w116 300sd manual transmission conversion

[2dads]

hey guys so i posted on here a little while ago about how my 1980 300sd made a noise then wouldnt get in gear while i was delivering pizza. rather than get a new automatic transmission or figure out how to fix the one that was in there, i decided to convert it to manual. prior to this the most i had ever done to one these cars was change the oil. found a guy on craigslist willing to sell me a manual transmission conversion kit for a w123 240 for 475 dollars locally so i jumped on that.


here is a picture of the car prior to the transmission breaking

i dont really have a lot of relevant pictures of the process just a bunch of pictures of me and my friends drunkenly wrenching like this one:



anyway it ended up being a really straightforward process. everything from the 240d bolted right in. the pedal assembly, the shifter - even the 240d driveshaft fit unmodified. the only fabrication i had to do at all was shorten the shift linkages and drill some extra holes in the transmission mount crossmember. i have a photo of that:



but yeah i googled the conversion a lot before starting the project and the internet led me to believe i would need to modify the w123 pedal cluster or purchase a pedal cluster off of a w116 german gasser or something. this just wasnt the case though. like i said everything but the trans mount and linkages fit unmodified. as far as i know there is no documentation of this fact on the internet so it seems important to share. it was a real easy project all things considered.

here is a video of me driving the car: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXKz2_Sj1os

[Squiggle Dog]

Awesome, thanks for posting this here, too. I had my doubts about the W123 pedal assembly working in a W116 since each car uses a different pedal set, but it looks like you were successful. It looks like a fun beach car, but you'd get baked alive here in Phoenix. I can't even open my sunroof here any time but in the winter, haha.

[Jdeoliveira74]

Have you noticed any mpg difference ?