Friends: Chuque Henry
q@wehenrys.comhttp://www.clubgwagen.com/extreme
http://www.wehenrys.com
Divide, CO
1982 SWB 230GE
Perhaps one of the most interesting and contrversial Gwagen's in the USA, this rig is built for the trail. Pulling the origional 2.3l four cyclindar and all of the drivetrain, I replaced it with heavy duty domestic running gear and featuring a Chevrolet 5.7l LT1. This bump to 350hp not only provided fantastic power on the trail, but a vehicle that cruises easilly at 80 mph on any grade. The domestic tranny, tcase and axles certainly changed the soul of the beast, but it also makes it cheap to replace, upgrade and repair.
For an extensive description of all the changes that have been made to this truck, you really need to visit the clubgwagen site and spend some time going through all of the modifications. Here are some highlights of the life of the truck.
Here is a picture from when I first picked it up. It was pretty much bone stock except for a leaky sunroof, cheap black paint and some fiberglass fender flairs. I had just sold my built Defender 90 with more modifications than I care to list and knew that I had a lot of building ahead of me to make it the truck I wanted. As luck would have it the new owner of my my D-90 lived only minutes from where I picked up the new Gwagen. I swung by to see the old girl and take some photos.
After running a few trails I knew I needed to make a few changes to survive the type of wheeling I enjoyed. I removed the flairs before they were ripped off unnaturally and slipped on some larger tires. The 265/85/16 Buckshots worked great on the stock steel rims and only rubbed at full lock. The bigger meats were a little much for the stock drivetrain and I started roasting the clutch pretty bad. I sourced some 6.17 gears from a wrecked G and looked to swap them in soon. Meanwhile my friend Dave Gomes (also of Club Gwagen fame) helped me narrow the stock bumper for a killer approach to the tires. A CB and some tools and I was a wheeling fool!
After several hairy experiences in off-camber situations I decided to lower the center of gravity. The quickest way to do that is take as much weight as you can from as high as you can. "Where's that sawsall?" I proceded to wait for the wife to go out of town for a week and went to work on the G. I've always loved converibles and knew I wanted one now. This picture was taken right after the conversion took place. If you are wondering about the tiny tires, I swapped out Dave for the day so he could see how he liked the bigger tires. He came to the same conclusion, just too much tire for stock gearing, even with the larger 2.8 in-line six engine.
I wanted to run 35" tires, but wheels for the G are pretty hard to come by. I decided to have some adapters made that would allow me to use the standard 5" x 5.5" wheel pattern. I then set about having some custom springs wound and adding some longer shocks. The truck really needed a top and a cage, so those came next. I tossed on a massive MB star to make sure people knew what it was. I was really starting to get the G I wanted, but man that power needed help! I started getting serious about swapping those gears in, and was looking hard at swapping the engine for a turbo diesel from a 300TD. Then the transfer case bit the dust.
At this point I started to really rethink my engine options. I hadn't installed the 6.17 gears yet, the tcase was toast, the engine was not working out and I couldn't find a diesel that didn't have a million miles on it. About that time a 4x4 competitor friend of mine said he wanted to unload an 'iron-head' LT1 and 4L60E tranny. $1000 made the deal and I started down a project that has taken me over a year. After the engine, tranny (ended up running a 700R4 instead) and Atlas 2 transfer case were in I discovered something rather alarming. The output on the stock Gwagen tcase actually turn in oposite directions front and rear! To rectify this the Benz engineers made the front axle reverse rotation. This means with a conventional tcase that when in 4x4 mode the front axle wanted to travel backwards while the rear axle heading forward! Well, obviously I had no choice but to move forward. The front wheel bearings on a G are notoriously bad with big wheels and tires with a lot of off-set. This certainly described my setup! I found a buyer for the front axle, but he wanted the rear too. What the heck, might as well finish the drivetrain. I swapped in a Dana 44 front and a Ford 9" rear. They were the perfect width and we built them very strong. There are a million other things that were done along the way, but some other items of note are replacing the crunched sills with 1/4" wall tube steel, a swing away tire carrier, and a custom winch from bumper. I'll never be truely finished with it of course, but I'm finally at a point where I can hit the trails again! Watch the website to see what I'm going to do next.
© 2008 clubgwagen.com