ZephTheChef

No kidding...if I'd known the limitations there is no way I would have paid that kind of money for a tune. I was concerned with doing a standalone because I didn't know how tied in all the computers are to each other and what other goodies on the car might not work properly. This isn't a "build" by any means...it is and probably always will be a daily driver. I want all my creature comforts working and no nasty dash warnings/lights.

As far as the killer chiller, that's more or less exactly what I did on my other car before I knew such a thing existed, and exactly what I was planning to do with the secondary intercoolers. I think they offer a good kit but the mark-up is insane for something that literally uses zero proprietary parts. I mean you could have their whole kit plus a reservoir and pump for the same price if you just buy all the parts separately yourself.

Water/meth: Check.

ZephTheChef

Also, I wanted to apologize for the delay. I've had a few other projects going and was on vacation for a week so I've been dragging my feet on installing the injectors and getting it going on E85. Hopefully will get on top of that tomorrow.

mercedesbenzs55

Subbed!

ZephTheChef

Ok, so I pulled everything apart tonight to install the injectors. It was enough work that I went ahead and pulled the intake manifold and am going to figure out my water/meth spraybar install...I really don't want to tear into all this again when I get around to doing that so I am just going to make myself do it now. I believe I managed to get it all apart without breaking anything, but hopefully it goes back together as smoothly.

I didn't snap any pictures of the teardown, but I will get some of my spray bar fab/install before I put everything back together. It might be a few days before I get another chance to work on it, but I hope to have it back on the road before next weekend. Once I get it up and running on E85 and the new water/meth spray bar and make sure everything is working smoothly, I plan to flash in my "race gas" tune and see how much better it runs.

Speedriven1

There is quite a lot of integration necessary with the standalone, but if you're looking for big power and total control it's the best way forward.

ZephTheChef

I may be in the future. Kind of pointlessly overkill for stock turbos probably. I don't know if I'll ever take this car that far...I mean I get access to 95% of anything I'd ever want to change in an engine/transmission tune in a $100 HP Tuners license on my other car, whereas we're talking probably $5,000+ on this car...and then I probably break the transmission anyway. Seems to me the way to go if I really feel the need for more power is just a nice sized wet nitrous shot that the computer doesn't know or care about.

What are we talking about though, an AEM or is there something better out there for this platform?

Speedriven1

Syvecs S12 ... and your $5000 estimate is about half the going price.

ZephTheChef

Completely unsurprised about that. Amazing what people will pay for upgrades for these. Not really surprising, I guess, I'm just still trying to get used to a platform where people are actually willing to spend that kind of money on their cars. Definitely not wanting to pay more for an ECU than I did for the car, lol.

Speedriven1

You're looking at it the wrong way. Assuming you're into the car $20K for a clean car, put $5K to make it 100%, then another $40K into making it go fast ($30K in upgrades to get you to 1000+ HP and a trans. build, $10K in the ECU) and you're in it $65K. That's a Shelby Mustang these days, and you'll be deep into the 10s (if not into the 9s) all day long in a rock-solid V12 Benz. There's nothing out there that can deliver power and performance in a package like this for that money.

ZephTheChef

Oh, I disagree very, VERY strongly. They are a great value in stock form. It's hard to start out with something better in overall quality for a $10-15k price point. But I wouldn't consider them a particularly incredible power and performance bargain. $65,000 would certainly not be a good value comparable to other platforms. I can think of a dozen other cars that I can end up with a much more reliable (read that as easier/cheaper to maintain and with a lot less things to break) car consistently in the 10s for under $10,000 total investment. It won't be as comfortable, or unique...but I have an abundance of replacement parts available dirt cheap and can swap engines/transmissions in an evening, lol.

You are right that it's a great relative value in a luxury super car...and that's why I bought one. But that's not what I'm comparing it to on the performance side of things which is what we're talking about. These offer such abysmal value from performance upgrades compared to most any other platforms of a similar (or any really) age that it's almost comical. If I had infinite amounts of money, I could certainly see throwin dis-proportionate amounts of it at one of these for upgrades...but to say that upgrades for these aren't overpriced/are a good value compared to other cars is just ridiculous. I understand that you put a lot of time and quality into what you build and offer. But building one of these cars with vendor parts at the prices they are currently at is just WAY out of my budget...especially when I have the perception I can fab it all myself for something like 10% the price.

Speedriven1

Good luck with that!

ZephTheChef

Uh-oh, now your disbelief is going to lead me to go on a rant, lol. Don't take any of this the wrong way, as I respect and appreciate all the vendors that have paved the path for upgrading these cars and I do thank you for your advice and knowledge but this IS my thread, and your sarcasm/disbelief naturally makes me defensive. Which often enough puts people in attack mode so if parts of this rant feel like an attack, I'm sorry.

Why do you think it can't be done? I realize not everyone can fabricate and not everyone has collected the tools/equipment over the years to be able to do their own stuff...but I'm not saying everybody can do it for cheaps...I'm just saying that I can. I also realize that many people who buy these cars have more money than time, and that's great for them...if I could just "hire it done" and not have to fuss with it and spend more time with friends/family or whatever then I'd be all over that. But I make $40,000 a year. There's no way I could own, let alone upgrade one of these cars if I wasn't capable of doing it myself for cents on the dollar, and if it wasn't more or less my entire source of entertainment. For those of us that do have to be more careful about money, the only way to play this game effectively is to do it yourself...and I realize I haven't walked the walk on this platform yet which is why I said I have the perception that I can do for 10% as opposed to outright saying I can. I don't know where I'll end up/how far is reasonable to go on this car. If you're calling me out on the ability to actually do things at least significantly more cheaply than by going through a vendor/shop, I'm happy to list examples.

10% may be an exaggeration in some cases but not by a large amount overall. I already have several good examples in the works or completed. The e-cutout/catless downpipes ended up costing me around $200 net plus negligible shop consumables after what I recovered selling the cats to the scrapper and only took one night of my time...vs $1,400 for vendor-built catless downpipes with no cutouts, and virtually the same labor to install. The water/meth is another good example. Just the parts to build a direct port nozzle assembly for one of these cars would be over $700 from any one of the 4 or 5 major water/meth kit vendors. I am going to be approximately $30 in parts into my spray bar setup and end up with significantly finer atomization, better distribution, and a setup that offers considerably less bulk and clutter and possible leak/failure points in the engine bay.

The computer tune is another example...most other flash-tuneable vehicles you expect to pay somewhere from free to $250 for a software license, and have an extremely large degree of control over almost anything you could want to change in the engine or transmission calibration. Cheapest canned flash tune to cover both the ECU and TCU for these I found was like $1,300 on sale. I don't know what the on-the-cheap alternative is to a $10,000+ standalone but I would probably look into getting tricky with a pair of GM V6 computers and custom crank trigger wheel/wiring harness and just get rid of the stock coils altogether. I'm sure I could come up with a transmission segment swap for those that would work as well. Certainly wouldn't have all the integration functionality and again, I can see where the $10,000 price tag comes from and how it would be worth it if you had the cash...but I can also see how there would probably be ways to do it on the cheap with the same power/performance functionality. But for now the canned tune will do.

I haven't gotten too crazy with the Benz yet so that's all I've got so far but expect to add the refrigerated intercooling killer-chiller style as well as the upgrades to the ambient system to that list by the end of the summer...most of the parts are already sitting in a box up at the shop just waiting for me to commit to enough downtime to install and the pricing is similar, maybe 25% tops of a functionally identical vendor supplied system. Look at any performance system and you can see that you can get functionally within a very small performance percentage at drastically different cost figures.

I mean a nitrous setup for example...could be put together for a couple hundred bucks, or you could easily spend $5,000+ for a pressure-regulated pusher setup with direct port and a separate fuel system and fancy electronic controller and remote bottle openers and purge solenoids and so on and so forth and at the end of the day the power-to-the-pavement performance would be nearly identical with the same jetting you just might be giving up some handy features (and probably adding a LOT more failure points/things to go wrong).

The last two turbo setups I have done for friends both cost less than $500 in parts, and the bulk of fab done on a Sat night plus Sunday. Exhaust parts, turbo, oil and coolant lines, fuel system upgrades, intake parts, etc all included in that. Granted, we are talking stuff built largely out of scraps I had laying around the shop and chinese turbos, but guess what they both work just fine and if something breaks, it's only a few bucks to get a replacement. Hell, even engines are $2-500 salvage on most of these cars. I mean when the cars only cost a couple thousand bucks private party and were ridiculously mass produced that's what you get 10-20 years later...lots of them in overcrowded salvage yards.

Those two aren't big builds by any means, maybe 1.5ish times stock power output...but realistically that's not too far off from what we're talking about with the Benz either (if you're looking at taking a stock but tuned S600 @ 600hp up to 1000 thats 1.66x). If they want to upgrade to a name brand turbo later it's easy enough to do so and there's no reason whatsoever I would expect it to perform any differently from the $5,000+ vendor-built version.

No, my parts aren't often show quality (in fact, you often wouldn't even want to show anybody, lol) but they're every bit as functional. Don't get me wrong, I can easily see where the cost comes from in terms of vendor pricing, but right now it's still a hobby for me...it's fun, so there is no "labor", it's entertainment time. If I was doing this full-time for other people, and trying to turn out top-notch quality and pleasant appearing parts like you guys do then I'm sure I would be pricing stuff up there as well, in fact I have no doubt I couldn't compete. But as far as getting it done cheap and functionally "good enough" or sometimes even better than I can go out and buy...yes, I am very confident I can do that.

I mean if it comes down to it and we are looking at comparing to a $30,000 upgrade package that gets you 850hp...could I get to that number for $3,000 if I wanted to? Absolutely. The tune gets you to 600 and a wet 250 shot of nitrous on one of these engines would be child's play. That setup in basic trim without all the ridiculous add-ons would be under $500 so we're well under $2,000. In fact it leaves plenty of room in our budget to run methanol in a cell or second pusher bottle as the enrichment fuel to add a large safety margin to the nitrous use, or to install a water/meth setup for the same reasons, or probably even both of those things together. Would it deliver the power all the time and as elegantly as your $30,000 package? No. Does it have ongoing costs/consumables required to function? Yes. But would it deliver the power functionally and when you needed it/could make use of it? Absolutely. And it doesn't alter the manners of the car at all when you don't need it, which larger turbos, and many of the other modifications certainly would. Not necessarily always for the worse but certainly so in the form of increased lag and a less linear powerband, both of which are extremely annoying in a daily driver in my opinion/experience.

Lots of people would argue that the lag increase isn't significant or even present for X or Y reason (billet/lightweight wheels, ceramic bearings, etc)...but it is. It always is. It's clear as day on datalogs, and in how much peakier the powerband is (how hard the boost hits). It may make no practical performance difference in a WOT situation, but the street manners just driving around normal are usually significantly different based on turbo response. I can't speak to this platform specifically, but have plenty of experience with turbo upgrades both on factory and aftermarket setups. Not a fan of the lag...hence my twincharged Buick. Anyway, now I'm just so I'd better quit.

ZephTheChef

And yes, I know I'm a bit of a know-it-all, self-righteous, opinionated *****. I mean what kind of ******* starts a thread asking for advice and then feels the need to butt heads with the knowledgeable vendor that tries to give it to him? Me, I guess.

ZephTheChef

In other news, I was hoping to finish my spray bar tonight and put things back together, but unfortunately *someone* used up all the argon so I can't weld it up. I think my gas supplier is closed Wednesdays, too...so it might be Thu/Fri before I can get her back on the road. Sadface.

wallyp

OT- Not many true hot rodders left, and damn few working on a Mercedes S600...

(And no, people like Boyd Coddington and Chip Foose are admirable as designers and businessmen, but they aren't hot rodders.)

ZephTheChef

Got the spraybar mostly complete. I couldn't really find tubing that was exactly what I wanted, so what I ended up doing is tapping a piece of 1/8" thick aluminum angle for one misting nozzle per cylinder along the length of it lined up with the ports, then welding on a floor for it to end up with a triangular pipe. It will go in the center inside of the intake manifold along the floor and spray more or less at a 45 degree angle upwards/outwards towards the ports. I was planning to take pictures, but forgot. I will definitely get some pictures of it up and running tomorrow when I rig up a flow test. I think it's going to be a ridiculous amount of improvement over a single large nozzle at the throttle body.

Since it's going to be inside the intake manifold I wanted to be extra sure there was no way any of the nozzles would come loose and go through the engine. So despite them being threaded quite tightly and probably not going anywhere, I pulled them back out and applied some good old JB Weld epoxy to the threads, as well as around the nozzles after they were threaded back in. Kind of makes it look like they are just glued on there...but I don't really care too much what it looks like, it's going to be buried inside the intake manifold.

I need to devise a flow-rate test method before I install it. I have seen figures anywhere from .5 gph per nozzle to just over 2gph per nozzle with these nozzles, so I really have no idea. If we assume 1gph each, I will have a cooling potential of around 81 degrees F at peak load if I run straight water, 30 degrees F on straight methanol, somewhere in between on 50/50. Anybody that's curious about the math on that, I would be happy to share...otherwise I won't bore you with it.

That would be great if they end up flowing around that 1gph figure. That puts me at 25% of my fuel flow for the water/meth setup which was my target. If it's double that...oh well, I've run that much before, it'll be ok.

Of course since we already have relatively cool intake temps (for a forced induction vehicle) it would probably be more effective to run heavy on the methanol side since it will effectively vaporize to a much lower temperature. Plus, I'm going to be around 4% lean on E85 with the injector size I ended up going with. I actually ended up going with 450cc injectors which more or less is properly sized for E70. There wasn't an in-between size available in the line of injectors I wanted and I certainly wasn't going to step up to 550s with no ability to compensate for it (apart from maybe manually fussing with the fuel pressure by adding a bleed regulator/return line). It will be easier to run gasoline in a pinch since I went to the lean side.

Then again, 12gph of methanol is going to be something like 12% of my fuel requirement. So not a whole lot of sense in going straight methanol either. Probably will just stick with the tried and true 50/50 and just see how it goes.

ZephTheChef

Ok, so I ended up working late on actual work so I didn't get very far with this project today. I should have the manifold all welded up ready to go back on by the end of the night but I don't think I'll be driving her home...lots of assembly from that point. Plus, I still have to go get E85. I told my friend to take a video of the spray test, but he only got like 3 seconds worth. Hopefully I can figure out how to upload it. Apparently my camera on the phone is busted again, so I don't have any pics just yet. Might have to get out the old digital camera.


<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ggvssPc0E4c" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

ZephTheChef

Ok, so for future reference, wireless fuel injector adapters do not clear the intercoolers. Which is a shame because they offer a nice clean/stock look. New adapter pigtails on the way.

ZephTheChef

Been driving the car on E85 for a few days now. Makes great power. Gotta get a few more parts to finish up the water/meth stuff before I can flash in the race gas tune.

VMAX7

Top notch work! Very interesting mods and plans you got man and im rooting for ya.

My aptitude for modding is the basic ecu remap and a bolt on or two, youre leagues above my pay grade!
Add pics and vids of your beasTT and join my facebook group of Merc owners.

https://m.facebook.com/groups/318943928290331?ref=bookmarks

*subscribed

ZephTheChef

Thanks, and thanks for the group invite.

The update on the car is my heat exchanger upgrade is fighting me the whole way. Bought a cheap x3 radiator and the end tanks leaked at the seam so I've been having a heck of a time getting it to seal up. And of course I didn't figure that out until I had already hacked the tanks up to put the right size barbs on so obviously I can't exchange it under warranty.

In other news, I ordered some 19mm thick hub-centric adapters to allow me to bolt on my other car's wheels/tires. 17x10.5 Cobra R wheels with 315/35-17 NT05R drag radials. Will definitely post pics when the adapters get here...I think the rubber is going to be quite a bit out past the wheel well, but it should look pretty mean with that much rubber on the back.

VMAX7

Awesome! However, that look will take some getting used to LOL

ItalianJoe1

Love the work so far. It's always fun to do it yourself when the average person tells you that it can't be done. Happened to me in the Cobalt world for a while. I'm also sympathetic with your twincharged car, set up something similar on an Ion Redline, ended up getting rid of the blower as it was nearly impossible to tune with the limited access HPT has to those P12 ECMs.

ZephTheChef

I think having a MAF must make tuning the crossover infinitely easier. I literally had zero headaches getting it dialed in, even compensating for a HUGE boost leak at the bottom of my adapter plate. I always thought the cobalt/ion would be fun to try twincharged since it could more or less be mostly done with all factory parts. But I heard there was a lot of trouble tuning them from those that had tried it.

ZephTheChef

I went ahead and ordered the frozen boost intercooler reservoir/ice box. It's not ideal, and I do want to eventually build my own that will sit inside the spare tire, but there's a midnight grudge fest event coming up at the local drag strip at the end of the month and I'm very tempted to get the car ready and see what it will do. At $80 my cost, it's probably cheaper than I could build one anyway. At first I was thinking it was a bit small on capacity but then I crunched the numbers on just how much ice you could get into a 2.4 gallon tank and it should easily be 12-15lbs with enough water to keep the pump happy. Probably close to 20lbs if you filled it clear full. I think during the actual 1/4 mile, the car is only going to need around 7 lbs or so to maintain freezing temps at the intercoolers.

All this work on upgrading the ambient heat exchanger and now I get to install bypass valving for it so I can run an ice box and not even use it, lol. Still worth the upgrade for daily driving though.

http://www.frozenboost.com/liquid-ai...a283ab61045cd8