New Here with Diesel Mercedes Roadster
 

A couple of years ago I swapped in a Mercedes diesel into my 380SL roadster. The car was built as an economical open road cruiser and with almost 60k miles on the swap has exceeded all expectations.

The stock gasser gets about 17-18 mpg while the diesel consistently gets over 30 and on long trips gets well over that. I have no interest in going the WVO or WMO route, but if I ever found a good source for used JP, I'd be all over it.

Looking forward to hanging out here and learning more about economical driving.

Welcome. A diesel roadster does sound like the best of both worlds. Top down and -- literally -- a never-ending road.

Would it be safe to assume the diesel mercedes engine is twice as efficient as their gasser, the gasser had low compression or needed replacing or is it a real dog to drive with 0-60 being measured in miles vs seconds or half a minute? :turtle:

I wouldn't say that the diesel is twice as efficient, but probably close. The 80s MBs fuel injection wasn't all that efficient, certainly nothing like current models. Diesel is more efficient and has an inherent advantage with BTU per gallon so that helps a lot as well.

I live in an area where there aren't any nice flat stretches to do a decent 0-60 time, though I would estimate it to be between 12 and 14 based on the donor 300Ds performance. This is entirely adequate for my purposes. The design goal was an efficient open road cruiser with a choice of hard top, soft top or top down not a high performance vehicle.