Luke, $100k? that's a lowball figure IMO, I would be suprised if he could complete this for under $150k, he used the word ti and stand alone ecu, not counting the price of the SLK and 63 donor motor, he's gonna have do headers, manifold, heads, cams, valves,intake/TB/fuel runners, pistons, rods, crank, suspension, tranny, axles, rear-end and a motec standalone. If he does ot for $100k or less I will be stunned...hell you know what's done to my car and I'm at $75k in mods and I have not even cracked my bottom half open yet.

I agree with you on the SLK being a silly choice to drop this monster into, SLK is a terrible chassis and the weight balance is going to be a joke, but it will be fast as hell in a straight line. Drop in in a CLK BS as you mentioned or an SLS, if he started with an SLS he would be saving lots of money on tranny and rearend and axle mods (SLS stuff can handle 700rwhp) the chasis is stout and the motor is dry sumped. He's probably into the SLK and 63 donor motor for at least $50k, drop another $120k on the SLS and save $50k on other mods and your only about $20k in the hole with a 1000% better chassis.

 

The SLS is a piece of crap IMO. It's a poor representation of the original gullwing and the modifications to the 63 motor I feel are too restricted. The original plan was to get a 300sl roadster replica, but $500k on a real or $200k on a replica chassis wasn't in the cards.

Remember that the plan for this car isn't to be the world's road-racing champion of the world. It's just a fun project. If it was supposed to be a full on race car then of course a different chassis would be used...or perhaps a full tube with carbon drapes. This will be race inspired, but not fully race built.

As for balance, the 63 motor is already lighter than a 55 motor and tubing parts of the chassis is in consideration if it does become an issue. Dry-sump will also be helping relocate weight. Strengthening a frame isn't hard when you have car stripped down to its core.

Motec is an option, but not the only one. Just as Brembo isn't the only brake company. Many of the components being used aren't going to be what most forum members are used to hearing about. Racing parts rarely get the forum presence that bolt-on part companies do since custom fabrication tends to be a bit too expensive for most. The guys working on individual components of this project aren't your run of the mill 'one-stop-shops'. They're experts at their fields, most with racing team wrenching experience with the likes of indy, nascar, rally, trophy trucks, and direct factory racing teams like TRD.

Flow testing parts came in so head work should commence shortly. Thanks for following and enjoy

 

Since we're both in LA - do you mind telling me who you're working with ? I've been involved with a couple race teams here in LA so we prob know the same people...PM me if you want to keep it under wraps.

Best,

Luke

 

This sounds so much like dear, departed Andy used to write.

 

So the SLS is a piece of crap.....Hmmmmmmm, it might not be the total package or ultimate race car but it is far from crap and it is 10 times the car any SLK can or will be. You are wrong about the balance, a 63 is lighter than a 55k but it is not lighter than the 55 motor than came in the SLK55. the SLS has some beefy stuff on it, already proven stuff but if you want to spend thousands reiventing the wheel on a car that will never handle properly have at it. I've got news for you, you are not the first person to look into these types of mods for a 63, I am currently kicking around the idea of boring and stroking mine to a 7.1 liter and if I do I can promise that I will have less money wrapped up in mine and it will be a far superior handling vehicle because I started with the proper chasis.

 

Some one just please get me a set of proven cams.. I 'm still waiting.. Jim let me know what you find on the 7.1 stroker kit. Group buy

 

I know what you need... You need to make a phone call to Rich. lol

 

will do...

 

7.1

 

We're just so crazy

 

Are you trying to instigate some sort of forum **** fest for some reason? Why would you be trying to complain about a project that delivers knowledge that would be beneficial for your own engine? If you've bothered to read the intent of this car, it's not supposed to be the worlds greatest sports car. It's supposed to be a fun and highly modified n/a powerplant/powertrain into a little itty bitty chassis whose requirement is a convertible.

The next closest vehicle that fit the profile was a CLK DTM convertible which wasn't even under consideration because, no offense, I really don't like the body style of the CLK. But to each their own and I understand. You wouldn't be the first person to recommend a clkblack to start with. The only style CLK that I like is the CLK GTR which blows this little project out of the water.

The engineering behind squeezing significantly more power out of the 6.2L motor is the key. The chassis is cheap by comparison and replaceable once the motor and powertrain are defined. Once all is done, it’s easily replicateable or transferrable to whatever tube or stock chassis wants it. If I wanted a 'bang for the buck' model, I'd beef up a 55 motor and turbocharge the crap out of it.

To address 3 things that you mentioned which don’t make any sense:
1) The SLS only produces 563 horsepower. Adding 150-250 isn’t going to make it happy. Think about what would need to get modified to accommodate that. The SLS ‘wheel’ certainly isn’t relevant to what this project entails.
2) If you’ve seriously considered boring and stroking your motor then you’d know that that alone isn’t good enough to get 700+ hp nor would it be remotely cheap to do.
3) You say you’ve spent $75k on mods. I’d be interested to hear what you’ve done.

I understand that you like you car, everyone should, but attempting to bag on someone else’s build is just sad. If you think your car is so wonderful, I’ll gladly set up a time trial race with my POS slk when it’s done at a road course against your CLK. pink slips perhaps?

 

I know you want to modify a 63, but it would be a lot easier to install a 55K into an SLK 55. Not to mention you can get more power from a modded 55K than a modded 63 N/A.

Nice! A call out with pink slips!!

 

OH snap! A call out from an imaginary car,

 

Bro, I'm not trying to start a **** match, I am just making a few suggestions that would have saved you some time and money. I don't think the CLK nor the SLS is the greatest looking car on the planet but the BS comes with a rearend and axles that can handle 700rwhp, trust me in this I have vids of my car on the dyno posting close to 650rwhp on a 100 shot of nitrous and run my car with that set up at the drag strip on slick and have yet to snap an axle or break a rear end. The SLS has similar rear end and axles and beefy tranny internals than the Black Series. You would have saved time and money and headaches on these things not to mention suspension that can handle what you are talking about right out of the box as well as not having to make body mods to accomidate rubber that can handle the type of power tou are talking about. SLS TB and intake can feed a stroked 63 motor and the SLS topend is a pretty nice set up for oem emmisions legal stuff.

I think your project sounds cool and if you look back I was the first person to back up and support your claims. There are a TON of 63 haters on this board and they all told me I was nuts when I started modding my Black Series and that it could never compete with the tunes 55s out there...well I proved them wrong and made believers out of most of them. So no, I'm not trying to start a war but some of your answers and replys seemed a bit condescending, there are lots of people on this board with tons of knowledge and experience...more knowledge than you and I combined, trust me on that one. My only point was an SLS would have probably been a wash on costs and saved on headaches and hassles and that my friend is priceless IMO. I wishh you sincere good luck on this project, I am a huge fan of the 63 powerplant and will be eyeing this closely.

 

I don't understand why every one is giving this guy such a hard time. His money his project and his time is involved not ours. Azncarjunkie good luck with the build and keep up the great write ups.

Sent from my IPHONE

 

I might just take you up on your offer, I guess you just made my decision for me...I guess I will be doing the stroker motor sooner rather than later. Let me know when your project is done and where I should ship my car for this race, I would prefer wheel to wheel but I will play by your rules a make it a time trial. If you have a salvage title all bets are off.

 

And awaayyyyy we go!!!!

 

Interesting project and as I said before you may need more than luck.... I hope you prove me wrong I reallly do.

2 maxxed out 63's up against each other ought to be fun - anyone running a book yet?

Who is gonna do the 55TT - come on there has to be someone?

 

You have still not verified if you are looking to attain 700-800 crank or rwhp...as you know there is a big difference. A bored and stroked 63 motor will make well over 700 hp at the crank, as I already stated you can get NA 550rwhp (about 650 crank) out of a a 63 motor with the following mods

Longtube headers and exhaust
Cat Delete
100 octane ECU tune
SLS heads cams TB and intake
Pulley

If you want to eek a few more ponies out of it you can go with even hotter cam lobes(non-emisions legal), I just thought going with readily available, already proven bolt-on SLS stuff would be the easier, headache free route.

Once again, the SLS gives you a great base from which to start. It's got great heads, cams intake compared to any other 63 on the market, it's dry sumped, the tranny, rear-end and axles can handle the HP you are talking about and most importantly minimal chassis mods will be needed. I get the fact that you like the SLK and thats great, I was just bringing up a few points that are very logical but you seemed to want to argue. I'm not sure how long you have been tinkering on AMG or 63's but I have about 3 years of tinkering on 63's under my belt and you are not the only person with "hook-ups" with race shops and such, the tech that regularly wrenches on my car is a former McLaren F1 team member and spent time working for AMG before that. There are guys on this board who have pushed the limits of their 55's and 65's and a couple of us who are getting close on the 63's so please don't come on here infering that none of us know anything about our cars and getting pissy when we pose some logical questions. Most of your answers and responces have been condescending and smug and to be perfectly honest we are all to familar with these types of posts and projects claiming to make outrageous HP and then the projects just peter out and the OP's fall off the face of the earth, there are a small few of us that actually follow through on our projects and goals. basically what I am saying is TALK IS CHEAP!!!!

 

I just think most people are skeptical when they read about these big HP builds. There's been hundreds of these threads started, and probably less than a handful of these projects actually get completed. Even people with enough money and resources have failed.

I know of a Crossfire owner that installed a Mercedes V8, which fit fine. I believe the Crossfire has the same engine bay as an SLK. He used the donor cars wiring and electronics. It actually worked, and he's planning on turbo charging it down the road.

 

Yeah, that things crazy. From what he said programming was a b***h though.!!

 

Yeah, they had to code it as a SLK500 with a Chrysler VIN. He had to work with a specialist that did the coding because it was all in German. The V8 install was the easy part. Getting the electronics to play nice was another story.


He's started working on the turbo upgrade now, so that should be interesting.

 

I spoke with the guy who did the swap and also the guy in france who is a hardcore programming enthusiast. Super nice guys they both are and incredibly helpful and willing to share what they know. Funny thing is that he thought the electronics were to blame for most of his headache when it turned out to be old fuel in the lines. If you ask him now, he’ll tell you the electronics were relatively easy .

And to Mr. jrcart, I’ll try to be brief, not to be rude, but for the sake of making this easier to read.

If you read back carefully, you'll see that nowhere did I say or even imply that people on this board don't know anything. Can you find an instance in which an inference of such is made? What is interesting is that there is this group of 'people' that damned you when you were building out your 63, yet here you are standing amongst that same crowd damning someone else for carrying out their own build. I hope you realize that other forum members simply see you as condemning someone as a “liar” because other people have failed in their builds previously which is simply you stereotyping anyone who has a project to ‘go big’.

If you were here truly to help then you would at a minimum compare apples to apples and at least first understand what the purpose of this build was (big motor, little convertible chassis)

A few points to clarify and that I also ask you to clarify:

1) The SLS powerplant and drivetrain is a nice OEM car, but it can’t handle a 700-800hp motor. Even to modify an SLS to that level of horsepower requires modifying almost everything I already am anyway, so why start with a more expensive platform that I don’t even like. That project would be more expensive than mine for sure.
2) Are you implying that doing a dyno run or 10 second blast down a drag strip 'proves' that a car will be reliable with 700RWHP at a racetrack? AMG 65’s and Brabus' cars don't think the 7 speed is good enough for their cars, then I certainly don't think so for mine. Even if it did work at 700, what if I’m able to get 800+hp out of the motor?
3) I measure horsepower IMO, the only real way an engine should...On an engine dyno where we don’t have to guess what the powerplant is doing. 7-800 is an estimate based on the mods that I’ve planned.
4) What in the world did you spend $75k on in mods??
5) You are correct. Talk is cheap and I look forward to seeing a thread on progress with your 7.1 stroker motor soon. Racetrack will be streets of willow in socal.
6) You only think my answers are condescending and smug because I don’t agree with your recommendations. I started this thread to share my findings with the forum and to answer questions about my build. Not to defend my choices of equipment from what initially appeared to be random thoughts rather than thorough considerations to my build.

 

I'm not sure about "easy", but I think everyone was surprised he was able to get the electronics working without much hassle once Beckmen(?) got involved.

I wish you all the best. I'm sure you've seen the SLR engine that was transplanted into a SLK? Was that the inspiration for your project? I believe that car was supposedly putting out close to 700hp at the crank with a 7-speed.

 

Haha, He's probably just talking about how easy it would be for him to do now vs. then. I forgot about Beckman, thanks for reminding me about him. There was another guy, Karim that he gives a lot of credit to. I give those guys mad props for really digging into figuring out how the OEM ECU works.

The SLR engine into the SLK was slightly influential in this build. I thought of doing a 55k and just tuning it up to be like an SLR motor, but figured it had already been done. Also, I really like the engineering behind the 63 motor and thought it a fun project especially since MB/AMG won't put the 63 motor into the slk chassis and I hadn't yet read or heard of any hardcore build-outs with the m156.

According to the MB tech guy (Dan) @ slkworld, the transmission in the slr-slk isn't the stock 7 speed. Dunno the validity of it, but I can't imagine it being since the 'normal' SLR uses the 5 speed also (in both the standard and 722 version that has 640 hp). Renntech did some pretty hefty mods on the SLR to go over 700hp at which point I believe they strengthened the tranny and put in a new LSD. Didn't look into the details of that either, but it seems pretty clear that the 7 speed won't work for what I want.

Thanks for the good wishes.