After spanging my Punto TD daily shitbox into a tree I needed a new car to do the 600mile a week I do, and in an ideal world it would've been a backup drift car as the RX7 is perpetually fucked, but I didnt have much money to spend, to say the least. Ideally idve liked... RWD Manual Forced induction 200bhp+ Decently new No rust T+T Nice looking inside and out But the chances of that for the money I had were slim to none, but a random at work ebay bid proved me wrong, and for about the money a set of Rotas would cost, I had a 1998 Merc C230 Kompressor Sport, Manual, and pretty fucking tidy inside and out. Considering you see rust holed base model shitboxes being sold for far more cash, I was happy enough. I half expected being red for the paint to be pink, but it was nice and red after a quick polish, right down to the gay headlamp eyebrows it had on it... It was a fair step up from my last daily, the wankbox wrote off Punto you see in front... Being a Sport meant the interior was decent and black with fake carbon shiz and white dials, rather then tweedy woody shite like usual... Engine was mint too... Went really well, was surprised, and despite TC you cant fully turn off, and an open diff, you could easy skid roundabouts and sliproads and shiz. 2.3 litre 16v supercharged, 197bhp and 197lbft as standard, runs 7psi boost, and weighs about 1300kg. Once I finished playing and went home, within a few hours I had fucked the chrome off and made the grille black.... And done the same with the rear badges... And the wheels too... And some pressed steel plates as the stock ones were cracked and fucked... I gave it a service, oil, plugs, filter, and with the bonnet up I couldnt help thinking the standard airbox looked restrictive as fuck, but there are no induction kits available and seems 99% of Merc 'enthusiasts' in the UK know less than my mum and think fitting an induction kit to one is impossible due to the complicated inlet setup and bypass valve shit. So 30min later I had made myself an indiction kit with shit I had lying about... Fucking the airbox off (massive K+N filter was added too) made it noticably quicker, and made it sound very, very, different... I did some testing with the supercharger bypass valve, this hallowed piece of machinery in the Merc world it seemed, and its fuck all, just an electronic dumpvalve, serves no purpose barring to lessen the boost spikes as you shut the throttle. The myth was that it was needed for under 1500rpm where the supercharger is disengaged as without it the car wouldnt get any air so wouldnt run. Nobody had ever proved that, it was just what the 'experts' say, but was it fuck. I seperated it from the system and the car ran exactly the fucking same, just the boost gauge showed bigger spikes as you shut the throttle. Then I took it to Bruntingthorpe and raped the shit out of it, open diff and traction control cant stop you when chucking it in at the top of 3rd... A mix of Brunters and road skids soon ended the life of the rear tyres though. The rears were as good as the fronts when I bought it. No prizes for guessing which is from what end... As you can see from the Brunters snaps, although the car handles way better than I thought, it was soft as fuck like all standard cars, so I needed to sort that. Not many suspension kits available for the car, and wanted it to be comfy as I do 600miles a week, and handle well as thats what I care about, so went for a Bilstein B12 kit... Got pics of fitting somewhere, but I tell you what, its a fucker on these. Bilstein stuff is amazing quality and come with new top mounts and bolts and allsorts, but to change suspension on a Merc means undoing bottom arms and shit like that, and we did it on a 4post and took all bloody day- I can do a Golf on my drive in an hour! This wouldve simply been impossible on a drive! Anyhow... Standard tyres were fucked, wheels looked shit but would be useful as drift day spares, and I have tons of spare 18in tyres, so I got some cheap 18s, and them and the suspension made it like this... Although the constant rapeage (inc another trip to Brunters that involved spinning off on to the grass at 70+ about 10 times) and shite weather soon made it look like this... It handled on the road mint with the Billies and though its harder, perfectly fine for road use, and the 2nd trip to Brunters showed how much the handling was transformed compared to before I fitted the suspension, and even Marc Kemp who was with me, whos a proper Trackday and Nurburgring addict/expert said how composed and stable the car was, even though I was driving it like a spaz. Still too much body roll for me though, so I have some Eibach F+R uprated anti-roll bars and bushes to go on, just havent had time to fit them yet. I have fucking caned the brakes too (again, quite good as standard) so have some uprated Tarox disks and pads to go on when I get time. One of the first things I do to any of my cars I use on track or for drifting is fit a drivers bucket seat, as the difference is night and day when cornering hard, and some more ebay cleverness meant I got hold of a pair of OMP carbon seats from an Escort Cossie WRC car, which new RRP is £1300 each, so £2600, for £300, shazaaam... They even came with the alloy side mounts which was nice, as wouldve ended up spending at least 100 getting cheapo steel ones otherwise. The big bus steering wheel had to go too, so my mrs bought me this for christmas, which is ideal and the smaller wheel dont half make for better steering response... A day of cutting and drilling and measuring and wild guessing and fucking about, and I had the drivers seat in place... And another day of the same and I had them both in, plus the standard seatbelt setup working (they are bolted on both sides to the stock seats as standard) and the interior was done... The standard seats with runners were mentally heavy, and according to the fishing scales I have saved about 50kg just by changing the seats, which is a bonus, as the main thing was to fit lower and mostly hold me in properly. After 'watching me drift for 10min' the copper who pulled me the other day made me clean my rear plate, CBA with the rest... All of a sudden the other day the car became shite slow, lost all its power above about 3k, and went from pulling away from E46 330s to being done by old men in 1.4 Pug 206s. Something was holding it back, and I'd done plugs and checked most things previously, so gambled first on the fuel filter... As you can see by the date, the fucking filter hadnt been changed for 10yrs, and the state of the filter bracket proved that too, and I ended up cutting it off with a hacksaw... I made a new filter holder with, err, some pink cable ties, and took it for a drive- Fixed! Job done, back to normal, and fast once again
My next port of call to fix the car if the fuel filter change didnt do it was going to be the MAF sensor, so I thought fuck it and took it off anyhow. Its a blow-thru one, mounted between the intercooler and throttle, and as well as being filthy, it had not only the usual AFM mesh, but a fuckoff plastic one on it too... I removed all that mesh as it looked restrictive as fuck, and gave the AFM a blast with carb cleaner, and happy days, better than new. I thought while I was at it I'd remove the throttle body and clean that up too, and low and behold what I find behind the throttle? Even more fuckoff restrictive mesh With all that sorted I took the car for another blast and it was noticably better again, esp over 5k, and now doesnt even seem to peak before the rev limiter, which shows how restrictive that shiz was. Why Merc mounted mesh after the throttle especially is beyond me... One thing you do notice, esp on warmer days and when giving the car a sustained raping, is the power drop off after a bit, and I've driven enough cars to know thats inlet temps from a shit intercooler doing that. The standard cooler is front mounted but fucking tiny, but there little if any chance of fitting much bigger due to where it sits, which is gay. I removed the mesh etc in front of it, which helped a little, but it needed more. Superchargers are innificent and shite compared to a turbo, so the inlet temps are always ridiculous, even at gay boost like the 7psi I'm running, so rather than trying cool the inlet temps as such, which is like putting a bandage on when you got AIDS, I decided to try stop the inlet temps getting so high in the first place, which is like curing AIDS. The thing is, 99% of the reason they get hot is the supercharger design, and no amount of shielding and cold air feeds and other wank people waste money on will change that, but what can is pre-compressor water injection. If youve read the thread on my RX7 youd know all about it from there, and I am just finishing off setting it up for the Merc too, and while its a different setup, it should work just as well. Not only will it stop the air getting heated up as much by the supercharger, basically increasing compressor efficiency, and therefore performance and maybe reliability too, but it should close up the clearances inside the supercharger, increasing boost a little too, hopefully...! As it is the boost starts about 2-3psi, is about 5psi by 4k, and is about 7psi by the limiter, and changing to a smaller pulley not only is an expensive ballache, but going by what most people have said, doesnt do loads, probably as the inlet temps are so stupidly high. Unlike the RX7s setup, I really couldnt be fucked with a seperate tank and pump and shiz, and after some testing it turned out I didnt need to. The Merc has a massive washer bottle, 5.5litres or so, and it also has a blanked off place for a spare washer pump, and a trip to the scrappy stole me another pump off a Merc down there and it popped straight in. Its common knowledge that a washer pump is no way powerful enough for water injection, but as I am injecting pre-compressor it wasnt fighting against any boost, so it has an easier time of it, and after testing various jet sizes I found one that gave me a perfectly fine spray pattern and almost exactly 300cc/min of water- exactly the amount I wanted to run (its rated to over double on a normal 10bar pump mind you). I mounted the jet into the end of the filter, so it fires directly down the trumpet into the supercharger... Somehow I needed to activate it, and I have always done the usual way of boost activation, but as its almost always on some boost, and I wanted to use it to hopefully increase the boost, this would be pointless and wasteful, so I decided on full throttle activation. The trouble is, the cars got an electric throttle, so cant just mount a switch on the throttle body, so a few hours fucking about with metal and I made one that sits under the throttle pedal instead... Thats all bolted in nicely, I just need to wire it up now. Maybe tomorrow if I can be bothered, hopefully it does something, lol...
Some good info there Stav, goes to show the Mercs aren't as bad as their image suggests. Be interesting to see how you get on with getting more power from the supercharger and what the car's actually capable of.
Well its already way faster than people think they are (mostly due to most being much slower autos and being driven by total fannys), which is great fun as everyone tries to race you and get wound right up when it doesnt go to plan. Its faster (not by much mind) than mates E46 330s and EP Civic Type-Rs, and the engine is strong as, proven good for 450+ on standard internals. For much more power the supercharger can fuck right off though, but I already got that solution ready to go...
i love this thread the wording is brilliant and had me in laughing a few times u dont fuck around do you its prety pimp for a daily
They bolt big turbos on these in the states. I miss my kompressor alot. 130 all the way from Rotterdam to Calais and atl did about 30 mpg. Loads of low down grunt to
did you drive through banbury in this a couple of months ago stav ? nice work, good write up as always
Not that ive seen they dont? All the turbo ones ive seen from there are gay little things, Evo turbos and stuff. Biggest thing I've seen is a UK car. Matt- Dont think so mate?
It would be a fun expererment, but no room without doing it as a rear mount, ridiculous heat, complex, still got the s/c parasitic drag, etc etc. Twincharged at stock boost- About stock power, maybe less. Turbo at stock boost- At least 50bhp more than if it is supercharged. To get any power from it twincharged youd need aftermarket managment and fuel system as youd need to run plenty more boost. A 2.3 would spool even a 400bhp+ turbo from bugger all, so not too worried about lag- you not got more than about 4-5psi until 5k+ anyhow supercharged. Im in no rush to do either though. Main thing is to find someone, anyone, who does an LSD for one, Ill run a welder if I have to, but at 600miles a week I'd prefer a proper diff.
I wish I dyno'd it standard as chances are it wasnt standard power after all these years, but yeah I will do that. Exactly at what stage I dont know as I guess a decent exhaust would help too.
i was behind a red merc with tints,black rims and pressed plates one night on the way home from work looked exactly like yours where did you get the plates made ? are they legal ones ?
