What Would You Upgrade Next?
 

Hello Forum -

Criteria: I'm looking for the best bang for the buck (performance to dollar) upgrade reasonably within the $1500 (+/-) price range. I'm hoping to get some advice from those of you who have heavily modded your car... maybe a "if I did it all again I would have done ...x..y..z. first" but all advice is welcome!

I should preface by saying that my long term goal will be to stage 3 SC my car, but its a long... long term goal as I know I'll have to build my transmission first ($$$$$). Anyways, here is a list of my current mods for reference:

• 2011 c63 (not my daily)
• ARH Long tube (with x pipe)
• Eurocharged V7 Tune
• ROW Air Boxes
• AFE Filters
• CF Hood

1. Lightweight rotors all around for added VTEC in gears 1-2 and a bit in 3.
2. Then you'll force yourself to do LSD after that when you struggle to put anything down in 1st gear.
3. E85 to sail past 500rw and really get the hammer down.
4. Lightweight crank pulley (assuming you meant light crank pulley and not flywheel, although even if you did mean flywheel, a lightweight flywheel is a fairly useless mod by and large in any car) is probably not worth the small risk involved in running one (has potential to cause long term engine damage). Perhaps just get the rev limit increased to 7500rpm instead. Many have done it and you'll be fine if you're sensible with it.

Approximate cost (if buying new) is around...6.5-7k?
Used will be cheaper of course. I think DocOC is selling an E85 kit and I'll be selling my lightweight rotors too in the coming weeks. LSD...try and get one from a salvage yard. Should be able to halve the entire cost above and maximise that bang for buck.

Wouldn't bother with the lightweight pulley. Sometimes does more harm than good.

I'd go LSD first, if you want to go looking through scrap yards as mentioned you could check car-part.com

Then lightweight rotors and then e85

But that's just me lol

Open Diff with all that power....... First thing to be upgraded.

What are you looking to do? Drag strip? Road Course? Canyon carver? LSD will help all of those. But then if you are going to supercharge the car and do drag strip work, definitely wheels and tires.

You know for some reason NOS didn't even come to mind, but I'm guessing this will be the true "bang for my buck" :rolf: I'd hate to get pulled over with this in my trunk though...

As you and Adi-Benz both mention a salvage yard - I'm getting the impression that the cost/performance benefit of an aftermarket LSD (for example, a WaveTrac) is not superior to a stock MB one?

Again, it depends on what you want to do with the car. for a drag strip, a helical diff like a wavetrac or quaife will do just fine. for a road course, a clutch type (stock LSD) is usually considered better. clutch type diffs work much better when one wheel has zero or near-zero traction like if you lift a wheel going over curbing or if one wheel is on ice (not a factor since you said it's not a daily). The ice part is less of a factor also due to the car braking a spinning wheel for you to keep a helical diff working. I have a wavetrac and I love it. the big benefit IMO would be just being able to swap a whole pumpkin in without someone having to tear apart your stock diff.

Yeah no, no reason other than the fact that a used stock lsd will do the job for 99% of M156 AMG owners, so I'm just thinking to direct you to the cheapest/simplest route to being able to afford all of those mods. The reason why I didn't jump on the LSD bangwagon like everyone else is because I've driven M156 cars with/without an LSD. Unless you're a very good driver that pushes it to the limit all the time or you're running a supercharger, you can quite easily go through ownership without an LSD and never have lost any sleep over it. If wheelspin off the line (let's face it, at the traffic lights 'in Mexico') is your concern, a good pair of rear tyres will help you loads.

Chris nicely explained the difference above between the different types of diffs. What are your thoughts/how you'll use the car? I think if you're ultimately going to do all of these things, then do it in whichever order you're comfortable with. I know an LSD isn't the most 'glamorous' of mods because your car won't really be any faster, but it will make it more usable. You'll probably want it/make yourself buy one if you add a little more power via either E85 or lighter driveline components (brakes, wheels, tyres).

That's a very helpful write up! No worries of ice here in So Cal :D but I would say I care more about handling (canyon, road course, etc.) than I do about the drag strip. Not to say that it won't be fun to do some weekend pulls in Mexico... but for the long term I'm thinking course.