Ladies and Gentlemen:

Many of you have followed our development of power parts for M156 engine in the past several months.

https://mbworld.org/forums/w211-amg/202131-amg-63-r-d-1-a.html


Here are the first fruits of our effort.

Although AMG rates M156 from 475HP in CLK63 to 518HP in S63, in reality this engine is right around 505HP, as all cars make close to 420 HP at the wheels - (420/0.83 = 506HP).

VR530, as the name implies, brings 63s to 530HP/485TQ.

To assist us in testing the components we were graciously lended a beatiful, white CLS63 by local MBworld member - John.

As many of you know I am a big fan of underdrive pulleys (UD). I have made them for many cars from Fords to BMWs and of course MB. Typically, by reducing alternator, water pump and power stering pulleys weight and increasing their size, I have seen 5-12HP gains. Typically in first three gears as rotational inertia and gear multiplication have bigger effect on power reaching the ground. In all honesty we are not really adding power to the engine, we enabling more horses reach the ground.

On M156 power steering pulley is made out of plastic and is very close to power steering fluid reservoir. No gains to be had. Alternator and water pump, on other hand, are heavy, cast iron pieces with room to play. Using T6061 billet aluminum and increasing pulleys sizes by roughly 10% we cut stock pulleys weight by half.

UD pulleys were the first to be installed and dynoed. I was not expecting much gains, but I was pleasantly surprised. Although there was only a small 3HP peak gain, HP under the curve has come up, which helps acceleration.

2. HiFlow Air Filters.

Since it is very easy to swap out filters on 63s, we went ahead and installed our new HiFlow Air Filters and removed stock charcoal filters. The gains were impressive as 63 was being suffocated by the stock filters combination.



The biggest enemy of power is heat. As incoming air rises in temperature, it's density decreases and less power is produced as the result. Stock intake manifold is made out of magnesium and becomes a heat sink after just 10 minutes of driving. In my datalogging I have seen as much as 70F rise in Air Intake Temperature (IAT) above ambient (160F on 90F day). Under normal street driving IAT never gets closer than 25F to ambient air. After becoming heat soaked car noticeably lays down on power as timing gets retarded.

To help alleviate this problem, I have produced a set of phenolic spacers that insulate intake manifold from the cylinder heads and prevent heat transfer from the heads. As the result there is 15-25F reduction in IAT and a significantly more consistent car.

Phenolic Heat Spacers (PHC) come with two sets of intake gaskets and new manifold bolts.




Now, the next obvious question is - why not simply relocate IAT sensor up front where it can always recieve cool ambient air. Stock IAT sensor is mounted in inlet splitter elbow by the firewall. Without truly reducing IAT, relocating the sensor will result in false data going to DME and thus possibility of triggering knock sensors as more aggressive timing tables will be used with warm air.

Now, however, since we did lower IATs with Phenolic Heat Spacers, true IAT will be a lot closer to ambient. To relocate IAT sensor upfront we simply left original sensor in it's place, spliced an extension harness with water proof connectors and added another IAT sensor now mounted up front by the driver side foglamp.

On the dyno, 63 loved it. IAT was the same as ambient and added 3 degrees of timing pushed total gains to 24HP.


VR530

1. Underdrive Pulleys Kit - $239
2. HiFLow Air Filters - $179
3. Phenolic Heat Spacers - $289
4. Intake Air Temperature Sensor with relocating harness - $129

Total - $836, Package Savings of $87

$749

$999 Installed.