u/John5788

I've been working on a manual transmission swap for my 95 E320. Parts gathering started around February of 2026, car went down for wrenching around middle of July 2026, and I just finished last night.

Sourced a 717.412 transmission from a 1987 190E 2.3. Rebuilt the shifter, clutch pedals, cleaned the transmission casing, custom aluminum flywheel, custom driveshaft, all new quality parts.

Took the car out for a quick drive last night and everything works! I am finding my 5th gear to be completely useless under 50 MPH. I am running around 1300 RPM at 50 MPH in 5th. I will likely change out the differential to a higher ratio once I can figure out what I have today, and what the W124 manual vehicles typically come equipped with.

I wanted to rebuild my instrument cluster and add the economy gauge to my 95 E320.

Remove the acrylic lens by cutting away the glue with a knife while simultaneously pushing it out. Will hear a lot of cracking and popping, and eventually the lens will fall out.

This cluster housing suffered from the white dots all over the inside. I sanded it down with a maroon scotchbrite pad and then painted with SEM Color Coat Landau Black.

Used Gorilla Glue Clear to adhere the acrylic lens back to the housing.

Needles repainted with florescent orange paint from a seller on eBay. Part number: HP-FLORP-01. Did 3 coats with a small brush.

Got new vinyl sticker faces from whitegauges.net. Applies like a screen protector with lubricant and a small squeegee.

Gauges were also recalibrated.

Fuel gauge is calibrated to 85 ohm empty and 3ohm full.

Water temperature is calibrated to 83.4 ohm at 80C. This one follows a Steinhart-Hart equation. If you know what I am talking about, the coefficients I am using are A = 0.001763, B = 0.0002380, C = 1.83×10⁻⁷ for equation 1/T = A + B·ln(R) + C·[ln(R)]³. This will give you the correct curve for resistance-to-temperature on the NTC thermistor for the instrument cluster.

Vacuum is set to 11 inHg right where the red part of the economy gauge starts.

Oil pressure simply calibrated to stop being at 3.

I noticed Sandra Dorsett had a red outline when I was returning her databank back to her. I threw down a save and tried some quick hacks on her.

Baiting her from her laptop makes her do weird circles. Putting the turret in friendly mode straight up shoots and kills her.

It crashed my game on the first time I did this. Couldn't reproduce the crash after reloading the save.