Mer-Chevy Project: Biofuel 40mpg Pickup

[bennelson]

Here's a video of what we did yesterday!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzq9mYnmTRY

[brucey]

Hooray! This is something I've been interested in a while. A long range hypermiler utility vehicle. The diesel swaps I always see in mini trucks are in the kind with 44" mud tires.

[my first gmc]

OMG!!! An update! Whoo Hoo! Thought this thing would have rusted to nothing by now.

[bennelson]

I got some more work done on the Mer-Chevy Project this weekend.

Last weekend, we ran out of daylight before we could get the transmission off the S10 gasoline engine.

So, yesterday, I did the work of removing the tranny from the engine.


The transmission had some long bars that bolt the transmission to the engine.
After getting the two apart, I also removed the pressure plate, clutch plate, and flywheel from the gas engine.

The Mercedes diesel engine has lots of things still connected to it.


The goofy round thing on the left/upper left is the air conditioning compressor. It also has a big metal bracket that wraps around the engine to hold it. I removed both the compressor and that bracket. The bracket bolts also held the water pump in. That started dripping coolant out on me when it loosened. I will have to get some shorter bolts to re-install the water pump.

The pulley in the lower right is the power steering pump. I removed that as well and both the belts still on the engine.

On the other side, I started working to remove the flywheel.

The flywheel is held on by a dozen 8mm hex socket bolts. I had to go out to the parts store to buy a male hex socket to fit those bolts.
I slid a long bolt through a whole in the flywheel, and through the starter motor hole to hold the flywheel in place while I turned out the bolts.

9 of the bolts came out fine (but boy were they torqued!) while three of them just stripped out. No way were those coming out now. I called Rich and asked for any advice on getting the bolts out. He suggested using a chisel and hammer to bite into the bolt heads and whack them counterclockwise.

I dug around and found a pointy chisel. I was amazed that the chisel really would bite into the metal of the bolt head. After some careful whacks, I actually was able to unscrew them!

With all the bolts out, I pulled the flywheel off.

Behind the flywheel, I was able to take out 4 bolts holding on the "transmission adapter ring" and smack it off with a rubber mallet.

Here's the drive end of the engine with the flywheel and tranny ring removed.


Here is the ring that was removed.

It's all cast aluminum and fits directly to the engine block. I should be able to use this as a template to create a custom adapter plate between the Mercedes diesel and the Chevy manual transmission.

Here's a photo of the Chevy Tranny with the Mercedes adapter ring in front of it and the 2.2L gas engine in the background.


I should be able to start work soon on designing the custom adapter plate between the diesel and the manual transmission.

Also, I need to figure out if I can find a flywheel off a Mercedes with a manual transmission, or if it is possible to modify the flywheel from the S10 to fit the diesel. I think that might be the tough part.

Does anyone know of a good forum for Mercedes diesels to ask questions and buy/sell/trade parts?

[my first gmc]

Oh remember, if shipping isn't to expensive to 70363 I would like that compressor. If you don't mind.

[gman]

that is gona be one sweet truck, one day i would like to have a diesel in my ranger

[bennelson]

If anyone is interested in spare parts from this project, please private message me with what you would like, and an offer for the parts.

I have the entire shell of the 1977 Mercedes 240D, including its automatic transmission.
From the Chevy (1994 S10 2.2L gas engine, base model), I will have the engine (wasn't running) and some associated parts off of it.

[The Atomic Ass]

Originally Posted by my first gmc

S-10's sit pretty level, so if you lower the back more than the front, the back will be lower than the front and might cause adverse aero affects underneath. I have a friend who did a 3/3 and it rode really good, and my other friend did the 6/6, riding in that thing was sick.

Once the springs wear out, yeah. Most S-10's though had a little more height in the rear, so generally an inch or two imbalance in drop leaves a level truck. Mine was dead level, measured at the frame, (which was level front to back, surprisingly), with a 2/3 drop. Someone else I knew had a 2/4 drop, and it also sat level with the drop imbalance.

[roflwaffle]

Originally Posted by bennelson

Does anyone know of a good forum for Mercedes diesels to ask questions and buy/sell/trade parts?

Shopforum is pretty good. Not as much activity as some of the Honda/VW/Toyota boards I've been on, but old MBs aren't too common either.

[The Atomic Ass]

Originally Posted by bennelson

Different differential gears (I don't know too much about this, but I think with the extra diesel torque, I could go to a little higher gear in back.

I don't know how much torque that diesel is going to put out, but I did research and found that the VW 2.0 TDI put out basically the same peak torque as the 4.3L available in the Dime-series. The 4.3L had gears down to 3.08 in the manual version, and was still plenty peppy. You're either going to have 3.73 or 4.10, so you could probably stand to drop a much taller set in there. The diffs in those trucks were basically used in everything that had a diff in Chevy and GMC, so there are plenty of ratios to be had. Try 2.73 if you don't mind making the engine and clutch work a little bit harder from a stop.

Also, consider getting a different transmission than the one you have currently. The NV1500, which is what was equipped for the 2.2L, is a notoriously weak transmission. It dies pretty consistently when the 2.2L is boosted to 10psi.