Sam87

Hello everyone,


A few months ago I decided to sell my e92 M3 CP as I wasn't using it much. I loved the car but I barely done any miles.

To replace the M3, I decided to go for an S65AMG. It's a pre facelift model and I wanted to do a facelift conversion just like I did on my last one but it has been very hard to find anyone in the UK that sells the facelift AMG bumpers for this model S class and after nearly 3 months of searching I haven't found anyone in the UK that sells them.
I have decided to leave the car as it and just make a few small changes.

So far, I have

Lowered the car

Fit spacers all around

Facelift rear lights

Boot lid spoiler

LED number plate lights

Here are some pic's of the car.































My old S600 with the Facelift AMG kit, lowered and on 21's







This is what the S65AMG replaced. e92 M3 CP

maw1124

TLDR... but nice E46M... Mine is TiAG over Imola. At least you didn't sell that one.

Cheers,

maw

SilverV12

Looks fantastic! How have you lowered the new car? Any issues with the ABC? Are those stock wheels?

JohnLane

OP got lucky and has one without chrome wheels that forever leak air between chrome and wheel.

Good looking ‘07 OP. Right color of interior and wood. Lowered it will catch every curb parking or pulling into a driveway. Be quick with the button to set it to tippy toes.

Give it more charge cooling and boost for more fun.

Enjoy!

Sam87

Thank you!
I've had a few e46 M3's. They are one of the best looking M3's BMW has made.

Le mans blue with white leather













Carbon black with black leather

















Thank you!
I changed the linkages for adjustable ones. Very easy to install and adjust. No isseues with the ABC. I done the same thing with my previous S class. The wheels are stock

Thank you!
We didn't get the chrome wheels in the UK. They wouldn't last long here with all the sault anyways
If it catches on speed bumps I might have to raise it a little bit more.
Tuning would be nice. Who wouldn't want more power but there's not many options here for tuning this cars.

Sam87

Yesterday I spent all day taking all the under trays and inner wheel arches off to clean the underside of the car. I started at around 11am and I was cleaning until 10pm.

No painting has been done yet and I will only do some minor touch up, paint the brakes and maybe a couple of other things. I don’t want to go too far with the underside this time

















forum pictures url













All the under trays put back.... I'll take some better pic's once the brakes are painted

CQHall

My humble opinion: I wouldn't bother with the facelift. I like the pre-facelift design...even the painted taillights.

SilverV12

Forgive me as I don't know- are the stock wheels 19s or 20s? Do you happen to know the style number? Would love to find a pair for my pre facelift s600!

JohnLane

221 and 222 S65 arrive with 20” wheels. Neither have enough brakes.

OP I gave my 221 S65 the same size wheels front and rear with same size tires. No more understeer. It rubbed a bit on front fender liners during parking. Now they can be rotated front to rear so you get the full mileage warranty on tires.

maw1124

Very heavy cars with big lumps at the front.

maw

Sam87

Hi,

I believe they are style 3 alloys but i'm sure someone will correct me if i'm wrong

Sam87

Heavy cars for sure but they are still very fast beasts

CQHall

Yup.

Coming from a W211 E55 (supercharged V8), I expected my S63 to be sluggish. It is not. It's heavy, no doubt, but the ABC II suspension helps it feel much lighter than it is. In fact, it feels more nimble than my E55 did with Airmatic.

Sam87

I’ve painted the brakes on both cars and here are the results,

I wanted to do a half decent job on the cars so I went to the paint shop and asked for some advise on what I needed to buy to good results.
I should have just done them like I normally do, just paint them silver and not go ott with it like I did this time but I thought i'd be brave and try something different.

I bought,

X3 primers

X3 white paint

X3 yellow paint

X2 silver paint

X3 lacquer

X1 black paint



It has been such a headache of a job as it took soooo long to strip and prep them. All the masking, painting and waiting for the paint to dry to use the other paints to finally have yellow calipers

I got told after using primer, I had to paint the calipers white and then yellow otherwise the yellow paint would look greenish.

Striping the paint off all the brake calipers, caliper carriers, sanding down and stripping the paint off the covers seemed like it took ages to do.

I spent 3 full days on each car just for the brakes alone. Either I’m slow or it really was a long job!

Here are some pics

Sam87

A longer update on this car compare to the S63AMG

Having old cars can be challenging at times but I still love both this cars and it might not make sense having two S classes that are the same shape just one is a facelift and the other a pre facelift car………for me they are so different, looks wise and performance wise.

I have been driving the cars on nice days and one Sunday I decided to take the S65AMG to a car meet that was nearly two hours away but by the time we turned up, the show had ended It was still a nice day to go out with the wife for a long drive so it wasn’t a wasted day after all, we still had fun apart from wasting nearly £50 on tickets we never used

Here are some pic's I managed to take once we arrived and 95% of people had left







The S65AMG started making some weird noise at random times, like a whining sort of sound that was louder inside the car. I couldn’t figure it out where this noise was coming from. Sometimes I thought it was coming from the engine bay but when I’d open the bonnet, I couldn’t hear anything and other times I thought it was coming from the rear of the car.

One day I put my ear next to the drivers wing and I could hear the sound very loud so I thought something had gone faulty inside the front wheel arch, some sort of a motor that I didn’t know was there but before I started taking the inner arch liner off I put my ear on the other wing and it sounded exactly the same! I was a bit confused.

I put the car up on the ramp and removed all the under trays and I was trying to figure out where this noise was coming from. After some time I realised that the noise was coming from the auxiliary water pump.

I ordered a new one from Mercedes..... While I was at Mercedes, I ordered an AC condenser as it had a leak on the S65.
The AC condenser was £800+ …. It took a month for the condenser to arrive from Mercedes in Germany

I also bought a genuine belt for the alternator and new pulleys.

A few months before that I bought new engine mounts and gear box mount from the dealer for both S classes as the V12 and the V8 like to destroy them due to the amount of torque this engines produce. I knew on the S63AMG they definitely needed doing but on the S65AMG they didn’t seem as bad. I still wanted to change them on both cars as I didn't know if they had ever been changed before.

I called my good friend that helps me out on the cars and to be honest, he’s the only person I trust to work on any of my cars. He helped me change the engine mounts on my old S600 as well and with that in mind we thought the S65AMG would be the same as in the S600 but there was some small differences..... nothing to big.

I should have taken some pics while changing them as it might help someone with a V12 if they wanted to give it a go.













The S65AMG is such a simple car to work on…….. who doesn’t like working on V12’s………… right!!!
To remove the AC condenser, you have to remove a million bolts, a few radiators and the whole front end just to get to it!
I did say it’s a simple car to work on didn’t I





















Once the ac condenser was done plus the alternator belt and the tensioners, we concentrated on changing the auxiliary water pump. We left the easiest job for last……….. well, we thought it would be easy but of course that’s never the case!



After changing the pump, we had to bleed the system but after trying for ages, we couldn’t get the water to circulate. It was nearly midnight so we left it there and decided to finish the car off the next day.

We pulled the car out in the morning and tried to flush the radiator as we thought that might be blocked. It was blocked but not too bad as we managed to unblock it but we still couldn’t get coolant to circulate. This is what came out of the radiator



We also removed the intercoolers as we thought it’s best to make sure they are not blocked. The intercoolers were not blocked but the one of the passenger side, we noticed the pipe was slightly bent which might restrict the flow. We fixed that.





While doing all this work we wanted to make sure that every pipe or anything else that had to do with the cooling of the turbos was not blocked or damaged.
There are two pipes that run under the coil packs. Could they also be blocked?

Of course they would be!

Drivers side was unblocked successfully but the passenger side wasn’t having it. After using a metal wire and trying to flush it, we finally saw water come out but not from the other end of the pipe.

The water was coming out under the coil packs. We thought we damaged the pipe when putting it under pressure.

To get to the pipe, you have to remove basically everything that’s on top of the engine including the coil packs.







Once removed, after looking at the pipe, I thought it was just blocked but I also noticed a tiny little hole and that’s where the water we saw was coming out from. I was trying to figure out how to maybe repair that small hole as I was inspecting the pipe.





Off I went to Mercedes to order a new pipe but seeing as the faulty pipe had corrosion, the other side must have had corrosion too even though we managed to unblock it so I thought it’s best I order both of them.

This was the good pipe





As always, every time I order anything for this cars, I have to wait ages for the parts to arrive as it seems like they come from Mercedes in Germany. After waiting a few weeks, the pipes finally got here in the UK.

Sam87

Looking at the condition of the metal pipes, we wanted to remove any pipes, hoses that had to do with the coolant system and make sure everything was cleaned.
Just look what came out from this pipes!







While I was waiting for the pipes to arrive and the car was in pieces, I thought I might as well order the ABC filter for both cars and new ABC fluid as that was another job I wanted to get done to the cars.
I ordered 20 litres of ABC fluid. I wanted to flush the system on both cars properly. If I’m not mistaken, the system has 5l of fluid.

The new coolant pipes were fitted and we started to put the car back together.







Once everything was on, there was more fun to be had……. Bleed the complicated system that Mercedes had designed for this car!
After getting all the air out, I took the car for a spin to make sure everything was good.

I have no words to describe the performance of this car! I thought it was fast before but by not having the auxiliary pump working properly, it seemed like it had an effect on the performance. The car felt like it pulled even harder now, a lot harder! I had read that the auxiliary pump makes a difference on the performance of this cars but I never thought it would make this much of a difference!

It made my stomach feel weird when the car went to second gear and it felt like this thing would take off if it had wings! I didn’t think I had concentrated as much before as I did on the first drive because you approach things very quickly! The s63amg is a fast car too but the way I can describe the performance between the two is, when I’m in the S65AMG, I feel like I can take on anyone ( although I know there are faster cars out there ), it just gives you more confidence, the kind of confidence that’s makes you believe not many cars will be able to keep up with you. I've had it for nearly a year and this car still surprises me with the way it picks up speed.

There was a car meet recently and I thought why not take both cars there! They got some attention and compliments which was nice to hear

Sam87

I wanted to see how the S65 would look with the 21's that I have fitted on the S63 but I prefer the 21's more on the S63 so I took them off again and put the oem 20's

cm60k

Waaaaa Sam, really AWESOME,,

Thanks a lot for sharing

(-;-ZAYED-;-)

Sam87

Thank you Zayed, appreciate your comment!

Sam87

A bit of un update on the S65.

I really like the original 20’s that the car came with but imo 21’s fill the arches better on the S class W221.

I love the AMG wheels that you get in the ML63AMG and GL63AMG.
I wanted a set from the moment I bought the car but they are so hard to find!

One day I checked on eBay and I saw a set that had just been put up for sale. I bought them straight away.

I ordered new tyres and I went for oem size that’s recommended for the w221 which is 245/35/21 fronts and 285/30/21 rears.

I raised the car a bit as it was too low when I was running the 20’s.

Ever since I had this wheels on my old S600, they’ve been my fav wheel for the S class.
Saying that I do love the wheels that I have fitted to the S63 also










I also changed all the chrome door trims that I had in the boot for over a year and that’s about it.



I have an updated for the S63AMG as well which will be revealed soon

Sam87

Another update for the S65.


When I bought the 21’s for the car, they were second hand and they had some imperfections. I told myself, I will leave them as they are because you could notice the imperfections only from up close and I thought I could tolerate that.

Well, it only lasted one month and I couldn’t look at the wheels in the state they were in so I sent them off to get refurbished

Before





After



I also lowered the car a bit more









Both cars together.... I gave the S63 a wash too