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Made a little progress in the month I've had the car. Lots of maintenance items have been addressed, and getting a few mods done. Taking a couple weeks for xmas break, then back at it after the new year. Brakes, aero, and a big diet coming soon!!!
Day 1
Lowered, tinted, needs paint correction!
Fat car with some little brakes. BBK soon.
Looking a bit better. AMG Monoblocks will be relegated to track duty.
I have to say the answer to that is a little complex. It drives much, much better. That said, I've also lowered the car, fixed LCA bushings that were worn, aligned and corner weighed it with -1° camber, replaced shocks with Konis, and the tires are Pirelli PZero vs old Nexens on the Monoblocks, which are now wrapped in Hoosier R6.
Rides great, doesn't tramline like it used to, and is hella fun on on/off ramps. Can't wait to get the new converter, headers, and tuning done.
I love the monoblocks as well, so they will live on wrapped in Hoosier R6s. It'll give it that period correct SVRA look at the track. At certain angles they really complement the car. At others, they make it look quite like a MC Hammer video.
Gator, thanks for the compliments. The Konis are the yellow sports, off the rack. Coilovers were a bit difficult to source when I first looked, as they were my first choice, but I wanted to get the project moving. Had to replace the OE swaybar and control arm bushings as well...140k and 14 years in Cali does a number on rubber parts!
Thankfully the previous owner took great care of the car and did the motor and trans mounts, which I hear is quite an underaking.
For me, suspension was the first area other than aesthetics. I'm hoping to have the Stoptechs, brake ducts, and new front end in by my first track day this season.
With a cab, chassis flex is a huge problem. Actually I get a good bit of flex in my Coupe. It was really bad in my targa vettes, so they got rollbars. Not sure if anyone makes underbody chassis bracing for our cars, but it will help a lot. I'm just going to rollbar mine when I change out the front seats and delete the rears.
As far as the smoked lenses, I wanted them a bit lighter, but I'm happy with what the guys did. It was a PITA with all the curves.
I'm blacking out the grille this week, putting the flat JBspeed AMG emblem on the hood, and switching the spring cups to #1 to drop it a bit more. That will do it for aesthetics until APR finishes the wing and the C63 front end goes on. Whew...it's busy having a new project!
I have a custom set of VIP320 strut bars that helps the flex.
The Fronts work perfect but the rear of the car is so intricately engineered in the tower area any extra introduced force might destroy the tower. Coupe might be beefier back there.
I started working on some mounting braces for the rear towers for strut bar support but decided to finish my supercharger project first.
Thanks for sharing your suspension upgrades and that special car.
Thanks Gator, Happy New year to you and yours as well. Would love to discuss the suspension bits you're working on in the coming weeks. I'll be taking the 6 point bar to the A pillars with driver swing out, but the front end and rear cradle could definitely use support.
Al this so far sems to be miniscule in terror for me compared to changing out the broken ribbon for the cluster LCDs, lol!
You should google how to prep or hone an aluminium block using that SN30 or something. Just check Gator's post then google that correct name in the above phrase mentioned. I came across an X5 owner who overhauled his entire motor cause the gaskets were going or shot. Couple pages later and the guy explained how he repaired the cluster as well. On his, the mileage wasn't visible so the previous owner got him there on the sale.
As with all 14 year old cars, especially expensive ones, there were many, many more problems than I initially was aware of. My fault for not having things looked at beyond a test drive. The entire suspension, inclusive of all the bushings, mounts, dampers, and joints needed freshening as many parts were worn or broken. Couple minor leaks I didn't see as well (PS res and Oil filter housing).
I was fortunate enough to join the SoCal AMG Lounge (great people) and find a great shop in OC to finish the outstanding maintenance items and make sure the car was fundamentally safe to now be modified for track use.
Now comes the fun part. Need to find a fabricator for the turbo exhaust, someone to do the rollbar and chassis bracing, build a trans, tune it, and someone crazy enough to build this K block I picked up into the terrifying monster that it should be.
So, my budget AMG build that started with a nearly 150k mile $4k coupe, is now around $9k invested with additional parts and labor. This does include some fun stuff like the aero pieces, tint, appearance stuff, and wheels/tires...but I haven't even gotten into the expensive stuff yet.
Also, anyone have a line on aftermarket seat rails for these things? Yeesh. Just want to put in light race seats!
No such thing as cheap, reliable, and fast. Can only pick 2.
HPDECLK55 awesome car think ive seen it on instagram. Any chance you could hook me up with the specifics on the spring pads to add low and what suspension you got as well as where from? thanks! want to do all the same mods/corrections as you!
12-20-2016, 01:12 AM
