14Speaker 01

  Uh, and those are finicky.

• 1:21:16Matt Farah?

  And you probably can't use the old key anymore, right? You still can use the original key?

• 1:21:22Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:21:22Matt Farah?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 1:21:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I'll show you my wagon. It's, you know, turnkey. I've prob- put probably 6,000-ish, 8,000 miles on it with the 6.2. And the reason, like, I'm selling that one because I have a four-mile commute.

• 1:21:35Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  And it never, I never even get the oil up to temp.

• 1:21:38Matt Farah?

  I, you know, I have a similar issue. I, I live very close to my office and I, my, actually, despite the fact that I live in a big city, my life in that city is quite small and I don't drive far enough to even turn the old cars on.

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:54Matt Farah?

  A bunch of the times.

• 1:21:55Speaker 01

  So the great thing about the 113 is, uh, I leave the parking lot sideways every day with a cold engine. I don't care. I dare the thing to blow up. It won't.

• 1:22:05Matt Farah?

  Is that, is it just that under-stressed from the factory?

• 1:22:08Speaker 01

  They are that reliable.

• 1:22:10Matt Farah?

  Was that, and was that 113 an all-new engine at the time?

• 1:22:15Speaker 01

  It was.

• 1:22:15Matt Farah?

  It was?

• 1:22:16Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:22:17Matt Farah?

  So they knew that this block and architecture was going to eventually have to withstand substantially more power?

• 1:22:26Speaker 01

  I assume so. They did make a few changes for the supercharged motors, but really just forged internals.

• 1:22:32Matt Farah?

  Right. Right. Cool. Well, I cannot wait to drive this car.

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:37Matt Farah?

  I am so stoked.

• 1:22:38Speaker 01

  It's gonna be good.

• 1:22:39Matt Farah?

  I think it's gonna be great. I'm gonna roll around LA looking like the man, making a good sound, the V8, and people are gonna go, "Hey, wait a minute. That car didn't come like that."

• 1:22:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:22:50Matt Farah?

  But it, but, but not right away.

• 1:22:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:22:52Matt Farah?

  You need to, you're, you're, it's not going to scream at you that this is different. You're gonna have to go, "What is different about that?"

• 1:23:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:02Matt Farah?

  The thinking man's tuner car.

• 1:23:04Speaker 01

  No, I, I really enjoy that. I have a wide-body 123 coupe and I saw the Craigslist listing for it once and I was like, "Oh, hey, it's one of those." And then probably 10 minutes later, I was like... Wait, they never made one of those.

• 1:23:15Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:15Speaker 01

  And then I had to go back and find it again, and then I went and bought it, and Sean has that car now, but.

• 1:23:19Matt Farah?

  So somebody, someone made a wide-body coupe and, and you're just gonna, you're gonna do basically what you're doing with mine?

• 1:23:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that was on the Top Gear video that I did four years ago now, with the supercharged V8 and a manual. And then somebody hit me because Nashville traffic is terrible. And Sean has had it for three years, basically doing the whole thing.

• 1:23:40Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 1:23:40Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, so hopefully it comes back soon.

• 1:23:43Matt Farah?

  Cool.

• 1:23:43Speaker 01

  I miss it.

• 1:23:44Matt Farah?

  Yeah, well, that's, that's, that's money. I, I, I wanna try this wagon of yours.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:48Matt Farah?

  Um, I also wanna try the G, the G-Wagon too.

• 1:23:51Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 1:23:52Matt Farah?

  That seems really interesting.

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  I mean, that's my girlfriend's car at this point. She drives it more than I do.

• 1:23:56Matt Farah?

  I love it. Well, look, honestly, my wife is gonna be driving this Mercedes probably more than me. Um, but, uh, dude, this has been great. I can't wait to see my car. Uh, it's really been interesting to see, uh, what you do down here. And, uh, yeah, I wanna go drive something.

• 1:24:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:24:12Matt Farah?

  Thanks, guys, for listening. We're gonna, uh, we're gonna go poke around the garage and see if we can drive something, and, uh, we'll see you next time. Bye.