Mercedes 617 diesel

So as you well know I've been putting a good bit of thought into doing a jeep diesel swap. Previously I have entertained using a cummins 4bt because it is a great motor and it's been done a million times. However, recent research has caused me to maybe consider a Mercedes 617 instead.

Back in the early 80's mercedes diesels were very popular in the states. The 123 frame mercedes were as bombproof as they come. I read that around 70% of the originally registered models are still on the road toady and there have been many reports of 1,000,000 mile cars still running strong... This motor is considered to be one of the most reliable engines ever produced... you make a car that good and you'll go out of business. Anyways, the 617 motor in these cars is a 3.0L 5 cylinder turbo diesel that makes about 100hp (of course this can be turned up). From what I can find these motors are really easy to work on and parts are readily available. The motor has indirect injection and an injection pump that is fairly similar to the legendary P7100 on the cummins.

There is a growing number of people that are swapping in these 617's. In fact in the past couple years they've started producing adapter kits for use with GM manual trannys... you can't beat that. From what i can tell the MB 617 is just as good if not better than the C 4bt as far as reliability is concerned and while the displacement might be larger on the 3.9L 4bt vs the 3.0L 617, they appear to make about the same power...

The cost of acquiring the Mercedes is much cheaper than a 4bt... you can buy a full out donor car for around 3k any day. For a decent 4bt you are looking at the same price for the engine alone unless you get lucky... and speaking of lucky, guys all over the web say they've scored old Mercedes cars for just a few hundred quid. There also appears to be a much larger support network for the MB 617 because of the amount of cars that used the engine as well as all of those loyal customers that are still using their 20+ year old cars.

So the Mercedes is looking like a much more practical option for a Jeep swap over the Cummins... I will probably post more about this as ideas begin to develop...


This is a 617 in an old toyota... MAN that fits in there good!

This is a Jeep comanche pickup...

Oh yeah, Trent did mention in a previous post about the 5cl Mercedes in the sprinter... These engines share some similarities but the new sprinter engines would be hard to swap for a number of reasons... We've both talked about this before... the old 617's on the other hand are pretty easy... I guess I just assumed previously that they would be finicky since most of those Euro vehicles are... like the VW diesel, great milage but a mechanic's nightmare.