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Cosbysweater's Lifted Om606 Wagon Build

I ended up replacing the turbo with a used one. and the car does feel a bit peppier which is nice, i was running into a issue where the engine rpm was way to high while cruising, it seemed liked the lockup converter wasn't working so i found i had messed up one of the settings in the trans controller and it wasnt registering actual engine rpm. i changed it back to internal reference and it works well now. i went on a little camping trip and some things became apparent. Number 1, it needs coil overs. Number 2, is that this if by far my favorite not stock car ive owned. once i got the lockup working in the 90 degree heat this thing managed to get 29-30mpg on the highway at a steady 70mph. with the tent on the roof and the bigger tires. i was going to throw a different gear set in the back but for right now it seems perfect. i am running into some issues when i really get on it. from what i am finding the big element stock sdl pump cam profile and setup is designed to pull fuel after 4k. So when you really get on it you can feel its not throwing enough fuel at it. which is honestly fine for me right now but after some longer trips ill see if i want to throw the 3.0 pump on it and have a bigger power band. not going to change the car much from this point forward other then fine tuning it, due to my patched up engine mostly.

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got the coil overs installed, it feels much better. i did some estimating on what spring to use. i have had a few 240s with coil overs and 200lb springs and that felt pretty good so i figured out a rough estimate of what the 606 and 722 weigh and landed on some 350x14 hyper coil springs. i had new diesel springs and extended struts as well as a 1.5 inch spacer up top and it was not enough. the spring unloaded was about 19.5 inches long and under the weight of the 606 the coils were about 3/4 of an inch apart. i also did not like the tie rod angle at all and i havent really seen any of the lifted guys address this. the car handled well but i just didnt like the angle so i fixed that too.

i used the stock upper perch and one of the 15a upper plates. i can get the proper camber out of it and i like how quiet stock perches are. ive run camber plates and made my own before and the ones i made were the best by far but it still felt a little rough.

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the coilover perch will go over the bearing on the stock perch but its super super close and since the strut itself centers the stock perch i looked for spacers. i found that the factory bump stops have the perfect spacer embossed in them. so i cut it out and used that to get a little wiggle room

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for strut spacers i made some out of some old strut tubes and the strut centering ring thats in the non abs strut housings

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for tie rod ends i did mcmaster carr greasable heims in m14, drilled out the knuckle to a 14mm hole and got some misalignment spacers for them and moved the tie rod to the top of the knuckle and made it a double shear fit

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and bam this is the finished result

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you can see its a much better angle then the original

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Dang! That tie rod end turned out really cool. Fairly simple too. Do you have any pictures of the top shear plate? Is it just welded to the top of the knuckle?
 
volvowagoon said:
Dang! That tie rod end turned out really cool. Fairly simple too. Do you have any pictures of the top shear plate? Is it just welded to the top of the knuckle?
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yea its 1/4 inch thick plate welded to the knuckle with a gusset. ill see how long the heims hold up! i hope they dont squeek and clunk like they normally do
 
It drives great so far. The spring rate feels pretty well matched to what's in the rear. I will say it's going to take a bit getting used to the heim rod ends. It has definitely made the steering alot more sensitive
 
Went to cars and coffee in Santa Cruz over the weekend, about a 80ish mile round trip with some good sized hills and it was pretty hot, coolant temp still stays perfectly in check even in the heat and traffic. It pulls the hills pretty damn well with the converter locked, egts never go over 600 degrees which is pretty nice to know. Car got alot of positive attention and after that drive I feel very confident with it. After checking my trans controller I realized that I've almost put 1100 miles on the car so far just daily driving it and going on some short trips. This weekend really reminded me that I need to fix the cruise control and the a/c so that will be on this week's to do list!
 
Got all the ac stuff situated. Just need to get the switch setup. No a/c leaks so far, put a one way diode in the cruise control output and that seems to be working okay for now. Need to do some more little things to it. Unfortunately the lower plate on the injection pump is leaking and I may need to pull it to fix it. Also one other thing is that it is drawing in air in the fuel system which I believe is coming from the cheap fuel water separator I installed. I'm going to fix that as well.

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katluke said:
These Mercedes engines have a big following in the UK being mostly fitted to Landrovers and other 4x4 due to them being so reliable and there ability to make so much power. Not sure if I?ve posted this link before but these are the go to guys in the UK for OM606 engine conversions/parts/tuning . https://www.dieselpumpuk.com/diesel-pump-uk/ also there YouTube site https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjYZxPW6oZ4KsVpEMJ2Pn1w hth
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I've seen alot of the dpuk stuff and it's really nice but if I'm going to go with a upgraded pump I'll get a meken pump. Being a swede myself I would love to support another swede.
 
deleted the cheap fuel water separator from the system and replaced all the plastic fuel lines. they seem to be a weak point with these, there is not much supporting the plastic fuel lines and the orings get rock hard on them, i never changed any o rings or anything when i did my swap so i got lines with the o rings from the dealer ship and after replacing those and removing the water separator the car actually has alot more spunk at higher rpms and speed and i have no air in the fuel system now. the ac system has held charge for a few days so i will get to wiring the rest of the system up tomorrow and see how it works. Im not looking for ford levels of cooling but it would be nice to have something. I manually adjusted the rack position to give me about 800 rpm of idle speed so with the ac engaged it shouldnt stall out. ive been kicking the idea back and fourth about installing a 603 elr system on it but i like that the engine has no electronics on it other then a shut off solenoid, some gauge wiring and the glow plugs
 
HiSPL said:
It's a toss up between this and the Buchka's daily driver 242 as to my favorite builds on this site. Awesome job dude!
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Thanks dude.

This diesel project slaps, I really like how clean the swap is.

The double shear outer tie rods look really sturdy but it appears you may have had very little to no effect on the bump steer, possibly even making it a bit worse. It's not the tie rod angle itself that causes bump steer, it's the relative angle between the tie rod and the control arm. It's hard to tell by your photos but that relative angle now looks more or less inverted, maybe a little bit larger, from where it was before.

Big mushy sidewalls can attenuate the perceived effects of bump steer so if you're happy with how the car drives I'd say you still made a solid upgrade.
 
Alex Buchka said:
Thanks dude.

This diesel project slaps, I really like how clean the swap is.

The double shear outer tie rods look really sturdy but it appears you may have had very little to no effect on the bump steer, possibly even making it a bit worse. It's not the tie rod angle itself that causes bump steer, it's the relative angle between the tie rod and the control arm. It's hard to tell by your photos but that relative angle now looks more or less inverted, maybe a little bit larger, from where it was before.

Big mushy sidewalls can attenuate the perceived effects of bump steer so if you're happy with how the car drives I'd say you still made a solid upgrade.
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thank you for the compliment, i am inclined to agree with you on this, before i switched the tie rod position the car felt pretty decent driving down the road, the part that scared me was the fact that you could almost not get the tie rod off the car when the suspension is at full droop. the only places where the car feels weird is on long sweeping corners at speed it feels a bit hard to control at times. ive gotten used to it now. ive been very tempted to pull the serpentine belt off and just run the water pump and alternator and see how it feels. once i installed the new rod ends it almost feels like 80s ford powersteering. there is little to no effort to turn the wheel. ive also been brainstorming ideas of moving the ball joint in and up a little bit to flatten the control arm out as well because when the suspension unloads you can definitely hear the lower ball joint retainer bolt hitting the control arm and you can see witness marks. I did put some button head allen bolts on the inside and that issue is gone.
 
Whelp Luke came in like a boss and found a 260 sway bar at the yard, thanks again Luke!!!! The wandering issue is completely gone, didn't think the sway bar would help as much as it did! I'm still going to relocate the ball joints but for now I'm very happy.

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