Jimbo1959
Senior Member
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2018
- Messages
- 1,786
- Reaction score
- 1,811
- Location
- Ayrshire
- Your Mercedes
- VW Scirocco. The Quattro, E350 CDi Blue Efficiency Sport Coupe, now both gone
Tonight, I unfortunately, had reason to take my E350 CDi Sport by the scruff of the neck and push it quite hard. In preparation, I set the suspension to 'S' instead of the usual Comfort setting . I was very surprised by how quickly it got outside its boundaries, bouncing and pogoing all over the road.
I was not overly impressed, hence the reason for deciding she's more of a Grand Tourer than a Sport. On a straight or good quality 'A' road it's short comings are not evident, it performs well as long as it's correctly set up for the corner being taken, which means basically, it would be a good idea if one knows the corner well or suffer the consequences when trying to make progress.
I had little option but to push it beyond its limits this evening and only having experienced and explored advanced driving techniques and a skid pan course enabled me to keep it on the black top. This was accompanied by the warning lights on the dashboard lighting up like a Christmas tree, I didn't have time to see what they all were due to being a little busy at the time but I was aware that they were on. Hopefully the necessity will not arise again.
This brings me to the question, is there a suspension conversion kit which might make the car handle better available? I am willing to accept the trade off, of a slight deficit in ride comfort to be happier close to the limit with the handling.
I'm sure I saw an episode of "Wheeler Dealers" where ED China did a McPherson Strut conversion on the multi adjustable standard suspension kit on a Merc unfortunately I can't remember the model type, I just wondered if anyone else has seen this or perhaps done the conversion on their E350 CDi themselves?
Any help/information would be much appreciated.
I was not overly impressed, hence the reason for deciding she's more of a Grand Tourer than a Sport. On a straight or good quality 'A' road it's short comings are not evident, it performs well as long as it's correctly set up for the corner being taken, which means basically, it would be a good idea if one knows the corner well or suffer the consequences when trying to make progress.
I had little option but to push it beyond its limits this evening and only having experienced and explored advanced driving techniques and a skid pan course enabled me to keep it on the black top. This was accompanied by the warning lights on the dashboard lighting up like a Christmas tree, I didn't have time to see what they all were due to being a little busy at the time but I was aware that they were on. Hopefully the necessity will not arise again.
This brings me to the question, is there a suspension conversion kit which might make the car handle better available? I am willing to accept the trade off, of a slight deficit in ride comfort to be happier close to the limit with the handling.
I'm sure I saw an episode of "Wheeler Dealers" where ED China did a McPherson Strut conversion on the multi adjustable standard suspension kit on a Merc unfortunately I can't remember the model type, I just wondered if anyone else has seen this or perhaps done the conversion on their E350 CDi themselves?
Any help/information would be much appreciated.