buckeyewalt

The guys with the "55" engine can get pully upgrades, headers, and ECU tune. I know that most of the tuners will say we will give you "up to XXX horsepower", and that's fine on a "55" engine where the boost could be played with and you can get those magical numbers. With a N/A engine, I have yet to see a tuner give you specifics on a actual horsepower gain +or-!
I really think that there is a lot more horsepower under the hood, but playing with the ECU is the key.
Is there a tuner that will commit to a specific number, or are we just SOL becasue of the work required to get the results? And with all of the tuners out there, for those who have had the experience, which one is trusted the most??

TREZ63

The 55K moter has been around for a few years now. Give it some time. Abviously they won't be able to do anything too crazy withe the 63 NA egine but there will eventually be an ECU that's reliable.

For now I'm staying away from the ECU upgrades, heard too many nightmares. I won't mention who ..

buckeyewalt

Thanks....thats what I kind of get here about ECU tuners....!!

I Like Soup

I'd say the most likely limiter to the 63's growth power wise would be the transmission.

buckeyewalt

you might be right about that, but I am sure that a 10% increase won't blow the transmission....it has to have some sort of reliability built into it!!

NickyBlack

Is the transmission that weak that it can't handle another 50-100 h.p?? It's only a 10-20% increase over stock.

Zax63

I'm convinced that a 3.06 rear gear would improve 1/4 mile times by 2 or 3 tenths. We are running a 2.82, E500s run a 3.06, but you'd need to reprogram the tranny. A shorter rear end wouldn't help a e55 as much because they already have such a hard time hooking up they are essentially traction limited on takeoff (without drag radials). Our cars need the low end torque help and in the quarter you shift into fourth with the rear gear we have, so a 3.06 would help you get higher up in the powerband in fourth and would get you into the powerband in all of the 1st three gears quicker as well. Vadim is working on this, as are a few others. Also, Vadim has a thread on making the 63 quicker, a project he is currently working on for all of us "just want a little more" types.

05VENOM

I think this whole 'transmission can't handle the power' is a load of crap. Torque would be more of an issue rather than horsepower.
The 63 engine is no diferent than any other. It is only a year old , give it time. There is always room for improvement at the intake and exhaust levels with ANY mass produced engine. Companies have to deal with smog and noise levels that put a restriction on what they can do. I think we could expect a realistic gain of 15-20 (roughly 550 at the flywheel) rear wheel horse when a high flow intake is developed to go along with an exhaust swap and computer/ecu upgrade.

rarfinancial

Hey Vadim, Where are you? is this true Do you need a lab rat? Air filters in yet?

Bluemax

+1

Goatspeed

+1

MUAHAHAHA <---- Member here

phoung

ECU..NIGHTMARES?!! WOW

buckeyewalt

I kind of agree with you to a point...I still don't think that the ECU has been fully looked at regarding additional horsepower, torque maybe, but not horsepower. If you look at the models being offered with the "63" engine, most have 2.65 rears, only the E63 and the CL63 are different. The CL has the same rears as we do but they have more horsepower 518 vs 507, the torque remains the same and so are the rears...the CLK, S63, and CLS all have 2.65 rears but power and performance is basically the same! I know back in the "old days", you couild fiddle with the jets in the carb, put different weights in the distributor so it would advance faster, etc, etc, etc...thats why I think no one still has "fully" explored the ECU as the single source for horsepower gain,a nd maybe a few lbs. of torque.

I know that Vadim is working his magic to get "real" power gains out of the 63 engine, however, I can't help but think that another 5%-15% lies in the ECU somewhere!!

jangy

I'd wait and let some of the mod freaks (G) do the R&D. I'd look for gains elsewhere, like the cooling. If you can get a system to cool the oil more quickly, then it will increase useable power PLUS reduce stress on the car. I'd still worry about the TQ convertor, 7g tranny, and TCU program to do too much. I'd almost think the car will "pull" back whatever you do for it.

stevebez

I was going to suggest fitting a 55K motor, with some minor tweaks - but that would be offsides to fellow AMG'ers...

Seriously though there wont be much you can do unless you got F/I of NOS.

I heard the next gen AMG will be a blown 550 Benz motor and not the 6.3 AMG unit.

dc63er

how bout these for oil

http://perma-cool.com/Catalog/Cat_page10.htm

or this for trans

http://perma-cool.com/Catalog/Cat_page05.htm

buckeyewalt

jangy..I hear ya, but I really think we have a fairly good system for our power already. The oil cooler is adequate, the transmission cooler is ok especially since it has a fan to help with the cooling....I still feel that useable horsepower will come from ECU tuning...IMHO...Maybe for a S/C engine cooling is the prime source for additional hp, but on a N/A engine its what you do with the fuel/air........ECU!!!

If the torque remains fairly constant, there should not be a problem.....again ECU.......like compairing the cl63/e63, same engine same torque, but the cl has more hp....and it seems that MB is comfortable with that!!

jangy

I ask you to take a vote of people who really run their 63s. A single 1/4 mile run has a dramatic effect and it is about 1/10th of a sec on each consecutive run. I only suggested it because I am hesitant to mess with the ECU on a 63 (warranty issues) and the cooling is intended to reduce stress and HP loss (real world).

I agree that the high compression motor can get a nice bump from timing, airflow, and fuel. Just be careful.

oldgixxer

I would think an ECU tune would be most beneficial AFTER modifying the intake&exhaust so it breathes better.If you get more air inside,then more fuel to go along with it is the key for HP&thats where an ECU flash would complete the tune.
Again,my only hands on experience with this is on my Jap sportbikes.They come from the factory making 165hp/per liter which is pretty damn high. Fattening up&re-mapping the fuel curve give minimal gains since nothing has been done to let the engine inhale more air.Adding a free flowing air filter&full exhaust and THEN re-mapping the ECU(by use of a dynojet powercommander)you can see pretty signifigant HP gains;8-12%.

I'm thinking this would be no different on our N/A 6.2L engines but I could be wrong

buckeyewalt

Where would you start looking at additional cooling....I mean how much cooler can it go? You can see that by my response that I am no cooling expert....so I leave it to those who know...I am VERY hesitant on messing with the ECU, no only because of warranty, but reliability issues as well! Maybe I just need to wait and see what comes down the pike....maybe we can get some of these tuners to chime in on what they see as the potential of the 63 engine.

Thanks for your suggestions.........!!

jangy

I'll let the 63 guys chime in on the "truth", but my take was that oil temps were climbing QUICKLY under load. Then, they were taking forever to drop back down. This is a very common phenomenon (oil heating on load) in the 4X4 world and I have seen many "kits" to alleviate it. You can add the volume of oil, which will add buffer capacity so that you could at least get a few blasts in before it fell off. To do so, you would simply get a bigger oil sump and or heat exchanger with bigger tubes.

Again, I am not comparing cooling mods to ECU ones on a 63. I just would NOT do too many performance mods on one yet.

MB_Forever

I agree with you. I ran my 63 at Fontana, and once oil temperatures were above 90 C, I lost a tenth on every consequetive run. Then whenever oil temperatures cooled to about 65 C, I (and all other 63s) were getting our best times.

MiamiAMG

No need to mention names of course, but what kind of issues?

TREZ63

Well MB will blacklist the car ASAP. And there is nothing you can do about it. The tuners will have you believe that it's undetectable but I challenge any of them to post their removal procedure and then you can decide if it will be detectable (63 removal procedure).

The issues I've seen have been with transmission. Again please don't PM me asking for who/where/what, if the people that had the issues want to I am sure they'll chime in.

As far as I am concerned, getting a .12 sec improvement on the 1/4 miles is just not worth the money/trouble/risk. (Rick's car has ECU + Headers + filter mod + drag radials) and his best time was only .12 better than the stock. Don't get me wrong, his car is amazing and sick, but you'd have a hard to convincing me he has more than 15 HP from the EDU if he's only gaining .12

The risk of getting blacklisted in basically worth about $10K to me, add the cost of the mods ($2K for ECU), I am just not seeing the benefit here guys.

jangy

Trez is right. It is an issue with the 63s.