Pod Insights The Smoking Tire Mercedes Engine Swap King Matt Kwiek About this episode 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
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Transcript 15,828 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Matt 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
0:43 Matt 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
1:23 Matt 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.
2:08 Matt 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.
2:17 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
2:18 Matt Farah? Not just for me, but for my somewhat fairly heirloom car.
2:22 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:23 Matt Farah? Do you know the story of this car?
2:26 Speaker 01 I have heard that it is your wife's aunt's car.
2:29 Matt Farah? That is correct. It's now ours. I have signed the title.
2:32 Speaker 01 That's good.
2:33 Matt 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.
2:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:53 Matt Farah? And do you remember, like, did you ever watch Saturday Night Live?
2:55 Speaker 01 Nope.
2:56 Matt Farah? Do you know anything about Saturday Night Live?
2:58 Speaker 01 I know of it.
2:58 Matt 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.
3:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
3:10 Matt Farah? So even people who don't know fucking Saturday Night Live know Coffee Talk.
3:13 Speaker 01 I know Coffee Talk.
3:15 Matt Farah? Coffee Talk, the characters were based on Aunt Liz, whose car that was.
3:20 Speaker 01 Amazing.
3:20 Matt 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.
3:40 Speaker 01 A 124 cab, yeah.
3:41 Matt 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.
3:48 Speaker 01 Right.
3:49 Matt Farah? So here we go.
3:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
3:50 Matt Farah? And you came, you know, when I talked to Shant at CMS, who was my neighbor.
3:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
3:56 Matt 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.
4:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
4:09 Matt 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.
4:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
4:18 Matt 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?
4:25 Speaker 01 Alright, so um, man, I guess I should go back.
4:28 Matt Farah? Yeah, what is your background?
4:31 Speaker 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.
4:37 Matt Farah? Here?
4:37 Speaker 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.
5:12 Matt Farah? While you were there?
5:13 Speaker 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.
5:25 Matt Farah? Okay.
5:25 Speaker 01 And so I was working for Apple Care. So I was working from home and had decent money and.
5:29 Matt Farah? Work for Apple Care, like repairing computers or like?
5:32 Speaker 01 No, phone support.
5:33 Matt Farah? On the phone? Okay, yeah, phone support. Okay, yeah.
5:35 Speaker 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.
5:43 Matt Farah? You seem just fine at it. How about that?
5:46 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:46 Matt Farah? They call that on the job training.
5:48 Speaker 01 Exactly.
5:49 Matt Farah? Yeah, yeah, that's crazy. Okay, yeah, you seem fine at it now. Problem solved.
5:53 Speaker 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.
6:26 Matt Farah? Yeah, but you're autistic. That's like having formal training. No, I'm just, I don't.
6:29 Speaker 01 No, it works. It works.
6:31 Matt Farah? It helps with studying.
6:32 Speaker 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.
6:58 Matt 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?
7:22 Speaker 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.
7:35 Matt 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.
7:48 Speaker 01 I mean, that's kind of the thing is I got so fed up with.
7:49 Matt 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.
8:06 Speaker 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.
8:11 Matt 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.
8:17 Speaker 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.
8:27 Matt 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.
8:56 Matt Farah? Which happened later. I I would you come on.
8:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, and that happened in every industry.
9:00 Matt Farah? The one twenty four was built to a price. It was just a price higher than today's industry would probably bear.
9:07 Speaker 01 That's right. Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. And obviously I had to stay under the S class, too.
9:11 Matt Farah? So just like the varying levels of Porsches. Right.
9:15 Speaker 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.
9:37 Matt 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.
9:54 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
9:55 Matt Farah? It's weird. There's a lot of them. I mean, think about how I I where I live in Los Angeles.
9:59 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:59 Matt 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.
10:21 Speaker 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.
10:29 Matt Farah? That's a good point.
10:30 Speaker 01 Like, you can just keep driving.
10:32 Matt Farah? Slowly decline.
10:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:33 Matt Farah? And then hit a floor of like, kind of works.
10:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:37 Matt Farah? That's when it will become like a cab in Botswana.
10:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:41 Matt 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.
11:02 Speaker 01 And then they go to Mauritania and they live forever.
11:05 Matt Farah? Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
11:07 Speaker 01 That's more or less.
11:08 Matt Farah? The LS four hundred is the next one of that.
11:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:11 Matt 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.
11:23 Speaker 01 Oh shit.
11:24 Matt Farah? Like 50% of all cars.
11:25 Speaker 01 Wow.
11:26 Matt Farah? Um, like the number of Lexus LSs and LXs that are just rolling in the Middle East.
11:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:33 Matt Farah? Is, yeah, it's crazy.
11:34 Speaker 01 I mean, you're a testament to that.
11:36 Matt 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.
11:44 Speaker 01 Right.
11:45 Matt 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.
11:55 Speaker 01 Oh, man.
12:00 Speaker 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.
12:16 Matt 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?
12:23 Speaker 01 So that was later.
12:24 Matt 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.
12:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, no, that happened in, uh, COVID.
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17:15 Speaker 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.
17:25 Speaker 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.
17:42 Matt Farah? What was the shop in Atlanta doing? You don't necessarily have to plug them, but this is.
17:46 Speaker 01 Pre-merger AMG stuff.
17:47 Matt Farah? Okay, alright, cool.
17:48 Speaker 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.
18:15 Matt 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?
18:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, no, like only one of the cars out in the shops local.
18:29 Matt 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?
18:38 Speaker 01 So we are finishing up 21 and 22 and 23 through 26 or 27 are in progress in the shop right now.
18:46 Matt 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?
18:57 Speaker 01 I mean, I've been doing manual swaps since my very first car.
19:00 Matt Farah? The 190? You did a manual swap?
19:02 Speaker 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.
19:16 Matt 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.
19:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:35 Matt 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.
19:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:49 Matt Farah? Yeah, yeah.
19:49 Speaker 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.
20:00 Matt 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?
20:17 Speaker 01 Uh, so I bought that car in twenty eleven.
20:20 Matt Farah? Uh huh.
20:21 Speaker 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.
20:35 Matt Farah? Okay. And then when did you open this shop? Twenty twenty one?
20:39 Speaker 01 Uh, in, I started in Michigan in twenty twenty and then closed down in twenty twenty one.
20:43 Matt Farah? Alright, so you had like.
20:43 Speaker 01 And then opened here in twenty two.
20:45 Matt Farah? So like nine years of practicing.
20:47 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:48 Matt Farah? There's your ten thousand hours, probably, at least.
20:50 Speaker 01 More than that, oh yeah, definitely.
20:51 Matt Farah? Yeah, yeah.
20:52 Speaker 01 Yep.
20:52 Matt 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.
21:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:01 Matt Farah? That's hard knocks practice. That's fucking cool. Alright, so what? Um.
21:08 Matt Farah? You, you obviously have twenty twenty, over twenty of these powertrain swaps. Mine is what? Twenty one, twenty two, whatever you said.
21:14 Speaker 01 Twenty five.
21:16 Matt 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.
21:42 Speaker 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.
21:53 Matt Farah? Yeah.
21:53 Speaker 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.
22:05 Matt Farah? Yeah.
22:05 Speaker 01 They're super strong.
22:06 Matt 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.
22:44 Speaker 01 Right.
22:45 Matt Farah? Yeah.
22:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, no, these cars are, the bones are already there.
22:47 Matt Farah? Yeah.
22:47 Speaker 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.
22:53 Matt Farah? Right.
22:54 Speaker 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.
23:23 Matt 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.
23:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
23:32 Matt 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?
23:49 Speaker 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.
23:59 Matt Farah? It's amazing how many people think they have an old car.
24:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:03 Matt 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.
24:17 Speaker 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.
24:47 Matt Farah? Yeah. Yeah, that, that sounds bad.
24:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:51 Matt 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.
25:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:05 Matt 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.
25:12 Speaker 01 You're gonna take it back out.
25:13 Matt Farah? Yeah, it's not good actually.
25:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:16 Matt Farah? Just like new bushings are like, huh, you know, it's like seeing the light.
25:22 Speaker 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.
25:39 Matt Farah? Yeah, that's, well, that's a, that's an engineering solution to a specific issue brought up by the powertrain swap.
25:46 Speaker 01 Right.
25:47 Matt Farah? That's not a failure of Mercedes.
25:50 Speaker 01 Oh, absolutely.
25:51 Matt Farah? Or a poor choice thing.
25:53 Speaker 01 If I could use the factory bushings, I absolutely would.
25:56 Matt 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.
26:17 Matt 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.
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31:03 Matt 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?
31:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
31:30 Matt Farah? Fully?
31:31 Speaker 01 Almost.
31:32 Matt 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?
31:40 Speaker 01 From Mercedes.
31:42 Matt Farah? And what is that gearbox?
31:43 Speaker 01 So Mercedes, a lot of people will say, "Oh, we use the Crossfire gearbox."
31:48 Matt Farah? I've heard that before. I drove one before like that.
31:50 Speaker 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.
32:04 Matt Farah? It's fine. Okay, that's good.
32:06 Speaker 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.
32:22 Matt Farah? So you can, you can buy a, is it new O S or is it new new?
32:26 Speaker 01 It's new.
32:27 Matt Farah? It's new, yeah. So a new gearbox in a crate, just showing up.
32:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, I've got four of them on the shelf.
32:32 Matt 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?
32:38 Speaker 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.
32:49 Matt Farah? Right.
32:49 Speaker 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.
32:57 Matt Farah? Oh, cool.
32:57 Speaker 01 So that it will hold 6, 800 horsepower and still feel like factory.
33:01 Matt Farah? Oh, that's pretty cool.
33:02 Speaker 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.
33:09 Matt Farah? That's what you'd use in like the black series, right?
33:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
33:12 Matt Farah? Yeah, we have one at my store, the silver one.
33:16 Speaker 01 Which one? We've done five silver ones.
33:18 Matt 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.
33:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
33:31 Matt 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.
33:44 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
33:45 Matt 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.
33:56 Speaker 01 Yeah.
33:56 Matt 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.
34:05 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
34:06 Matt 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.
34:18 Speaker 01 208 chassis.
34:19 Matt Farah? Yeah. Stock engine, four, a four point three with a manual, lovely.
34:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
34:25 Matt 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.
34:31 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
34:32 Matt Farah? Good times.
34:33 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
34:33 Matt Farah? They, these, this really wakes up the fucking cars.
34:37 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
34:38 Matt 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?
34:55 Speaker 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.
35:05 Matt Farah? Uh huh.
35:05 Speaker 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.
35:13 Matt Farah? Yeah.
35:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
35:14 Matt Farah? Yeah. So would you say that there is an enormous amount of value in those cars?
35:21 Speaker 01 I mean, in terms of experience, yes.
35:23 Matt Farah? Yeah.
35:24 Speaker 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.
35:37 Matt Farah? Yeah.
35:38 Speaker 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.
35:45 Matt Farah? What do you have to do? Software wise to make that setup work in a, in an early two thousands car?
35:52 Speaker 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.
36:19 Matt Farah? You just like use your old Pentium processor to log, to log in and go click for manual.
36:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:26 Matt Farah? And it's just, that's it.
36:28 Speaker 01 Basically, I mean, you've got a mirror, the reverse lights and the clutch switch.
36:31 Matt 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.
36:38 Speaker 01 As long as it's naturally aspirated.
36:40 Matt 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.
36:50 Speaker 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.
37:10 Matt 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,
37:54 Matt Farah? I'll just pay the difference just to say I have it. But there are reasons not to, you're saying.
37:59 Speaker 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
38:13 Matt Farah? It's because when it goes
38:16 Matt Farah? they get an erection, that's why.
38:17 Speaker 01 Well, uh, did you see Sean's black SEC that I did?
38:21 Matt Farah? Yeah.
38:21 Speaker 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.
38:41 Matt 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.
39:06 Speaker 01 So that's basically the pagoda.
39:07 Matt 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.
39:14 Speaker 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.
39:27 Speaker 01 It was fantastic.
39:28 Matt Farah? Really?
39:28 Speaker 01 I loved it. I'd like, I don't wanna sell it, but like, you know, we gotta move on to new things.
39:32 Matt Farah? Is it here?
39:32 Speaker 01 It's out in California.
39:33 Matt Farah? Oh damn.
39:34 Speaker 01 O T S is selling it for me.
39:36 Matt Farah? Okay.
39:37 Speaker 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.
39:55 Matt 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.
40:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, um, but now I understand why they didn't use the fifty five in it. You don't need that.
40:21 Matt 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.
40:36 Matt 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.
40:59 Speaker 01 Yeah.
40:59 Matt 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.
41:34 Matt Farah? Make a note to tell Zach that at thirty one minutes.
41:41 Speaker 01 The bike fell over.
41:41 Matt 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.
42:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
42:06 Matt Farah? So, so.
42:08 Speaker 01 That was one of my employees.
42:09 Matt 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?
42:17 Speaker 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.
42:37 Matt Farah? Okay, so it is, though I drove one in LA that where a guy did it himself.
42:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
42:42 Matt 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.
42:56 Speaker 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.
43:21 Matt 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?
43:42 Matt Farah? Or where you have to charge a pain in the ass tax for doing it.
43:46 Speaker 01 So there, there are two. The one that I say no to is the 114, 115 chassis.
43:52 Matt Farah? Well, you're, I'm not quite as nerdy as you, but go on.
43:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. Late 60s to mid 70s Mercedes E-Class.
43:58 Matt Farah? Okay.
43:59 Speaker 01 Um, the, their 300Ds or 220Ds, you would know them as.
44:04 Matt Farah? Yeah.
44:04 Speaker 01 The one, the precursor to the 123 that everybody thinks of as the, the early E-Class.
44:09 Matt Farah? Uh huh.
44:09 Speaker 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.
44:20 Matt Farah? Okay.
44:21 Speaker 01 Like it just doesn't fit.
44:21 Matt 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.
44:32 Speaker 01 Right.
44:33 Matt Farah? What can people do with 3.6, an inline six?
44:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, totally. Or an OM606, if you don't mind a diesel.
44:39 Matt Farah? Uh huh.
44:40 Speaker 01 Right? Like I've done a bunch of those.
44:41 Matt Farah? A modern, a more modern diesel swap.
44:44 Speaker 01 Yeah. Or yeah, you can even go up to the OM648, the common rail one from the aunts.
44:48 Matt Farah? Oh wow.
44:49 Speaker 01 Those are fantastic engines.
44:50 Matt Farah? The CDI?
44:51 Speaker 01 Yep.
44:51 Matt Farah? That's a CD, 320 CDI?
44:53 Speaker 01 Yeah.
44:53 Matt 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.
44:59 Speaker 01 Right.
44:59 Matt 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?
45:33 Speaker 01 Probably, yeah.
45:34 Matt Farah? Like least return for investment?
45:36 Speaker 01 The return for investment is, um, burnouts on demand.
45:40 Matt Farah? Sure, well, yeah, no, that could be a desirable thing.
45:43 Speaker 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.
45:55 Matt Farah? So that's the biggest waste. What's the best?
45:59 Matt 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?
46:08 Speaker 01 Limited slip.
46:11 Speaker 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.
46:20 Matt 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.
46:33 Speaker 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.
46:50 Matt Farah? What about the R129?
46:52 Speaker 01 No, none of those got.
46:53 Matt Farah? None of the R129 SLs had limited slip?
46:55 Speaker 01 I've never seen or heard of one with a limited slip from the factory.
47:00 Matt 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.
47:05 Speaker 01 Some of them have ASD, which is, um, a hydraulically actuated limited slip.
47:09 Matt Farah? Is that brake vectoring?
47:11 Speaker 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.
47:30 Matt Farah? Yeah, like the new Mustang has.
47:32 Speaker 01 I have no idea about that.
47:33 Matt 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.
47:52 Matt 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.
48:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
48:05 Matt 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.
48:19 Speaker 01 Yeah. Cars newer than like 2005 just don't exist to me.
48:24 Matt Farah? Yeah. Funny. Yeah.
48:26 Speaker 01 The newest vehicle I own is that 2003 G55.
48:29 Matt Farah? Yeah, I roll up outside. He's got a fucking manual swapped uh G55, which is actually pretty sweet.
48:36 Speaker 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.
48:47 Matt Farah? Do the transfer cases still work and stuff?
48:49 Speaker 01 Well, it's a divorced transfer case. So, yeah.
48:52 Matt Farah? Oh, it's at the back? You just did a different drive shaft and it knows no difference?
48:57 Speaker 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.
49:15 Matt Farah? Oh, yeah, that's.
49:15 Speaker 01 But like, oh, yeah, it wasn't.
49:18 Matt Farah? But.
49:19 Speaker 01 But now that it works.
49:19 Matt Farah? You have a manual G-Wagon and the transfer cases work, which is really cool.
49:23 Speaker 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.
49:31 Matt Farah? Yeah, that's pretty sweet, actually. Same gearbox.
49:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
49:34 Matt Farah? That's the same, the same. So.
49:36 Speaker 01 Yep.
49:36 Matt Farah? The, the fact that you're now using it for off-roading in a heavy ass, no problem.
49:42 Speaker 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.
49:53 Matt Farah? You put one of these Mercedes gearboxes in your truck to tow with it?
49:56 Speaker 01 With an OM606 turbo diesel.
49:58 Matt Farah? What is an OM606?
50:00 Speaker 01 Okay, so the OM606 is a 2JZ of...
50:03 Matt Farah? I assume it's some kind of truck motor or something?
50:04 Speaker 01 No.
50:04 Matt Farah? Oh, what is it?
50:05 Speaker 01 99 E300 turbo diesel.
50:07 Matt Farah? Oh.
50:08 Speaker 01 Twin cam, six cylinder, indirect injected.
50:11 Matt Farah? Okay.
50:12 Speaker 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.
50:20 Matt Farah? Okay.
50:20 Speaker 01 And they're just absolutely bulletproof.
50:22 Matt Farah? And what truck did you put that in?
50:23 Speaker 01 A 73 F250 Highboy.
50:26 Matt Farah? You still, you use that truck still?
50:28 Speaker 01 Uh, it's up in Michigan now.
50:29 Matt Farah? Oh wow, that's pretty rad.
50:31 Speaker 01 A friend of mine has it, and yeah, no, he still uses it.
50:34 Matt Farah? There are probably not many Mercedes diesel powertrain swap 73 F250s out there. That's...
50:41 Speaker 01 Not that I know of.
50:41 Matt Farah? That has to be...
50:43 Speaker 01 There are at least two Mercedes diesel swapped Ford Falcons still running around that I did like 15 years ago. Like, yeah.
50:51 Matt Farah? You did more than one?
50:53 Speaker 01 I did three of them.
50:54 Matt Farah? What? Who sees a Ford Falcon and is like, "I need a Mercedes diesel"?
50:59 Speaker 01 My second car was a Ford Falcon.
51:01 Matt Farah? Okay.
51:01 Speaker 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.
51:10 Matt Farah? Okay.
51:11 Speaker 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.
51:28 Matt Farah? That was like Roadkill's power tour, right?
51:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
51:31 Matt Farah? I have a vague recollection of that being a thing.
51:33 Speaker 01 It was fun.
51:34 Matt Farah? And yet, and you sold fucking Falcons off of that?
51:37 Speaker 01 No, I mean, I just did these for shits and grins.
51:40 Matt Farah? That's crazy.
51:41 Speaker 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.
51:53 Matt 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.
52:17 Speaker 01 Oh, I mean, these are not 80s, 90s.
52:19 Matt Farah? No, these are very dirty.
52:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
52:21 Matt Farah? Oh, yeah. But.
52:22 Speaker 01 Rolling coal.
52:23 Matt 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.
52:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
52:40 Matt 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.
52:54 Speaker 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.
53:27 Matt Farah? Yeah, yeah.
53:28 Speaker 01 Um, and so we would have to change the firewall. We would have to change the cross member underneath.
53:33 Matt Farah? And like, why?
53:34 Speaker 01 It's not worth it.
53:35 Matt Farah? What, have you driven, just out of curiosity, of, uh, uh, an M119, uh, which has a manual to it on it?
53:44 Speaker 01 Not yet.
53:44 Matt 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.
53:52 Speaker 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.
54:18 Matt Farah? Hmm.
54:19 Speaker 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.
54:26 Matt 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.
54:57 Speaker 01 Yeah.
54:57 Matt Farah? You know, like, I, I don't need a whole bunch of 600 horsepower manual gearbox sports cars.
55:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
55:03 Matt Farah? I, those are for me to have fun on the weekends.
55:06 Speaker 01 Yeah.
55:06 Matt 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.
55:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
55:23 Matt 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.
55:33 Speaker 01 Yep.
55:33 Matt Farah? Uh, and did you, did we, did you rebuild that? Or did you have to do anything to it?
55:37 Speaker 01 Um.
55:37 Matt Farah? Service it?
55:38 Speaker 01 You, service it.
55:39 Matt Farah? Just fluids and whatever and it seems fine?
55:41 Speaker 01 Uh, conductor plate, right? That's what always fails on those.
55:44 Matt Farah? What, uh, I don't even know what a conductor plate is. What is a conductor plate?
55:47 Speaker 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,
56:06 Matt Farah? crack.
56:06 Speaker 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.
56:13 Matt Farah? Got it.
56:14 Speaker 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.
56:21 Matt Farah? Cool. Okay. So, and, and actually we saw the, the new shifter is installed, which is from the E55. It's not.
56:28 Speaker 01 It's not.
56:29 Matt Farah? Oh, I thought it was.
56:30 Speaker 01 The E55 shifter is too tall. It would stick out of the center console.
56:33 Matt Farah? Oh.
56:33 Speaker 01 So we use one from a 202, well, actually a 208 chassis, the CLK, the four.
56:38 Matt Farah? The CLK one?
56:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
56:40 Matt Farah? Oh, okay.
56:40 Speaker 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.
56:47 Matt 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.
56:58 Speaker 01 Yeah.
56:58 Matt 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?
57:08 Speaker 01 I did in Seattle about six years ago.
57:10 Matt Farah? Did it work?
57:11 Speaker 01 It did.
57:12 Matt Farah? Did you use a newer OEM wheel, or did you get aftermarket paddle shifters?
57:16 Speaker 01 It was an aftermarket wheel, just like a standard Momo with paddles, the bolt behind it.
57:21 Matt Farah? Really?
57:22 Speaker 01 Yep.
57:23 Matt Farah? It's kind of, and it did work?
57:25 Speaker 01 It worked, yeah.
57:25 Matt Farah? Hmm.
57:26 Speaker 01 It's, yeah, it's from the same guy who we get the kit from that controls the transmission.
57:30 Matt Farah? Oh, interesting, yeah. It's, it's not something I want for my car, but like, that would be cool.
57:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
57:36 Matt Farah? I mean, it would, it would.
57:37 Speaker 01 So like.
57:38 Matt Farah? Certainly you can't shift fast, but for a fucking car from the 90s, it would be way better than whatever you had.
57:43 Speaker 01 We did a 124 wagon for a local guy that takes it on a lot of rallies.
57:49 Matt Farah? Uh huh.
57:49 Speaker 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.
58:12 Matt Farah? Now he wants, now he wants a manual. Yeah, well, you know, learn by doing.
58:16 Speaker 01 Yep.
58:17 Matt 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.
58:26 Speaker 01 Right.
58:26 Matt Farah? My car is for cruising around.
58:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
58:28 Matt 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?
58:37 Speaker 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.
58:50 Matt 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?
59:00 Speaker 01 Yeah.
59:00 Matt Farah? They are?
59:01 Speaker 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.
59:23 Matt 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.
59:32 Speaker 01 Right.
59:34 Matt 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.
59:45 Speaker 01 Yeah.
59:46 Matt 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.
1:00:04 Speaker 01 You're gonna have cowl shake.
1:00:05 Matt Farah? I'm gonna have cowl shake.
1:00:06 Speaker 01 Those cars had cowl shake from the factory.
1:00:08 Matt Farah? Yeah, but like not, not more than I had, right?
1:00:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, no, yeah.
1:00:12 Matt 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?
1:00:23 Speaker 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.
1:00:35 Matt Farah? Oh, mine's the first cab you've done?
1:00:37 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:00:37 Matt Farah? Oh, well, happy to be the first.
1:00:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:00:40 Matt 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.
1:00:57 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:00:57 Matt Farah? If you got a, honestly, if you got a 20.
1:01:03 Matt Farah? Eighteen Bentley GT. It would have cow shake.
1:01:07 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:01:07 Matt 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.
1:01:27 Matt Farah? Uh, and that's a two plus two, not a four. The. Current generation Bentley GT.
1:01:35 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:01:35 Matt Farah? And even then, only the soft ones, not the sporty ones.
1:01:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:01:41 Matt Farah? Uh.
1:01:42 Speaker 01 Well, in that case, yeah, there's nothing to worry about.
1:01:44 Matt Farah? Yeah, it just is what it is.
1:01:45 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:01:45 Matt Farah? Yeah, it is what it is.
1:01:46 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:01:47 Matt Farah? Um, but, but it's not like, uh, you're, you're going to twist the thing like a pretzel. Yeah.
1:01:53 Speaker 01 Nope.
1:01:53 Matt 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.
1:02:02 Speaker 01 Super cool.
1:02:03 Matt Farah? Okay.
1:02:03 Speaker 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.
1:02:31 Matt 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?
1:02:42 Speaker 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.
1:02:51 Matt Farah? So the quote modifications happen somewhere else in the wiring harness. It gets, the signal gets converted or something?
1:02:58 Speaker 01 Generally the signal gets converted.
1:02:59 Matt Farah? Okay.
1:03:00 Speaker 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.
1:03:15 Matt Farah? Got it. Um, and what is your recommended upgrade for brakes when you've got one of these V eights?
1:03:22 Speaker 01 Uh, the cheap and easy go to is, uh, W two 20 S class, like 2002 ish.
1:03:31 Speaker 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.
1:03:38 Matt Farah? Yeah, for a thirty two hundred pound car, that's fine.
1:03:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:03:41 Matt Farah? Yeah. And then if you want to spend a little more, we would do six hundred stuff, stuff from a six hundred?
1:03:46 Speaker 01 Well, the six hundred stuff is the same as the four thirty stuff. I just say six hundred because it sounds fancier.
1:03:50 Matt Farah? That's hilarious, really?
1:03:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:03:52 Matt Farah? They don't, I, I thought the six hundred one, I guess the one twenty nines had bigger brakes.
1:03:58 Speaker 01 Not bigger than these.
1:03:59 Matt Farah? The, the, the, the later S class, and this would be the two thousand and one to two thousand and six S class.
1:04:06 Speaker 01 Yes, two twenty chassis, ninety nine to six.
1:04:08 Matt Farah? Yeah, four thirty, five hundred, fifty five.
1:04:13 Speaker 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.
1:04:22 Matt Farah? Right.
1:04:22 Speaker 01 So.
1:04:23 Matt Farah? So this, so that's really your limitation is the seventeen inch wheel?
1:04:26 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:04:27 Matt Farah? Yeah, okay. So this is the best Mercedes brake that will fit in a seventeen?
1:04:30 Speaker 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.
1:04:59 Matt 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.
1:05:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, and like my Pagoda.
1:05:18 Matt Farah? There's worse things in life than burnouts.
1:05:20 Speaker 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.
1:05:29 Matt Farah? In the rear?
1:05:30 Speaker 01 All around, yeah.
1:05:31 Matt Farah? That's gonna, that's probably loosey goosey.
1:05:33 Speaker 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.
1:05:47 Matt 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.
1:06:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:06:25 Matt Farah? He goes, if you bend the frame, you can drive the truck home.
1:06:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:06:30 Matt Farah? And you can actually put it on a frame straightening machine and fix it.
1:06:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:06:34 Matt 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.
1:06:44 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:06:44 Matt Farah? And then you're not getting home.
1:06:46 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:06:46 Matt 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.
1:06:53 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:06:54 Matt 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.
1:06:59 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:07:00 Matt Farah? Which is a choice.
1:07:01 Speaker 01 Absolutely, yeah.
1:07:03 Matt Farah? You mentioned a bunch of, uh, the road rallies. You said you put your own on?
1:07:07 Speaker 01 I do.
1:07:08 Matt Farah? What's that called?
1:07:09 Speaker 01 Um, it depends on the year. It's, uh,
1:07:11 Matt Farah? Oh, you just change it? Just your customers and stuff?
1:07:13 Speaker 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.
1:07:20 Matt Farah? Is it always around here, Smoky Mountains?
1:07:22 Speaker 01 Um, yeah, Kentucky, uh, North Carolina, yeah.
1:07:25 Matt Farah? Good roads.
1:07:26 Speaker 01 Kinda hard to go wrong.
1:07:27 Matt 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.
1:07:37 Speaker 01 It is. That's exactly what I use it for.
1:07:39 Matt 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.
1:07:44 Speaker 01 It's a lot of fun.
1:07:45 Matt Farah? And what car did you bring on that?
1:07:47 Speaker 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.
1:07:55 Matt Farah? Okay.
1:07:55 Speaker 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.
1:08:03 Matt Farah? Yeah, I haven't seen that. Yeah.
1:08:04 Speaker 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.
1:08:16 Matt Farah? It's a 190, uh, Cosworth or just a regular 190?
1:08:19 Speaker 01 It's a 190e.
1:08:20 Matt Farah? Okay.
1:08:20 Speaker 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.
1:08:28 Matt Farah? Oh, I saw. I've seen that car. Yeah.
1:08:30 Speaker 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.
1:08:38 Matt Farah? That's pretty cool.
1:08:39 Speaker 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.
1:08:55 Matt Farah? Where is that rally?
1:08:56 Speaker 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.
1:09:08 Matt Farah? You drove there and drove back?
1:09:10 Speaker 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.
1:09:22 Matt 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?
1:09:33 Speaker 01 No, yeah, it really is. I just, I'm in love with them.
1:09:35 Matt 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.
1:09:40 Speaker 01 Oh, I mean, it is though.
1:09:43 Matt Farah? Why is it the best?
1:09:44 Speaker 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.
1:09:55 Matt Farah? Well, I've, I mean, okay, I suppose I've driven, uh, I've driven 190 Cosworths.
1:10:02 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:10:03 Matt Farah? And they're very slow.
1:10:04 Speaker 01 I have one of those. It's not slow.
1:10:06 Matt Farah? Well, they're slow stock.
1:10:08 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:10:09 Matt Farah? They're slow, like in the same way E30 M3s are slow stock.
1:10:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:10:12 Matt Farah? But I drove an E30 M3 that has like a S54, like a 2005 and it ripped.
1:10:19 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:10:19 Matt Farah? It's, is that what we're talking about here?
1:10:21 Speaker 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.
1:10:36 Matt Farah? Yeah.
1:10:37 Speaker 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.
1:10:48 Matt Farah? Is it worth building one into a race car?
1:10:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, I would.
1:10:52 Matt Farah? Like that seems like a pretty sweet race car, like a 4.3 with a six speed.
1:10:59 Speaker 01 Hmm.
1:10:59 Matt Farah? That seems like a pretty bitchin' like champ car.
1:11:03 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
1:11:04 Matt Farah? Right? What does that car weigh?
1:11:06 Speaker 01 Probably about 3,000 pounds. I really need to get a set of scales.
1:11:09 Matt Farah? You should have a set of scales.
1:11:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:11:10 Matt Farah? I feel like that fucking would rip.
1:11:13 Speaker 01 It does. You can drive it. It's out there.
1:11:15 Matt Farah? I would like to drive it. Yeah, we should do that.
1:11:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:11:18 Matt 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.
1:11:38 Matt Farah? Do you remember what I'm talking about? Do I have to get my phone out and find a text message?
1:11:41 Speaker 01 The seals in the front cover.
1:11:44 Matt Farah? Okay.
1:11:44 Speaker 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.
1:11:58 Matt Farah? That's probably what it's from. Okay, but it didn't cause any like catastrophic damage?
1:12:02 Speaker 01 No.
1:12:02 Matt Farah? Okay.
1:12:03 Speaker 01 Uh, oil in the coolant more than, yeah.
1:12:05 Matt Farah? Yeah, but like, once you took the engine apart and cleaned things and put it back together, like, fine, right?
1:12:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:12:10 Matt Farah? Okay.
1:12:10 Speaker 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.
1:12:17 Matt 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?
1:12:23 Speaker 01 Nope.
1:12:24 Matt Farah? Okay, so, Sean, who is out of his mind, he says he would like to drive this thing to Car Week.
1:12:32 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:12:32 Matt Farah? Which is in fucking August. And for the record, today is June 22nd.
1:12:36 Speaker 01 Yep. Along with two other cars that are in stock.
1:12:39 Matt Farah? That are here?
1:12:40 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:12:40 Matt 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.
1:12:49 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:12:49 Matt Farah? Gearbox is physically in the car.
1:12:51 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:12:52 Matt Farah? But that's kind of it right now.
1:12:54 Speaker 01 The suspension is all done.
1:12:55 Matt 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?
1:13:03 Speaker 01 A whole lot of wiring.
1:13:04 Matt Farah? Wiring?
1:13:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:13:05 Matt 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?
1:13:19 Speaker 01 Alright, let's see, we've got the ECU, which-
1:13:22 Matt Farah? Did I have the biodegradable wiring, by the way, in my car, the original? So, you throw all that in the garbage anyway?
1:13:28 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:13:28 Matt Farah? Okay. Ran one part, though.
1:13:30 Speaker 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.
1:13:43 Matt Farah? Okay.
1:13:43 Speaker 01 And you have engine temperature sub-zero, engine temperature sub-zero multiple times a day, that's what kills them.
1:13:48 Matt Farah? Sure, okay.
1:13:49 Speaker 01 Um, so California cars, Florida cars, they usually survive longer.
1:13:52 Matt Farah? Okay.
1:13:53 Speaker 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.
1:14:08 Matt Farah? Uh huh.
1:14:08 Speaker 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.
1:14:16 Matt Farah? Okay.
1:14:17 Speaker 01 Um.
1:14:17 Matt Farah? Cause this car, the O2, has the weird, the chunky.
1:14:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:14:21 Matt Farah? Yeah, that nobody likes.
1:14:22 Speaker 01 Right.
1:14:23 Matt Farah? Yeah, okay.
1:14:24 Speaker 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.
1:14:40 Matt Farah? Okay.
1:14:40 Speaker 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.
1:14:55 Matt Farah? But is it traction control?
1:14:56 Speaker 01 No.
1:14:57 Matt Farah? Okay. So if I lose traction, I don't have traction control?
1:15:00 Speaker 01 No, you don't.
1:15:01 Matt Farah? Okay, that's fine. I'm okay with that. I just wanna know.
1:15:04 Speaker 01 I figured you would be.
1:15:04 Matt Farah? I just wanna know what I have.
1:15:06 Speaker 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?
1:15:12 Matt Farah? No, no, no.
1:15:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, no.
1:15:13 Matt Farah? Do I have ABS?
1:15:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:15:14 Matt Farah? Okay.
1:15:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, all that still works.
1:15:16 Matt Farah? Okay.
1:15:16 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:15:16 Matt Farah? And like you said, I have full HVAC as well.
1:15:19 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:15:19 Matt Farah? Yeah, okay.
1:15:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, everything works the way it should.
1:15:22 Matt Farah? All right, cool.
1:15:23 Speaker 01 And.
1:15:24 Matt 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?
1:15:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:15:30 Matt Farah? This isn't to figure out, it's just.
1:15:31 Speaker 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.
1:15:52 Matt 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.
1:16:01 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:16:02 Matt Farah? Is that, is that just a you thing?
1:16:04 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:16:05 Matt 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?
1:16:19 Speaker 01 Sometimes, yes, on those things, you know, yeah, that's what we do.
1:16:22 Matt Farah? Have you ever had it not work, just outright, have you ever had a model you couldn't make work?
1:16:27 Speaker 01 No.
1:16:28 Matt Farah? Okay, well, that's good.
1:16:29 Speaker 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.
1:16:36 Matt 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?
1:16:42 Speaker 01 Nope.
1:16:43 Matt Farah? The CLK didn't have that yet?
1:16:45 Speaker 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.
1:16:59 Matt 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?
1:17:11 Speaker 01 The only car that we've had to figure out where to put a third pedal in is that G55.
1:17:15 Matt Farah? Right.
1:17:16 Speaker 01 Apart from that, yeah, you just buy the pedal set that goes to that chassis.
1:17:19 Matt 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.
1:17:34 Speaker 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.
1:17:44 Matt Farah? Yeah.
1:17:44 Speaker 01 But, like, it's still bolted up.
1:17:45 Matt Farah? Yeah. Is that gearbox used in other stuff, not Mercedes, or do they make the gearbox? Is it like a Getrag or something?
1:17:52 Speaker 01 No, it's a Mercedes.
1:17:53 Matt 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.
1:18:04 Speaker 01 Nah.
1:18:05 Matt 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.
1:18:12 Speaker 01 Well, no, with the Mercedes engine too, but those guys over in Europe are crazy, they'll put anything in anything.
1:18:18 Matt Farah? I guess Sweden, I'm not thinking about Sweden.
1:18:20 Speaker 01 The Swedish drift scene from 20 years ago?
1:18:22 Matt 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.
1:18:40 Matt 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.
1:18:48 Speaker 01 80% of my business.
1:18:49 Matt Farah? Yeah.
1:18:50 Speaker 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.
1:19:01 Matt Farah? Yeah.
1:19:02 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:19:02 Matt Farah? Is that worth it?
1:19:04 Speaker 01 If you want Formula One sound, if you want 12 cylinders. But from a like, cost benefit analysis, no.
1:19:11 Matt Farah? I didn't think so.
1:19:13 Speaker 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.
1:19:23 Matt Farah? That's like the, the modernish one, right? From like 2005?
1:19:27 Speaker 01 Uh, 2008.
1:19:29 Matt Farah? 2007, 8, 7, 8, 9.
1:19:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:19:30 Matt Farah? Yeah, yeah, yeah, the 63 engine.
1:19:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, the actual one before it got turbo.
1:19:34 Matt 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?
1:19:47 Speaker 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.
1:20:00 Matt Farah? You're not quoting a customer on the podcast, just range me out.
1:20:03 Speaker 01 70 ish for the full, everything, engine, transmission, suspension, brakes.
1:20:08 Matt Farah? Turnkey.
1:20:09 Speaker 01 Turnkey, yeah, you send us a car, you get the car back and stuff.
1:20:11 Matt Farah? Yeah, yeah.
1:20:12 Speaker 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.
1:20:30 Matt Farah? Sure.
1:20:30 Speaker 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.
1:20:40 Matt Farah? Beyond that.
1:20:41 Speaker 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.
1:20:48 Matt 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?
1:21:06 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:21:06 Matt Farah? It is. Okay. Because of the wiring and the even more advanced.
1:21:11 Speaker 01 That moves on to the next generation of, of engine computers?
1:21:14 Matt Farah? Yeah.
1:21:14 Speaker 01 Uh, and those are finicky.
1:21:16 Matt Farah? And you probably can't use the old key anymore, right? You still can use the original key?
1:21:22 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
1:21:22 Matt Farah? Oh, that's cool.
1:21:23 Speaker 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.
1:21:35 Matt Farah? Yeah.
1:21:35 Speaker 01 And it never, I never even get the oil up to temp.
1:21:38 Matt 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.
1:21:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:21:54 Matt Farah? A bunch of the times.
1:21:55 Speaker 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.
1:22:05 Matt Farah? Is that, is it just that under-stressed from the factory?
1:22:08 Speaker 01 They are that reliable.
1:22:10 Matt Farah? Was that, and was that 113 an all-new engine at the time?
1:22:15 Speaker 01 It was.
1:22:15 Matt Farah? It was?
1:22:16 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
1:22:17 Matt Farah? So they knew that this block and architecture was going to eventually have to withstand substantially more power?
1:22:26 Speaker 01 I assume so. They did make a few changes for the supercharged motors, but really just forged internals.
1:22:32 Matt Farah? Right. Right. Cool. Well, I cannot wait to drive this car.
1:22:37 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:22:37 Matt Farah? I am so stoked.
1:22:38 Speaker 01 It's gonna be good.
1:22:39 Matt 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."
1:22:49 Speaker 01 Right.
1:22:50 Matt Farah? But it, but, but not right away.
1:22:52 Speaker 01 Right.
1:22:52 Matt 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?"
1:23:02 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:23:02 Matt Farah? The thinking man's tuner car.
1:23:04 Speaker 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.
1:23:15 Matt Farah? Yeah.
1:23:15 Speaker 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.
1:23:19 Matt 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?
1:23:26 Speaker 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.
1:23:40 Matt Farah? Okay.
1:23:40 Speaker 01 Uh, yeah, so hopefully it comes back soon.
1:23:43 Matt Farah? Cool.
1:23:43 Speaker 01 I miss it.
1:23:44 Matt Farah? Yeah, well, that's, that's, that's money. I, I, I wanna try this wagon of yours.
1:23:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:23:48 Matt Farah? Um, I also wanna try the G, the G-Wagon too.
1:23:51 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah, absolutely.
1:23:52 Matt Farah? That seems really interesting.
1:23:53 Speaker 01 I mean, that's my girlfriend's car at this point. She drives it more than I do.
1:23:56 Matt 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.
1:24:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, absolutely.
1:24:12 Matt 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.
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