Beautiful - I love the way that came out. It would make one hell of a coffee table! Anyway, if you don't mind me asking, what should one expect to have work like that done on one of these? Also curious why you chose to rebuild it. Thanks - looks great!

 

Bit too expensive for a coffee table. LOL! I rebuilt the engine so that I could make sure it runs perfect before I get on with other mods (mainly Weistec s/c). There were a couple of oil leaks and one of the heads was warped too - all this discovered after the engine was out.

To answer my own question on the break in oil. I did some research and most companies couldn't confirm 100% if their oil is fully compatible with our alusil bores. Brad Penn, Liqui Moly, etc. I wanted to make sure I put the correct oil after carrying all this work so cutting a corner with just an off the shelf break in oil was not an option for me. Pretty much everyone I spoke to kept insisting I contact Mercedes-AMG for the confirmation. I even spoke with engine specialists at Brabus and Vaeth and both said they use fully synthetic, service oil in their cars during the break-in, not a special break-in oil. After giving AMG a call I was given an email to send my request to: amg-technik@daimler.com.

It only took AMG a couple of hours to come back with a list of fluids and oils recommended for our cars: http://bevo.mercedes-benz.com/bevoli...ets-sort1.html

I spent some time going through the list trying to find anything relevant and indeed, there was a document for engine oils: http://bevo.mercedes-benz.com/d/d/en/Spec_221_0.pdf

Interestingly enough Page 7 of above file contained information on break-in oils. However, what I was looking for - a table with engines and approved break in oils - wasn't there. Instead there was a reference for yet another document (223.1) which is not available in the big list of specifications AMG emailed first. Here's what it said on page 7:
So I fired up my copy of WIS and found said document 223.1 just to be met with yet another obstacle: the table for AMG engines had no approved oil listed. Instead there was this:
And that's it.

I tried looking up this specification online but to no avail. Again O emailed AMG asking to provide any insight on that specification and oils approved for M113K. 2 days later, I received a reply: I feared it would come to this. AMG email support couldn't/was not willing to dig any further so tried to brush me away. Not willing to give up I asked my local main dealer to help. And it paid off. My copy of WIS is not up to date so the information I found in the above document 223.1 was not very helpful (just to remind):
Dealer's WIS had more. They also decoded mysterious "DB" in the quote above. It stands for Daimler Benz. Not a lot in it but it's good to know that it's not a "database" or something else.

Anyway, here's the excerpt from dealer's WIS:

Second sentence basically confirmed that I wouldn't be able find anything in WIS due to engine being basically obsolete. And so we're back to square 1. No info in WIS, nothing from AMG folks or from oil manufacturers. At least some help from Brabus and Vaeth engineers to go by.

Then the mechanic who worked on my cars had a brilliant idea - M275. Essentially, a block from the same era, with same alusil coated bores as in M113 and still in production. The rest was pretty easy. According to 223.1, the approved break-in oil for M275 is 225.10 or Mercedes p/n A 000 989 78 01 10 (note the 10 in the end).

Mercedes describe this oil as
which Google translates from German as "Initial Operation of engine oil" or "break-in oil" as confirmed by the main dealer.

 

Alusil is not a coating. It's a high silicon aluminum where as a special honing process with a Sonnen machine brings those silicon molecules to the surface. By doing this, it makes the bore very hard and resistant to wear. However, Nikasil is a coating some manufacturers use instead of the Alusil bores. It makes the process of piston selection much easier since with Alusil you must run a coated piston in the bore and Nikasil does not require the coating.

Glad you found the right oil for the break in process. Too bad AMG was giving you lip service.

 

I need to bring you some questions to your engine builder here. I come from another auto community with alusil bores.

Alusil is NOT a coating. It is the block material. It has a high concentration of silicon crystal structures when it is cooled after casting.

With this silicon, the boring and honing process in the final stages works to chemically wear away the aluminum and only leave the crystal structure of the silicon behind.

With that said, an alusil bore should NOT looks like it has a "cross hatch" pattern. It actually more has a dull-matte mono-color finish.

This is just the internet, I am just a guy, very far from you, talking about this - but I must stress how much you need to be careful -

The picture you are showing of your bores looks VERY VERY WRONG. Also, you are mentioning that someone said they used a "stone" on the bores. Final honing (technically lapping) with alusil is specifically with an AN-30 paste and FELT PADS. It does not materially change the dimensions of the bore from the previous last boring stage.

Again - NO stones, no "dingleball" hones with alusil. FELT PADS. AN-30 paste.

You may not give crap what people say on the internet - but spend some time on the research for this before you put that engine together. It DOES NOT look right if those are the stock alusil bores.

 

Post number 6 in this thread shows some good pics of what alusil looks like:

https://mbworld.org/forums/w211-amg/...5-project.html

 

Thanks for your advice, guys.

Re Alusil. I've seen some refer to alusil as coating, which I appreciate can be wrong. It is an alloy.

Re stone. The balancer just referred to it as "stone" but mentioned it was very soft and felt like. I will ask again what he used, just to clear it but I'm almost certain he got it from a specialist for alusil.

Re crosshatching. It is very, very light. In fact, not only it didn't change the dimensions of the bores, it didn't remove the scoring which is still visible in some cylinders. It is not much of a honing even, just a very light pattern of grooves for the rings to bed.

Btw, here's an article describing the honing of alusil bores as a 3 step process:

http://www.sunnen.com/NewsDetails.aspx?NewsID=11