jangy

No, they would only help adjust toe. What it all comes down to is the flex (mainly bushings) that is in the rear end when traction is increased along with power mods. Under "normal" circumstances, a good launch will make the rear wheels toe out slightly. As the rear flexes, the diff starts to flip flop and you get was is like a squirly feeling in the rear. This is a major reason why we can not run 305s without mods. You can get it to fit perfectly, but the tire will rub on the subframe and explode without TOE link supports.

For reference, RennTech sells them as well. In this case, the intent was to go BEEFY!

Sunir

ahh ok gotcha. Do you think this would effect and SL55 during launch as well since we can run 305 in the rear without any rubbing issues? Or are these toe links more benefical for e55 cars?

brad @ evosport

FYI, we just released our arms.....


(click to go to the e-class w211 post on this).

As to the reasons why:

Kit Features:

- Lightweight adjustable arms
- High quality heim joint design for length adjustment
- Black powder-coated chromoly shaft provides high strength to weight ratio
- Jam nuts allows for easy lock/unlock of adjustment mechanism; relieves stress on shaft during adjustment
- Black anodized billet mounting bracket

Benefits:

- Easy to install and adjust
- Allows for precise and accurate adjustment of rear toe during alignment
- Provides stability and more control during acceleration and cornering at all speeds
- Added safety to reduce over-steer and increase rear control
- Decreases wear on rear tires by providing more rear end stability
- Improved performance during acceleration and cornering

Here they are on our page.

thanks
brad

rarfinancial

Lookin good Brad !

jangy

They rock in the SL for two reasons. First, you mentioned added traction (305s PLUS the weight is above the rear tires) and second a more square wheelbase (less straightline stable). Even stock E55s show a difference.

jangy

Thos look cool, Brad!!

Haha!! I didn't know EVO was still into the W211!! Any more products (arms) coming? The front camber would be MINT!!

Brad is absolutely correct on the additional advantages of the toe adjustment. A slight toe out will give you quicker turn in (especially on these pushy cars) and gets the rear around better. They also wear the tires more evenly, since more of the tire scrubs on the road.

I'm still very interested in the strength. I'm hoping to finally see some AMGs with enough power and traction to start breaking things!!


Has anyone tested them out? I'd love to give them a run.....

Sunir

I definately see the advantage of this upgrade on a road course car, especially with bushing wear and flex over time effecting rear toe settings...but on a street SL55 which goes on the dragstip a handful of times a year, lowered by Star so not too aggresively lowered...and with factory toe settings I don't know how this would be tremendously advantageous/needed although I do see how it makes a difference as Jengy pointed out...I think the deflection would not be so dramatic, any thoughts?

Brad care to share some insight... as fellow BMW CCA club racers you know we used these as one of the first mdifications on the prepaqred class race cars back in '04 ... hope all is well for you guys, Simon, Jon Holder and the rest

brad @ evosport

Yep, still working on a few things. You know us, we don't really announce them till they are ready! lol

The front is something that is on the "near future" board though!

Yes, these are a huge advantage. Have you seen our BMW ones:



We find nearly all the modern cars have huge toe problems under severe load (drag launches, road racing changing pavement/arc, rough roads, etc). These are one step to just eliminate some of the "cush" that Mercedes builds into the cars.

Thanks
Brad

jangy

Well done!! I know I loved the rear end when it finally got toe and camber adjusted. I never did get to do the front, though. Handling will be awesome (as an Orca can be) with being able to lower the car and have the contact patch down.

blackbenzz

Come on jangy, I've been breakin stuff for a while without all this stuff and get plenty of traction! I haven't even launched my car off the stall yet

jangy

Bro, if you like to hit a nice WOT run on any surface and with or without turns, stronger TOE links are KEY. The oem ones come with a slight curve and are hollow. They work almost like a bow, but the issue is that they are their stiffest once "loaded". Strong toe links are already loaded, so to speak and so power is transferred differently. The added traction and stability keeps the diff from reacting and giving the weak wobble that we get.


If you do not know what the wobble is, try to reproduce it first. Maybe your car doesn't do it but I finally got pretty good at launching 55s and can even get them to wobble when doing a role on WOT.

In summary, 2 advantages. First is the ability to adjust TOE, which as you say may be more for the track minded or those that like to ride lowered. The second is the strength. I can't speak to the EVO design because this is teh first I see them and i have no clue about metals used or design but I do know that stiffer toe links make an instant difference in feel, ride, handling, and tire wear.

Knowing EVO, these are also beefier and would serve the second purpose as well, but maybe Brad can comment. Damn, I hate to see someone work on the handling of the W211 without me!! All the crap I got / get for trying to make a boat turn and now these beautiful arms....

Sunir

Adjustable RLCA do make a difference for sure; I've used them on my BMW M3Ltw race car...Brad and his dad campaigned one in the same class years ago; I started racing in '04 w/ BMW CCA, NASA GTS etc..and have seen the advantages of upgraded componentry on road course race cars for sure.

On the SL55 I'm not too concerned about handling, although the car handles fairly well you need to know how to drive it as it has considerable corner entry understeer as well as mid corner instability; although you can trail the throttle very well on this car. I'm more concerned with straight line performance on the SL55...I think I need to feel this wobble and see what that's about; things like wheel hop/axle wrap concern me with the present rear suspension geometry under hard acceleration and launches and I've thought about these being an instability consideration on launch; perhaps the rear trailing arm bushings (RTAB) factor in here as well. Brad care to shed some light on this...interested in hearing your thoughts.

Jengy what kit do you have for the rear toe issue? Do you have a link I can go to? I'd like to learn more and appreciate your insight and thoughts

brad @ evosport

Sure, but I am by no means the MBZ expert here as Simon knows more than I.

That being said, it is simply a matter of eliminating unintented toe out. Think on your BMW when you go from an oval to a flat or off-weight the car, the stock lower rear front trailing arm bushings allow too much flex and the car goes from toe-in to toe-out. That is why people added stiffer RTAB's or added the Ground Control shims.

This is the same situation, but different suspension gemotery. These arms will prevent the rear suspension from "flexing" in hard power situations or off-camber/changing surface conditions. The arms sacrifice a tad of the "cush" that MBZ built in while adding much increased stability.

Everytime you hammer the throttle from a stop (ie: stop light or drag) the stock arms flex, which absorbs energy and minimizes the transfer to the wheels while toeing the rear wheels out. The result is less efficient energy transfer, less grip, less predictability and over a slower launch.

Ours are new to the market, and in our opinion are a refinement from what was available. They addressed a few areas that we were not happy with on the ones that were available. That being said, any arm is better than stock!

Thanks
Brad

jangy

I ran the MBarts ones and they are STIFF!! I dunno if EVO tried that style and assume Brad means of the options available to the distributors, etc. to which I would agree. RennTech has had theirs out for the longest, but I wanted something beefier and with better clearance for changing geometry. That is where MBArts worked with me to develop those arms. I know they are available but don't know that they have a strong theorhetical discussion on the issue.


Real life, I get what you mean. You would think that a little straight line fluff would help with traction and that adding metal to metal would make the rear stiff leading to skip, etc. But, the reality with the 55k cars is that we have a hard time getting great launches, especially as we trick the cars. We can only go so wide on tires, so we have to rely on other ways to get traction.
Controlling toe under hard acceleration is a huge way to control the contact patch you lay down. More than that, the bushing we are talking about is a "break away" by design. Do a search and you will find that the weak link of these rear ends are these bushings. As they wear and you get more play, two things can happen. You can jerk the subframe around enough to finally pull a bolt OR the bushing can come out as you are cruising and the next thing you know your rear wheel is aimed 90 degrees off.

No doubt these are extremes but it tells you the weak link in this setup.

jrcart

Rick, you're just figuring this out now? Why the hell do you think I stopped posting on this site? There was always a handful of bustouts pointing fingers and trying to provoke people into a flame war, I'm not going to use any names but it's always the same 4 or 5 guys, we all know who they are.

I've PM'ed you as well as spoken to you in person about your car. We have the same motor and very similar mods however I am running nearly a second quicker than you, your slight weight disadvantage should not cost you a second. No offense but you are all over the place with your mods, IMO you don't spend enough time researching your mods and tunes and when you get them installed you don't use the right methods of testing and proving/disproving them. I've known you a couple years now and I think you have actually had more combinations of mods on your car than I have (or at least close). I notice you're usually changing a bunch of stuff at one time, IMO this will never show what kind of net HP gain/loss a mods makes. Change one thing at a time and test it on multiple dynos and multiple track days to gauge if it was a worthwhile mod or not. If you change 2 or 3 things at once and go out and gain 10rwhp or 1/10th you have no what mod to attribute the gain to. I have made a handful of mods on my car that actually hurt my performance, but this was easy to see and easy to fix because I knew exactly what had changed, there was no guesswork involved. You need to step back and start over, make one change at a time, there is no reason your car should not be running at least 11.0's right now. Before you go and dump a bunch more money into your car on mods you have already paid for only to keep spinning your wheels is a waste of time and money. Feel free to call me or PM me, I have these 63's figured out, I have documented every change on my car and have corrisponding dyno sheets and in most cases track slips to show what gains/loss were noticed. I thought you already had headers on your car, these new headers are not going to give you significant enough gains to warrant the cost. I have witnesses back to back to back longtube header tests on a C63 and the variations in peak HP was less than 2rwhp between the three and torque curves were nearly identical...what I am saying is your current lack of performance has nothing to do with your current headers.

Don't let the forum b!tches get you down, don't let them spoil your hobby, I've been down that road and the losers are not worth it.

MB_Forever

Hey Jim.... when are you hitting the track next? Any new numbers?

c32AMG-DTM

^This is solid, thoughtful advice, and a generous offer to chat further about it offline. Kudos to you, jrcart.

Thericker

rarfinancial

I hear you Jim. I do mod changes some times just to put a new product on my car for testing. I like to help out shops trying out new things. I also just like trying out new mods. Over all I have hundreds of slips and a LOT of dyno graphs. I know for the most part what gains are what. Like I said in one of the posts above ," I will run this latest setup at least at 10 track days" that way I will know what it can do and I will have the launch down.. Thanks for the offer. I'll take you up on it.. Now you know why I usally PM you

jrcart

I hope you did not take my post as me being critical of you or the fact that you are always testing new stuff, I think it's great you are not affraid to try new stuff. As most of us know I am always trying to get to that next level of performance and ALWAYS testing new stuff as well...some of it ends up in the scrap pile in the back of my warehouse and others stay on the car. All I'm saying, and I might be wrong, but it seems you change a few things at once and hop from shop to shop and tuner to tuner, when you don't get the results you wanted or expected you change a bunch more stuff never really taking the time to take an extra close look at what contributed to what. As I already stated there is no reason your car should not be running at least 11.0's, changing to a new set of headers is not going to get you there, I would be suprised if you net more than 3rwhp with these new headers over your old ones. If you decide you absolutely need these new headers be sure to run a baseline with your existing headers and mods for comparison and DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING ELSE BESIDES THE HEADERS, MAKE NO OTHER CHANGES OR MODS to gauge what gains you realized with the new header design. I promise you the headers are not your problem, these new headers will not give you 1/10th on the strip over your current set-up. Please note, my headers comment is not trying to dis-credit or disrespect the person/shop building your new headers, they look like fine headers, all I am saying is there is probably not going to be a night and day difference between them your current headers unless your current headers are seriously flawed in design. IMO to drop another $????.?? (unless they are free)on them at this point of the game seems like a waste, at least until you get the other stuff figured out. There has got to be another flaw somewhere in your set-up that is holding you back, PM me a list of your mods, I would like to compare your set-up to mine, mine seems to be working well

jrcart

Who you calling B!tches Kunt-Cart??

Funny, I don't recall mentioning any names...guilty conscience have we???

Jakpro1

Wazzzzzzuuuppppp Jim!!!

How you been man.

Can't wait to see what you do with the new twin turbos coming out.

Hope all is well!

blackbenzz

I thought he had a SL65 Black Series on order a while ago. That should be a monster! Despite our differences I still love to see people pushing the MB performance envelope and Jim certainly does that

MB_Forever

+100000 on changing too many things at once. I have talked to Rick about this in the past, as I was concerned that going through so many different configurations may end-up hurting his performance. I literally saw him go through so many tunes, different ECUs, wheels/tires, suspension setups, and even different NOS configurations all in one track session and in a matter of few hours

However, Rick loves it and is always very charismatic about it, which makes the journey an even more enjoyable one

Rick, you need to slow down a bit and start changing one thing at a time so we can at least get a chance to follow you

Thericker