Big Mods! 1985 Mercedes 500SEL

**mercD** · 04-05-2006, 05:47 PM

I've been wanting this car for three years and now I finally have my paws on it! It was sold to me in very good condition considering it's age for only $900. The 5 liter V-8 engine has 110k on the clock and it looked good from the outside. (it doesn't looks so good now that hurricane Katrina dropped bits of tree on it ) The interior was not in the best of shape but I'm planning to have it re-done anyways. Overall it was well-worth the $900 i paid.

Currently the gas mileage sux. There is no radio. The a/c is in need of a re-charge. And the interior is in pieces because I am redesigning the entire electrical system.

Plans for now:
I am rebuilding the center console and dash to house two 8" lilliputs and a center channel speaker. Putting a SFF (small form factor) PC in the trunk along with three 2000 watt 4 channel amplifiers and an extra battery. I have created a serially-based circuit board that will interface my computer with various electrical aspects of my car. I will be able to control the lights, ingition, a/c, door locks, and windows just by touching buttons on the touchscreens. (I am planning, once it's done, to market these interfaces and hope to find people willing to test out the system in thier own crazilly modded cars eventually)
And lastly the system will interface with the automatic transmission to select the park, drive, neutral etc. gears from the PC.

Plans for later:
Weld the front and back doors together and make them rise on tracks above the body of the car and out of the way when opening.
Change out the guages in the dash with monitors displaying guages overlaying rear and side view cameras (tha side mirrors on this model and aweful for blind spots)
Design a microprocessor-based engine management system with AI to directly control spark timing, fuel injection and automatic gear shifting using inputs such as octane rating of gas, air temperature, O2 sensors on all eight cylinders, internal engine and transmission temperatures and driving style.
With the AI, the engine with be able to adapt to differing weathar, different types of fuel (gas, E85, hydrogen and propane) and it will give real-time information to the drive about the efficiency of the engine and how it is compensating between the different cylinders. The system will be very accurate and should significantly increase mileage, power and longevity of the engine.

This is how the engine is now. Notice the 5L V8 and all of its classic glory!

The interior is all apart and the center console is ready for my controler moduals to be soldered in.

I know what almost every single wire there goes to and how I'm going to change it.

Hopefully it will all come together as well in reality as it has in my head...
If anyone has ideas as to what else I out to do while I've got it opened up, let me know

**nkotch** · 04-05-2006, 06:00 PM

Holy cow! Sounds like it'll be a good project....I definitely wouldn't have the patience and would probably cry once I got to that part of where your interior is at.... so I applaude you! LOL

Post some exterior shots as well.

Good luck and looking forward to seeing how it turns out? Do you have rough timeline sort of planned out or just working on it as you have time?

**mercD** · 04-05-2006, 06:08 PM

I should have some exterior shots but I've been putting all the time I have into the inside. The exterior got banged up by the hurricane and I put it on the back burner... Planning to bring the paint back to the factory silver so the engine bay will match again. And eventually bag it and add AMG Monoblock style II 18"s. Put in all clear headlights and turn signals and make my own LED rear lights. But all of that is low priority right now...

**redbullah** · 04-05-2006, 06:14 PM

Technically you can't controll these things thru your computer cause most of parts don't have an universal network. There may be a way to do it with programmable bluetooth buttons. Even you make it, you can't produce it since each car has unique structure. Installation may be extremely complicated or impossible for some cars (specially old cars). You need skilled men for both side of installation. Hardware and software. I wish you good luck anyway.

**mercD** · 04-05-2006, 06:29 PM

Luckly for me, The car's electrical system has no network at all! There is no data streaming anywhere in it. I have created a circuit board that you control on a serial link from the PC. It has 4 digital inputs, 3 of which can be used as 8-10 bit analog for 0-5 volt readings and 8 outputs going into 8 16Amp SPDT relays. On top of that, I made the boards so you can daisy chain them with telephone wires so you can literally have as many as you want! Sure instalation will be almost entirely different for diferent cars but I'm an electrical engineer and I know what I'm doing.

Some people have a problem beliving mewhen I talk about the things I'm able to do. Especially when they see that I'm just a freshman in college and just turned 20 years old. My car is older than me for God's sake! But when i bring out proof of my experience, People belive me. And just FYI, I got it working...

**redbullah** · 04-05-2006, 06:52 PM

Originally Posted by mercD

Luckly for me, The car's electrical system has no network at all!

indeed lucky for you now you can build your own but a commercial version would be close to impossible and not worth the price. btw i appreciate your target and definately believe you can make it.

**mercD** · 04-05-2006, 11:56 PM

whoo hoo!!! i done changed my tranny fluid! which brings me to another possibility... Is it possible to create some kind of electrical circuit that would give real-time information regarding the remaining life of oils and fluids in the car? IE... A friend of mine says his truck can tell him how many miles you can get out of the oil in the engine before it needs to be changed. I thought it was just a countdown based on the odometer but when he put synthetic in, the readings changed entirely... would this circuit find the capacitance of the oil? maybe the flow rate through some kind of speed sensing hole at different viscosities? or even chemically smell the oil somehow to read it's "usedness"? hmmm... it would be something i'm sure quite a few of us would want...

If you have any ideas for something like this... Or any ideas that you wish you could do to your car and can't and want someone else to do it first... let me know... It'd be phun!!!

**Vinister** · 04-06-2006, 12:39 AM

wow, you're like, a big deal. does everybody know?

**mercD** · 04-06-2006, 01:20 AM

My center console looked something like this when I first started but it was blue... This area will house one lilli 8" and the other will go above the a/c vents if I can make it look good...

It looked good for it's time... But there are

NO CUPHOLDERS!!!!!

hopefully i'l manage to make some where the gear selector would have been had I not removed and automated it by then...

Even back in the day people had amazing mods they did to this car... The one below was actually made by mercedes and posted in Car and Driver magazine millenia ago.

Granted, there wasn't a computer in there... but there was a b/w tv!
If anyone has any idea what the rest of that stuff is... Speak up! Because I can't figure out what it all is... is that a joystick? I wonder if it could play Pong?!?!?!

**Anshu** · 04-06-2006, 02:10 AM

loookin good
subscribed!

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