Besides the general MOAR POWER bragging rights I don't really understand why most people would want more power than the tune will get you. 600+hp already overwhelms the traction control and you're not wanting to spin tires at freeway speeds in normal traffic

Unless you're just trying to rule the drag strip get a tune and be done

 

There are definitely different breeds of car people, lol. They are fun with a tune, but in this day and age a high 11 second car is nothing special.

 

We enjoy modifying cars, and playing with them.

We build performance cars for a living, and a hobby. We enjoy designing products, we enjoy seeing what can and can't be done. We enjoy dyno'ing, we enjoy racing, we enjoy having that power on tap.

Don't concern yourself so much with what I do or do not want to do with a car I'm looking to purchase.

If you have nothing constructive to add to this discussion, go bother someone else.

 

Seriously ? Nothing constructive , when I told you of the good warranties available ?

I do nothing but try to be helpful . Your original post said you wanted a family friendly sedan , your thread title says you're concerned about reliability . But once you go extreme it is no longer going to be family friendly , reliable or even safe for everyday family /traffic duties . Do you want a car that can spin sideways at 60 mph? As a owner of a performance shop you already know that once you go extreme , the car will no longer be family friendly or even daily drivable . Bottom line do what you want - I could care less about what you do with your car , turn it into a 1000hp , 100 octane only race gas terror. In fact we would all love to see that here- it just doesn't fit in with family friendly or reliable

 

Nowhere did I say I wanted to go extreme.

I have a 600awhp tuned track car that I would happily tote the kids around in on the daily, if it was feasible to get them in and out of their car seats, and wouldn't get stuck on every pot hole in NYC. It's very much reliable and daily driver friendly.

But as I said, this is a new platform for me. I'm asking questions for curiosities sake at the moment.

And we like to tinker, and see what can and can't be done.

The mindset here seems to be of the "leave well enough alone" variety.... I'm more along the lines of "who wouldn't want a 700+hp family sedan"

These cars seem to be vastly underpowered for their driveline. I understand that messing with that takes away reliability. But there in is the fun... Seeing what this beast can do.

Turbos are so easy to get insane power out of.

With basic bolt on turbo housings with upgraded internals, we can crank out over 700awhp on a v6.... What on earth could we do with a v12?

It's enticing, to say the least.

 

Agree with you. I can barely touch the pedal now and the guy/gal on the side already gives me the dirty look. Those colts and ponies are now pulling behind and not on the side.

 

Agreed. Many of the responses I get on here are, "you can't do that, it won't work" or "why would you want to do that?". In general this is a bought not built crowd when it comes to mods. There are some people doing their own thing, but it's definitely a different mindset than you're used to. For example, I've been told more than once that if I just upgraded turbos and the supporting mods for that, that I could have a 10-second car for only about $60,000 total investment...and what an incredible value that would be, lol.

I mean parts upgrades are obviously subject to the "Mercedes tax". We're dealing with a platform where aftermarket downpipes sell for $2,000...and they're not an incredibly challenging or complex shape or anything. I can understand and accept that pricing from the vendors, given the amount of time and specialty equipment/knowledge that goes into it. You see a pretty healthy margin on any platform, I mean I know about overhead. But that doesn't change the fact that it's not attractive pricing and really encourages people like me to just find my own path.

I guess I've just gotten used to older, cheaper platforms where information is a lot more free-flowing. Those that know around here's livelihood depends partially on not being too specific about what they are doing. As compared with GZP regarding 3/Ss, for example. I see you out there on the daily sharing free advice and information to the community regardless of whether or not they are customers. I'm not saying the vendors around here don't support the community and aren't helpful...it's just a significantly more vague kind of help, lol. Mostly because the answers, I think for the most part, are a lot simpler than you would think and the only thing proprietary about a lot of the upgrades is the knowledge that it works.

I mean I can't seem to get any answers or input about what can/has be done to overcome the fueling limitations without a standalone, or even exactly what point that becomes an issue at power-wise. It may well be as simple as telling the computer it's an S65 and putting in S65 injectors/pump. Who knows. Or maybe speedriven can scale injectors where Eurocharged cannot. I don't know, I haven't been able to get a straight answer on that.The community at large thinks these cars' electronics and engine control systems border on magical and shouldn't be messed with yourself, but at the same time the first recommended upgrade is almost always a tune, lol. Most people are kind of afraid to do the experimentation themselves, so I guess I'm just going to have to figure it out myself when I do hit that 100% injector duty cycle mark.

I do think you're absolutely right about the power output of these for what they are...50hp per cylinder is a joke, these engines still aren't even trying hard with a tune. I would have to be double that before I really started worrying about the engine.

 

We actually do support modification. In fact I often talk of open exhaust for the f1 sound out of the nonturbo v12. Of course that's not a family friendly modification.

Yes these engines can handle 1000 hp, It's not about worrying about the engine -Mercedes detuned these engines to protect the rest of the driveline . once you get past 750lbft of torque or so , you'll need to upgrade everything else - transmission rear end , half shafts, etc. if the desire is reliability , you lose reliability when you start breaking parts because the engine is so powerful . Yes there is a ton of potential in these engines and the tuning shops have already taken them to 800hp or so in pump gas or 1000hp on race gas- but that's with a host of other driveline mods and at those levels these are no longer reliable daily drivers but track cars

 

I know that there are some people that are digging into these cars, but it's a handful of people vs an overwhelming majority of people on other platforms. And I agree with your points to a certain extent, but you're not consulting to people who don't know and understand the risks of upgrading. Hans and Emilie have historically been a lot more conservative about power upgrades and what can and can't be done on stock components than me so I'm sure they will be taking the same approach with this car and not pushing it too far too fast.

I don't agree with your assertion that bumping the power makes it a race car/not acceptable or reliable for daily driving. Obviously if you want to beat on it all the time or track it, you are going to have to build the trans and rest of the driveline to handle it, but for street driving with the occasional blast of power I believe it's a non-issue. These drivetrains are well protected from shock-loading in the first place with the flex discs on both ends. Beyond that, traction limitations on the street will keep those components from even approaching that limit, regardless of what peak engine output is...and by the time there is traction available you're in 3rd gear with about 1/3 the torque multiplication vs 1st gear acting on everything behind the trans. I really don't think increasing the power will have much effect on day to day reliability unless the car is tracked (which it probably will be, at least casually).

The first thing to break from power in a street application should definitely be the transmission itself, which are available pretty cheaply salvage and there's no reason any average trans shop couldn't rebuild one with a few race mods like more clutches, etc...although that's one thing that speedriven doesn't have priced too terribly out of line @ $5,000 for a drag-ready transmission. I could easily see axles/rear end/couplings breaking on a hard track launch...I mean you're talking about approaching 10,000lb-ft of torque through the rear axles after 1st gear plus the rear end ratio. So yes, if you want it to be an all out hard-launching race car as well as a street car then it gets very expensive. But if you just want it to be fast/upgraded street car with the occasional play-time then I see no need for things to be pre-emptively upgraded. It's highly unlikely in my experience for an automatic transmission to fail catastrophically on the street...it usually will give quite a bit of warning that something is amiss (start slipping under heavy load or shifting weird, etc) and just progressively get worse.

In any case, I don't see the purpose in pre-emptively upgrading the transmission or other driveline components on a street car before you have an issue, just because somebody had to (or perhaps just wanted to) with their hard-launching drag car. Unless you've got the money to spare and a reasonable expectation that you would definitely break the stock one sooner rather than later.

 

You'll find more activity on this engine in the R230 amg forum. Although different body style, the engine is the same. Not a lot recently but if you do some searching you'll find a number of threads focused on engine modifications. There are also some on the CL board that you might find helpful.

 

Haha ive enjoyed the contents of this thread so far, some smart chaps here, this will be fun to witness the outer limits of the W220.

Anyway, I think I know this car. Does it have rust on the front driver's side fender?
Does it need tranny and engine mounts?
Is it stuck in Comfort mode?

Definitely an insurance job 😑

 

She posted some pics in this thread:

https://mbworld.org/forums/s-class-w...ml#post6850247

 

No rust. Tons of problems, none of those sound specific to this car.

The interior was shredded to pieces. We got it in Maine, but it spent the majority of its life in Florida.

We also just purchased another 02 s600 as a donor car for most of the nit picky stuff we need.

 

Cool. I saw the pics on a fb group page just now. Looks like alot of fun await you ��

 

Just picked up a sweet 02 with a mint interior to swap into our 05. It's coming along nicely.

Hopefully I can convince my husband to make a progress post on it.

 

Youll have the only 05 600 with 02 600 seats heehee. Dont forget to swap the door panels and window switches too to make the seats work.

Moar pics!

Also, dibs on the suede headliner, sunroof slide, visors, wood mirror covers, wood handles, and A & C pillar covers if youre selling

 

The interior in our 05 is slashed from top to bottom. So, I'm not sure there will be many interior parts left to sell that are in good condition... They even slashed the headliner I believe.

Pretty much everything seems the same from 02 to 05 except for a few dash trims, that can be salvaged from the 05 and used on the 02 dash.

The door panels and buttons are all slashed and broken on the 05 anyway, so, everything needs to be swapped in, though they have the same controls between the years.

 

Doesn't the 2002 have the old style buttons and operate on a different electronic network then the 2005? Would be great to hear they directly swap and work

 

The seat buttons look exactly the same as best I can tell so far (our 05 is missing most of the button faces).

The dash trim buttons are different, and the radio/screen is a different size.

We will find out soon enough. We are taking our yearly trip to the Dragon the end of the month through the first week of August... And we are planning on taking the S. Lol