Hi! In today's episode of our W140 "Whale" series we're gonna be talking about the S320 SUV.

I said a few words about it in the previous video,

Now I'm gonna tell you about it in details and we'll also drive it a little here, around the Kecel autocross track.

We built this car into its current state 6-7 years ago. Originally it was an S320, in a brutally disgusting blue color.

It used to be an auto, with a cream cloth interior.

It is a very base spec car, even lower spec'd than the silver S320 that I mentioned in the previous video.

This one doesn't even have an automatic A/C. This is basically the rarest thing in W140s to have manual A/C!

It literally has nothing in it. No sunroof, no heated seats, no electric seats. I am not sure if there's anything ticked on the extra list, I think everything it has is included in the base spec.

What we've done to it is putting a set of S600 springs in, that's what makes it sit so high. There's nothing else done to the suspension.

It has standard shocks, it is very soft, but it's okay as it is.

Apart from that we initially tested it with the auto trans, but autos don't really work well with welded diffs, it is guaranteed to fail sooner or later.

It got a manual trans too, one that was put into this model from the factory too, a dogleg gearbox with 1st being at the bottom left.

This is a very weak design from Mercedes, it is still working at the moment, but I'm not giving it much time.

In the drivetrain, there is a welded diff with factory ratios. A shorter one would be better but we didn't take care of that.

It got 4 huge wheels, somewhat offroad tires at the back and regular Michelin winter tires in the front.

We also put in a hydraulic handbrake which we didn't really overthink, we simply put it where it fits, there were no aesthetic aspects put into consideration.

And then one of the most important things are these mirror protectors. When you go into the woods with a car, the first thing that basically breaks off are the mirrors.

While you drive forward it can be okay as they can fold in, but as soon as you have to reverse back from somewhere, they break off for sure.

These protected the mirrors a couple times already. Not only the mirrors but the whole side of the car as well,

We had a snow driving once where we slid into the ditch on the side of the road and the whole car was lying on these mirror protectors and that way the side of the car didn't even touch the ditch.

This mirror reinforcement saved the car's whole side, so it's a great extra equipment.

We put on a bullbar from a Vito minivan I think. Underneath it continues in a skid plate. We also painted it green.

We didn't overthink the car, but it does well in what we use it for. Quite reliable technically.

When we built this car, we used it a lot. We took it everywhere for a bashing almost on a daily basis and it held up well.

We then put it away for a couple of years and we took it out of sleep recently. We swapped the fuel pump, changed the fluids and filters and now we're going to hammer it here around the Kecel track a little.

Before we take the Whale out on the track, let's take a look at a carVertical report of a particular car that we bought recently into the family.

This is a Peugeot Traveller, it's got twenty something thousand kilometers on the clock, we purchased the car in an official brand dealership.

Let's see the report: here it says it's been crashed, it was registered in 2019 and in late 2019 they have already found damage on it.

Then there's maintenance stuff, etc. Let's see what else we got,

Here we can see the mileage, 23,000 (kms). Damage, front section, windshield, in late 2019.

Expected cost of repair, 200-300,000 HUF (485-730€/$). And then one year later, at the end of 2020, right rear quarter and right front door.

Now then, before I explicitly asked about these damages, nobody told me anything about them. I asked them twice whether if the windshield has been replaced.

Later on I saw that this third, window number plate is not original and then they finally admitted that they replaced it.

And then after all that I asked if the rear right had anything happen to it too. They said yeah-yeah, it had some minor damage, this section has been repainted.

Not a big thing, but it's still not bad to know things like these about a car of this price, like even though it has very low mileage, there have already been repairs done on it.

Let's see what else it's got, price: this was probably a trade-in price, 11.5M HUF (~28,000€/$), and then later it was sold for 36,000€,

Photos: it has lots of pictures of it here, the car wasn't advertised with these, we haven't seen 1/4 of this much when we bought it.

Here we can see many, very detailed photos of the car. So the report was very useful for us in this case!

Let's see another one, about this car, which is an Audi A6. We're about to start shooting with this car, we already drove a couple laps around the track. The video about that is coming a bit later!

Let's see what carVertical says about this car. Mileage has been tempered with, this is the main thing here. No accidents recorded, hasn't been used as a cab, it is a 2011 model year car.

In April 2015 the car has 114,000kms (~70k miles), but then later on at the end of 2015 it's been clocked back to 65,000kms ( 40k miles).

And then it started climbing back right up to 120,000 from there.

So let's see, what can this S320 Whale do on this autocross track with these massive wheels.

When we got here, I drove a couple laps, without pushing it, just cruising. A couple cylinders started misfiring, at the end it wouldn't even start after I came off the track.

We thought it was the end of the day for this car, but it turned out that our issue was vacuum in the gas tank and the fuel pump couldn't work with that.

Apart from that, all was good. It's just impossible for this car to have issues!

The good old dogleg manual gearbox from Mercedes. It's just never good.

Literally, never!

The synchros always go bad and it always throws out gears.

Back when we used to go to these smaller races with W124s, they had the same gearbox models, sometimes we would lock the shifter into second gear using rubber bands and I drove it in second the entire event.

This time I'll hold it in second by hand. Second gear is pretty much all I need.

This single handed power steering is the best thing about W140s!

The suspension is working hard.

This engine is very weak for this though.

It threw out the gear again.

A turbo would make it better and then we could accelerate coming out of every corner.

It is now hurting a little as it is now at 5,000RPM.

It looks like we have 1st and 4th at the moment, 2nd and 3rd gears passed away,

And our water temp is at 120C (248F).

Hoops, it took in second! It took it in, so we can go one lap, I'm gonna be holding the whole time.

FUCKING SEND IT!!

This is how the video began, but this is actually our last shot because the gearbox is now completely broken,

No second, no third gear. Third isn't that big of a deal, but I'd be driving second the whole time.

I said earlier, these gearboxes aren't exactly durable. This is how short-lived they are.

And also our larger fan stopped working, it must be some small issue, but we don't have time to mess around with it, we have two other cars we are shooting with here today.

The coolant is boiling, that's it for today. And I'll see you in the next video!