So after 2 years of on and off again searching for a 65 I finally found one that I liked with all the options my SL55 had. 2006 SL65 with 43K miles, no accidents, pano roof, front and rear parktronic, distronic, black on charcoal, and designo. I'm the third owner, bought the car from a dealer in Redondo Beach, CA and had it shipped to Wilmington, NC after having it thoroughly inspected by a Mercedes dealer.

I'll be updating this post as progress goes and including reviews for the products and people I interact with along the way.

Delivery day:





Mod 1 was a single slat black with chrome edges grille from 55tech. Their pricing is good and shipping was quick. I originally ordered the black with glossy black edges grille then changed my mind and sent 55tech a message on ebay asking to change the order to the black and chrome. I got a response within the hour and it was no problem. eBay name was "jakuo" since I ordered from their ebay store rather than 55tech website.

Mod 2 was a carbon fiber front lip that I ordered from Jerry at formymercedes. Extremely nice guy that went well above what you'd expect from a vendor. The front lip is honestly the exact same lip for a SL55 so if you're looking for one it's ok to order one for a SL55. (I had a 03 SL55 just before purchasing the 65) Jerry's lip came with convenient holes drilled in the lower portion of the lip so you could fit a drill or whatever tool you were using to install. It also came with bolts and washers but since I had installed a front lip on my SL55 I just used self tapping screws. I was also on the fence about carbon fiber arrow style mirrors and Jerry sent me the only set he had in stock for free and if I liked them said to contact him and he would charge me then. The mirrors, like the front lip, looked amazing but I could not get the turn signals to work.

Mod 3 was lowering links I got off eBay 2.5 years prior that I had on my SL55.





Here's a few shots of the mirrors and how well they were packaged and the install.






Update

Mod 4, I changed the hood badge and steering wheel badge to the Affalterbach emblems. Got them from eBay, also got the rear deck badge but not sure how to install it as it comes with screws... The sellers eBay name was "japan_lighting" and the shipping time was average.



Mod 5, I put my RadEnergie R5's on. They are made in Germany and are 3pc forged, 20x9 with 265/30 Michelin Super Sports (front) and 20x11 with 305/25 Michelin Super Sport (rear). In these pictures you can see the after of having the car clay barred, waxed, and color corrected.





A picture of my friend with his E63 and my 65 at a car show:


Update 10/28/14

Mod 6, I went to a local muffler shop and had the mufflers cut off and straight pipe added with the factory tips welded back on. Makes a nice difference when you hit the loud pedal. I plan to go full custom 3.5" turbo back exhaust with a x-pipe/h-pipe hybrid that way I get enough scavenging and not cause to much turbulence with flow.

Mod 7, I got a carbon fiber rear diffuser installed with great pain. I got the diffuser from eBay seller "carbonfounder" and the shipping time was pretty good. The piece is nice and is a carbon overlay. I took the rear bumper off and once again used self tapping screws drilling from the inside of the bumper that way it was a clean looking install with no bolts/screws showing. The fitment isn't perfect but using the screws, like on the front lip, pulls the bumper to the diffuser making it look great!!




Hit the dyno today just to get a baseline before my custom intakes and tune are done. The car has no performance mods other than the muffler delete. 529.7whp and 674.3tq on pump 93, not to bad but need much more!!!




Update 11/05/14

Mod 8, I finally got pics of the custom "short ram" intake that I'm running for now until I widebody in February. It's 2.5" piping coming to a pair of HKS "death mushrooms". I absolutely hate the green filter and am hunting down an alternative, hoping to find a gray or black reload for the filters to replace the green. The piping is ceramic coated with air dry black velvet. I'm curious what you guys that have done intakes did with the sensors? If you look close I just have mine bolted down on each side of the module in front of the intercoolers.



In this picture the carbon cover and other cover are just laid up there to get the visual, hence the gap between each other.


Mod 9, half way through with powder coating my calipers. I picked the closet color I could find to the Petronas color on the Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 car. I'm a die hard F1 fan and Mercedes is having a fantastic year, team LH!! I was on the fence about getting an AMG stencil or the caliper decals then clearing smooth with high temp clear. In the end I went the decal with clear route since I've seen more success stories that way. Here's the progress so far.





Update 01/25/15

Sorry for the slow updates, a lot of traveling over the holidays also we had a lot of trouble getting the color on the calipers to come out right. Anyway here's a few more pictures of the powder coating. You can see the color really pops in the light and matches the Mercedes F1 PETRONAS color perfect.





Mod 10, Stainless steel brake lines all around. Here's a pic of the car on the lift during the caliper powder coating and brake line install.


Mod 11, Changed the center caps on my RadEnergie's again to these:


Mod 12, Also changed the valve stem caps again to the ones below. I got them from eBay seller "reaction_electronic" and they look great.

 

Nice setup and mods

 

Nice! Very interested to hear how the install of the new side mirror goes. It's a mod I want to make but there are too many non-fit stories around for me to pull the trigger.

BTW, the Quattroporte is quite nice too! ;-)

 

The mirrors Jerry sent me fit fantastic, I just couldn't get the turn signals to light up so I sent them back. The puddle lights would light up, so I tried wiring the signals to the puddle light power source and still nothing. If you look at your mirror and how the underneath is cut then get on eBay you can very easily see which style mirror you need.

 

I'm looking to sell my factory 19" wheels if anyone is interested please PM me.

 

more pics of the car's front end please!

 

Big update after hitting the dyno. Also put my factory wheels up for sale: https://mbworld.org/forums/wheels-ti...ml#post6211698

 

^^PM sent about the wheels. Very nice 65 BTW..... I'm doing similar cosmetic mods to my 08 55. 63 rear cover with CF diffuser, CF mirror covers, links (May do lowering module though), grill (mines all black).... Again, nice looking 65, like the new wheels too. Let me know bout ur stock wheels. Thx

 

looks nice!!!!

 

Thanks!! What gear are you other 65 guys doing your dyno pulls in and is there another way to get into dyno mode because the method in the diy section doesn't work for this car? It worked on my sl55 though. The intakes are done being fabricated and I'm ceramic coating them with air dry black velvet today. I hate the intake filters but it was a quick substitute until what I want gets here. Will post pics once they are back on the car. Won't have any dyno numbers for a few days because I started to powder coat my calipers and top hats the teal color from Mercedes F1 car and am waiting on the new seals to get here.

 

Update!!


Can we get the delete post option back please?

 

Updated the 1st post and reached the 40 image limit so here's 2 pictures of my 65 next to my old 55.

 

Looking good, must be a blast with all of that torque on tap! How difficult was it to remove the rear bumper? Do the exhaust tips touch the diffuser or is there sufficient room in between?

 

How is the quality of the hood and steering wheel badges?

 

All looks good so far except not sure about the caliper color. Do you have any more mods planned for the engine?

 

The hood and steering wheel badge look terrific. I will say I think the hood badge has yellowed some but for the price things like that are to be expected.

Here's 2 quick videos of the car on the rollers trying to sort out the eurocharged tune. It's breaking up really bad up top running rich enough to have fouled 4 plugs. Going to send Jerry and Phil the data and see what they can come up with. Sorry for the poor quality, I left the gopros at home so we were using iphones.

 

The rear bumper removal is honestly quite a job. Half the trunk liner has to be removed or shoved out of the way to reach the bolts. The tips never touched the diffuser but I had them centered back up yesterday because after putting on the diffuser they weren't no longer center. I'm comfortable with the room I have between the tips and the carbon now.

Yeah the color is going to be a love or hate type of thing. I went with it cause I like teal and it's on Mercedes F1 cars so it seemed cool to me. I just got the tcu tune with Eurocharged and it makes a night a day difference. Still no dct, smg, or pdk but worlds better than what it was. Also we're trying to work out some wrinkles in my tune also from Eurocharged.


Side note, I have been going back and forth with Jerry and Phil at Eurocharged since Halloween and have nothing but good things to say about the guys. There communication is great and it never took more than 30 minutes to hear back from one of them. There was about a week delay in getting my tcu sent back to me but 2 days after sending it to them I got an email saying that they could send it to me or just wait until they restock on ecu cables and send everything together so no complaints there. Phil also quickly helped me resolve an issue on my end why the tune wasn't flashing on, ended up being a bad driver on one of my computers. A quick install of the software onto another laptop and I was in business. I'll keep you guys posted on their customer service as we go back and forth on the tune.


Also, is there any chance one of you guys knows where I can get my hands on a Maintenance Schedule for this thing?

 

Nice...good luck in your future mods.

 

Get rid of the HAI and draw the air in front of the radiators. You should see a good bump in power and reduce heat soak. Car will probably run a lot better all around too.

 

euphoriaDSM - she's a beauty!

Thanks for the thorough write-up also. You and I have many similar mods including rear diffuser, lowering-links, ECU/TCU upgrades (mine's Modern Horsepower), new wheels (mine's BBS), etc.

I have been considering a CF front splitter but was unsure if the formymercedes would fit properly having been told the SL55 and SL65 splitters were not compatible - guess they are. I'll be ordering mine soon.

Having a Diamond Silver car, I'm uncertain how the Black Grill 1-Fin syle will look on my 65. That said, after seeing yours I'm leaning towards ordering one!

I've got the AMG badges on my E55 and may soon order ones for the 65 also. What size did you use for the steering wheel and how did you mount it?

Keep up the posts - again, she's a beauty!

 

I agree with you, it looks like you are choking the motor along with feeding it hot air. The piping you have made is on the narrow size and the filter is restrictive with small surface area to draw from. Maximizing the pipe diameter feeding the turbos will help the little turbos spin in the high RPMs. Increasing the filter's surface area will allow the air to enter the filter at a slower velocity before it enters the pipe back towards the turbos. I realize the SLs are cramped for space, but a few have made some success with custom setups. Here is a link to mine:

https://mbworld.org/forums/cl55-amg-...e-version.html

Otherwise looks good keep at it!!!

 

I could be wrong, but the dyno videos sounds as if you are shutting it down early at around 4500rpms? Did you make any pulls with the green filters off?

 

I already have plans to dump that intake, I'm just waiting on the couplers to get here. I plan on running something very similar to Thericker's intake setup. As for shutting down early, yes, the car was breaking up up top worse and worse on each pull. Eventually ending with some misfire codes due to running pig rich and fouling some plugs. If you listen for it you can hear the car sort of hesitate and bog in the videos. Again the engine mods are muffler delete, that hai, tcu tune, and ecu tune and with it breaking up horribly it managed 794wtq and a sad 596whp on a superflow. A dynojet would have read plus or minus 5whp because with my 1031awhp eclipse I've only seen a 5hp difference between the two.

 

If you want to see a nice silver SL with a single slat grill just to get the visual go to some old threads of kamilclk430 circa 2011 threads I believe.

 

Glad to hear, I have catless downpipes with stock mufflers. I managed 645rwhp on a dyno-jet. 550rwhp and 684 rwtq on a mustang dyno. This was also with the latest Eurocharged tune. My personal best time in my signature was with the previous EC tune (stock exhaust and airboxes). As you have mentioned, they are a real good group of guys.