Bro your car looks great man... don't really see you at the cruise any more.. how comes?

 

Cheers mate, which cruise?

 

Used to always see you at hayez with your privia. My names mo big guy with the kickers. Dw you'll remember me by face lol. Anyways bro will need your help with the head light tinting

 

Yeah most probably recognise you in person...

Yeah give us a shout mate, instagram - teamspb, or facebook as teamspb...or check out website link out on the stickers on the car

 

Right, time for some updates...not much has really happened with the car to be honest as im still waiting on some audio bits so I can crack on with that side of the project...

A few weeks ago was Players Classic and DC13 and we went along to both! AWESOME weekend for sure and the drive to Goodwood was certainly interesting! Even mixed it up with some hot hatches on the twistys which even suprised me LOADS! Was good watching the usual hot hatch jap crew blazing it with a 2.5ton Merc right behind them lol!

The car was due a wash...so we had it looking like this;







Some of my best pics throughout the weekend;



































I also took away Best Mercedes of Show at DC13!! Well chuffed!!!




HUGE thanks to all involved!!!

 

Need to update this Big time! But while I get the updates in order...some of my best pics of the year!







Be back tomorrow with some more updates!

 

Right, where do I begin!!!

Firstly, I havent been overly active with the CLS over the last months, just simply getting on with little bits here and there mainly down to continual growth of the business etc so getting more and more cars coming in all the time.

The main bits that I have done, is just get it to a better standard! Changing bits that weren't up to my standard or I felt can be better.

On the whole, the car is pretty much the same!

Lets catch up with show season...

Shows attended this year were;

DC (Best Mercedes)
Players Classic
Modified Nationals
Westside
Ace Cafe German and Passionford Meets
All Dubs

Cant remember any others!

So some pics through the season...

























So thats show season done! We were meant to go to Show and Glow, but after hearing the weather was meant to be bad, I decided to give it a miss and had a nice day off instead!

Now, onto the bits that I have changed!

Due to the EXCESSIVE camber I run (was measured at over 4degrees!) and the Toe settings being out, my front tyres shredding themselves in around 1500 miles!! Painful especially on a set of Bridgestones! I wanted to change them regardless however due to wanted to trim down the tyre size a tad as I couldnt drive the car as low as I wanted on the front.

Tyre size has now gone from 235/35 to 225/35. Im MUCH happier with the new toe settings and the 225's as the steering is like a feather now!

Check the insides of the tyre!!!


Next up was a service! I havent serviced the car since I bought it and felt like doing it just to keep on top of it...The previous owner/garage said they had just serviced it before I got it....all I can say is LIARS!!!! I dont think this is the state of an air filter after less than 5000miles!


Other side


Right...dinners ready now lol!

 

Since I had bought the car, I periodically had an error message saying Battery or something, so it was about time I did something about it as it started to come on more frequently.

As I have 2 batteries in the rear of the vehicle, one OEM battery and another XS Power D2400 battery to help spread the load, I knew it wouldn't be showing an error from the rear batteries, which only left the front aux battery.

When I removed all the bits to access the front battery, I noticed it was the original MB battery from new. Not bad considering these are meant to have 3-4 years life in them.

As per my normal actions, once the battery etc had been removed, I cleaned EVERYTHING out and got rid of any leaves, dirt and grime from the area and then waxed it all!



As per the instructions, I had to fill the battery up with the supplied distilled water and let it settle for 20minutes before giving the battery a full charge. In its charge state, the battery now floated at around 12.9v. Perfect!

Then as I went to fit it, as normal, the terminals would not fit! So after a few modifications, I got everything to fit and was on my way to finish the installation.







All back to normal with a new pollen filter to


Next up, I bought a set of AMG stainless door pins as I didn't really like the look of the plastic ones.







The big change in the interior was the addition of a brand new Genuine AMG steering wheel and AMG paddle shift conversion








I also got a custom Carbon AMG gear lever which I have not seen many if any about. Apparently it was made in Sweden according to the guy I bought it off


Ill get some better photos of it later.

Im just downloading some more pics so ill be back with an update shortly

 

The sickest mercedes I have EVER seen!!!!!
Without changing the suspension, what size wheel/tire would you recommend to "tuck" the tires using an elm that will drop -2"?
Ps- the elm also has a "show" mode that will allow it to sit as low as the suspension will allow given wheels don't prohibit it.

 

This is the guy a was telling you about

 

Next up was time to clean the seats…now, anyone who has seen the interior of the car will know its relatively clean. However, most people associate 'shiny' leather with 'clean' leather, you couldn't be more wrong!

Leather in its natural colour, will have a matt like finish to it and not feel slippery etc.

Now, I'm guessing the previous owners of the vehicle looked after it quite well but fell under the category of people thinking shiny leather is great.

My rear seats out and ready to clean…before


After


Clean on the left vs untouched on the right














Front seats










A quick reflection shot of the CLS with my Previa (Project DFN U) in the background



Some more of the gear knob




teamSPB

 

Thanks mate

TBH its up to you, I think most people will go 10-11inch on the rear with offset of between 20 and 25 which will be perfect. Tyre wise, I run 255/35 on the rear and now 225/35 on the front…The front does catch when I drive around 10mm higher than full drop. The rears catch on full drop. Next tyre change will probably see 255/30 or 245/30 on the rear and 225/30 on the front…it should go back to laying frame then!

 

What's your rim sizes?

 

Mine is 10.5 on the rear and 9 on the front

 

Recently I have noticed my headlights bulbs have been pretty poor at lighting up the road so I have been looking into getting replacements. I LOVE the Ring Sportz Blue bulbs I had in there, but thinking they have trouble with projector style lamps (As we have had this issue on a Corsa with projector style headlights), I decided to update the car further more. I wanted the bi-xenons but can't find them for the love of God!

I decided instead to use some 55w HID's in 6000k temperature/colour. Looks very OEM and looks exactly like the Xenon equipped cars. Further more, no error lights at all!

55w HID vs 80w Ring Sportz Blue




Next up, I wanted to change the wing mirror for later spec items, I found a set on offer and snapped them up!

Big thanks to 'television' for sending me the instructions on the wing mirrors!

Old vs New




Wing mirror covers removed and looking dirty


It was all washed down and given two layers of Poor Boys Bare Bones for protection

New mirrors on


LED lights on the bottom to fully working








teamSPB

 

I did NOT know paint could look like that. My CLS550 is a daily driver, but I could see looking into a couple of modifications that you have, ah, illustrated.
Your attention to detail is...formidable.
The steering wheel IS on the wrong side.

Wow.
bob

 

may I ask how you got the interior dome lights circular lighting to be white led as well? I replaced all the bulbs with leds, however my circular light that is always on is amber :/

 

As someone noticed, the number plate has been changed also…The new plate which spells out 'DROPPED' was bought as a birthday present and the plates themselves were sourced from a company in Northern Ireland.

However, when I received the plated, the rear one was off centre so I got a replacement sent out. FANTASTIC service when I initially ordered the plates (Ordered on friday or thursday and were were on saturday)…not so great when I wanted a replacement as it took around 7 working days to turn up!



Its only very slight but you did notice it on a small plate




Size comparison between stock plate and shortened plate

 

You make the factory non-AMG body kit look amazing. Makes me rethink buying an AMG or Brabus kit. I had that same CF shifter knob in my SLK350. High quality stuff huh? I was really impressed.

 

TeamSPB,
Awesome build on the C219. I have the 2007 CLS63 AMG with P30 package in black and love this car. I have been wanting to do three things you have done almost since I bought it though.
One is the single bar black grille that can be had on eBay for really cheap. I personally would keep the bar and Tristar chrome though. Just not sure if it is also cheap quality.
The second is to black out the headlight bucket chrome. I think this is how the black, darker cars should have been from the factory. I just want to be able to return it without too much trouble in the future. So I'm looking for the headlight bodies used maybe in bad shape as the chrome bits seem to come out pretty nicely. I will film black out the tail lights to match.
The third is to lower the car but for me not to the extreme that you do with the ELM. I think I may go with a fixed link to sensor approach to just drop it an inch all around.

Very nice work man.

 

Its amazing where I started…



And where I am now!!

 

Cheers mate! I have found there is no difference between the cheap and expensive ones…my one I paid around Ł60 for but was second hand.

Black headlight is a must!

I didn't touch the ELM my is converted to hydraulics and is on switches I was going to go down the link route, however, I still new it wouldn't go as low as I would have wanted it to hence to hydro conversion

 

Cheers! TBH it only works as the car is sitting so low…however, I still do not like the gap from the bottom of the front bumper to the floor…so the bumpers are being changed! Im not going for the typical AMG kit though

Could you enlighten me as to what gear knob it is? The guy I got it off had no details about it but I just liked the look of it so bought it cheap!

 

Thanks for the thread and Brilliant job on her Sir.

eBay single fin black and chrome grill being ordered tomorrow.
Yes, Yes on the blacked out headlamp setup. Ordering the Plasti Dip tomorrow and still looking for a pair of sort of beat up headlights to rob the chrome out of just in case I need to go back to stock.
Right, I did read your bit on the Hydro kit install. I just don't need that much so I'll probably do the link set.

 

Nice....What are you going for? Brabus Rocket? Prior Design?

I bought my gear knob off these guys:

http://formymercedes.com/mb_results....ry=Shift+Knobs

I would buy again but my shift knob has keyless go and it's 3x more expensive lol.