I'm told I'll get a refund on my previous dyno time/tune. Which I've yet to rec'v a dyno sheet. (not sure what's up).

so far I've been patient for 7mo's and $XX,XXX spent, and I've driven the car for 2 hours..... with one break down on the side of the road, tow to shop (belt came off due to misaligned pulleys), then failed emmissions this past weekend, jerky shifting, poor drivability, and alot of promises.

it's time to change course.

I want a leak down on the motor to be sure it's healthy from all this non-sense, and then put a klee tune on it.
I've never been so disappointed in my life about something I truely am passionate about.

This is not personal against anyone, it's just business...... poor business.
But I will get this resolved one way or another.

 

ouch! You left that huge part out till now. You are super patient, after all these months of waiting I would of taken that belt and slapped the **** out someone with it

 

I feel for you because I've been there and my story is even more agonizing than yours. At least your tuner did not set your engine on fire twice and eventually destroyed the entire engine including the block.

 

When I picked the car up the 1st time 2 mo's ago it was supposedly finished:
* I paid in full.
* No dyno sheet avail because computer was down? But told it makes 400 at the tires. OK, I move on.
* I drove my filthy car off the lot, and stopped by the gas station to fill it up as it was on E. It would not restart. After some choice words and about 5 mins it finally started, and I'm on my way.
* I get home, and inspect the work under the hood, and several hoses are disconnected and vac hoses not hooked up, and the ram air tubes are unhooked. I'm pretty handy with tools to I zip tied everything and hooked it all up.
* Bolster is torn.
* It turns out the battery was shot and would not take a charge so I changed that the 1st night I had it back which fixed the hard to crank problem.

The next day I went out for a test ride and it had jerky shifting on part throttle... but the power was good. About 30 min into my ride the red triangle comes up and say see shop now... I'm rolling at 70mph at this point and no power steering. Not good. I pull over @ 6:30AM on a sunday AM, call the wife and wait on a wrecker to have it towed back to MW. The belt shredded off of the blower due to misalignment. I noticed the misalignment when i inspected it the night before, but did not think it would shred off.

Fast forward to last week.... after 1.5 months in the shop 2nd time they get the pulley alignment sorted out, and I pick it up last Friday. Still jerky shifting and poor drivability.

I'm not one to whine.... but I do have my limits.

I honestly don't have faith in Motorwerks of Houston to touch my car anymore.

It's nothing personal, I really like the owner, super nice guy.


Wow that was a mouth full!

 

Sounds like a bunch of amateurs running that shop or they simply just don't care. Are they in financial trouble because this type of gross negligence is a sign that they are going out of business soon. This was what happened to me before the entire shop went up in flames (literally) on the fourth of July.

 

Tune/dyno refund in the works. So that'll take the sting out of shipping.

 

Damn thats really poor quality work. Sorry to see that happen to a member. Good luck with the car in the future.

 

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now, so I'm actually getting exciting about this project again.

A quick question:

Anyone with Kleemann S/C and stock CLK55 single exhaust with Kleemann Headers/downpipes (no prim cats), and high flow 2ndary cats and AMG stock Muff - Do you notice the exhaust to be a bit raspy? And how would I get a deeper tone without the raspy sound? I don't care about dual exhaust for looks, but if I have to go to dual exh to get rid of that raspy note I'll consider it.

Or will the kleemann muffler with the single exhaust, and kleemann headers make the tone deeper?


At $1200 shipping oneway, I might just make a road trip of it and drive the car back from Colorado Spring to Houston when it's done dep on work commitments. We'll see. $1200 will buy alot of gas and hi-way food

 

Some kleemann goodness....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLYRhwzNGus

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxjUd...eature=related

 

Kleemann FTW!
Cory is a great guy to work with.
Good luck and let us know how it turns out!

 

I need some Kleeman headers!

Have you seen this vid? Seems that the owner has a H pipe installed. Very aggressive sound.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGWxW...eature=related

 

So here's the plan:
My car ships to Klee in the next 7-10 days.
Then dyno before after.
And I might get some extra klee goodies while she's at the car spa.
Then I'll fly up to Boulder, get the rundown from Klee on my ride, perhaps tour their shop, and road-trip from Co back to Houston. Should be fun!
I'm getting excited about this again.

 

its going to be ur best road trip ever!

man I thought u would be done and racing by now

I am trying to figure out a solution for all that jerky shifting. the car actually adapts with time but when red lining i dont like the jerk it makes when shifting so im looking into a torque converter or a TCU upgrade

 

PTE posted the same issue and mentioned a tuner who reprogrammed it for him, look it up. What were your recent times at the drags?

 

PTE told me his shift point was too close to the rev limiter, so they backed off the shift point 50-150 rpm below the rev limit to keep it happy.

 

thats a good idea i'll look into it

I attached a picture of my best times surprisingly they were consecutive runs but i took breaks in between them I started at 11:30 in the morning and was having problems with my launch and keeping the car grip so i was getting mid 13s then was able to get it down to a 12.9 but by ten the track to so dirty. damn i hate those funny cars they ruin the launch area.
so then i gave the car a break for about an hour at the same time i was helping out a friend with his launch. it was his first time dragging and hes got a C63.

they then cleaned up the track and they werent letting the funny cars on one of the lanes so luckily i was the first to try the clean lane. the middle time slip in the picture was my best time although the run before that had a better 60' time. the last slip on the left has my friends best run his C63 is stock and I was impressed with his numbers

I still have to figure out a better way to get the car to shift because the jerk it makes while shifting makes me loose acceleration time
and I was using all season tires that are way overdue so new tires is also on the list of things im going to have to do :P

my next step would be getting a bigger diameter exhaust pipe to try to reduce the back pressure and get better flow. maybe cancel my secondary cats and im giving thought into getting an x pipe but im afraid the car might be too loud for my liking ( i already have an esinemann exhaust muffler on).
i am looking into buying a set of semi-slicks or a set of good performance tires.
I also have found a high throw torque converter that I am giving some consideration but i need to find out if someone has used that before or not. and possibly get a more efficient water pump and water radiator

sorry i didnt want to take over the thread I was going to start one but since we both have the same mods right now and im guessing u wont stop at that only so I thought i might start thinking out loud and see what u guys think before i do anything and regret it


I also just found a slip of my best time while the car was still stock my 60' time was 1.819 1/4 miled 13.578 with a trap speed of 102.70 same drag strip I believe it was in November though while this time with the blower the weather was hot it was the first day of May

 

wtf?? 1.81 is a really good launch and your best. I have no clue how you managed a 13.5 with that good of a launch. Your trap is really low too. Are you letting off that gas too soon or something?

 

If that's on crappy street tires..... then I see .5 sec coming off of that with sticky drag radials and good weather and good track conditions, so I'm thinking low 12's is on order for you.

Also try elim excess wgt... spare tire, tools, floor mats, extra junk. AND be sure your motor gets a good long cool down.... if you can avoid it.. don't keep the car running while in the staging lanes.

Don't go through the water with street tires..... no smokey burnout... just a quick scrub to clean em off.

And see what tire pressure you've got.... I run 45 up front and experiment with 25-28 in thre rear tires.

Also if you have anything larger than stock 17" wheels/tires.. your sidewall is soooo tiny and with crappy tires not conducive to good traction.


If you car is at all heatsoaked.. you computer will pull timing and you lose HP. These blown cars HATE heat.

 

Man look at the MPH diff at the 1/8th mile between those slips..... pretty big diff between runs. Are you spinning in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd or during shifts?

How are you running with TC on/off? Manual mode? Shift points?

 

Classic CLK55 VID.... from the barfly perspective: )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RmCugOnSZU

 

"Thats a ****ing Mercedes Benz!" LOL

 

Got up early to spend a little quality time with the CLK55-K before her long journey to Co Springs.

Cleaned up top to bottom. Can't wait to drive it!





I'll look at coil-overs, big brakes AFTER Klee get's the mechanicals sorted.











With the old stocker wheels -

 

Lookin good

 

TC was always off I tried manual mode and shifting on S mode too it didnt really make much of a difference. I tried shifting it before redline but i wasnt getting as good number as i was getting when i let the car shift at redline on its own. but i still never liked the jerk it made while shifting

well it takes me over an hour to get there and when i do get there im just too excited to race that i dont even wait i just start burning those tires and race. we usually go in a group but never have enough helmets so we take turns thats when i take a break. the last time i went was some of my friends first time at the track so i jumped into some cars and gave them some tips and pointers. thats when my car cooled down and i had some good runs. i never really bothered to take anything out of the car
nor have i ever changed my tire pressure. one of my friends had a mustang I remember we removed his rear tires and his entire trunk, we would have removed his passenger seat is not for the safety belt sensor making all that noise he also was playing with his tire pressure and suspension stiffness. but i honestly wanted to just see what kind of difference the blower would make first before going all hardcore about it. it was more of proving to myself that i was able to make some change in the car and that it actually does perform better

this was back when my car was stock and it was my first time drag racing. I actually blew that engine and then replaced it later

 

Hami - If you wanted to get really serious about getting times down on this car, you could hook up some data-logging for each run.

It would be good to see:
IAT - intake air temps (how effective is the HE system? are you getting heat soak on a single pass? I've read the e55k boys seeing heat build up and pulled timing in the time of one 1/4 mile pass.... hard to believe.... but i read it on here).

Heat exchanger temps

Injector duty
are your injectors maxed out...... 95% + duty cycle?

AFR Real time with a wide band O2 sensor (there are several brands out there)
This is a wild card..... if your tune is very conservative (rich), then you're leaving power on the table...... but as these cars are expensive to run/build/main.... I don't have the cajolies/budget to run on the ragged edge with my tune either.

Boost - belt slip can be a real issue with our little kleemann belts/pulleys (the mustang boys have been using some special belt-dressing for centri blowers with good results, there is also a treatment you can put on your blower pulley to lim slip)
See if you're boost is dropping with rpm? Also good to diagnose any leaks.


Fuel Pressure
Verify fuel system is adequate for mods......
I don't know if you have a fuel pressure regulator setup which bumps fuel pressure with boost, or if you fuel is all controlled by the tune.

FUn FUn.