Kens-E55

For all you performance e-55 guru's - I've studied many different upgrades - Brabus, Carlsson, Renntech, Powerchips, etc.. with varying degrees of promises and especially prices????? Does anyone have solid performance figures and what upgrade is considered the best overall for the $'s??
Any solid opinions are helpful..

BoBcanada

Easy Renntech is the best after all my observations.....guys who has them will confirm that....ECU+Pulley.

clkguy

are you looking for speed or handling?

Dr Chill

Europeans swear by Carlsson but it's very expensive.

Mug

Best performance upgrade is.....

A 1 or 2 day driver ed class at a local track with a good instructor!

Kens-E55

I have to believe most E-55 owners are decently adept at driving a car of this performance. I'm interested in Straightline 1/4 mi performance stoplight to stoplight. Any direction is helpful.

Thanks

saber

I have the Renntech ECU and Pulley with some other minor mods. The performance increase is very large. I have had mine at the track before and after. However, Renntech is expensive. As I have stated in previous posts, my belief is that the ECU upgrades are all very similar. Hence, no need to spend the $2,500 for a Renntech. However, the pulley from Renntech was clearly the best quality made. It looked exactly like the MB part down the the markings.

stephens

saber
Did you take a pic of the pulley? It probably is a modified MB unit by the sounds of things.

Kens-E55
Powerchip are now doing pulley ECU upgrade kits that are 2/3 the price of the Renntech unit and produce bigger power gains.

E55BEAST

IT MY BELIEF THAT YES THERE ARE MANY DIFFERENT ROUTES TO GO WITH WITH UPGRADES. BUT ID RATHER GET QUALITY OVER SAVING MONEY. AND RENN-TECH IN MY OPINION IS THE ONLY WAY TO GO. IVE USED RENN-TECH WITH 3 DIFFERENT BENZ' ALL LONG TERM USE AND THE POWER GAINS ARE CONSISTANT AND AMAZING.

stephens

I appreciate the passion of your opinion BUT THERE IS NO NEED TO YELL!
Turn the caps lock off when posting.

saber

I love the comment.....yelling for CAPS. That is great

Kens-E55

To E-55Beast,
I see you have an '04 with Renntech and say that the Power gains are "large". Have you done any Dyno's or track times with the upgrades or simply saying "seat of the pants" improvements are large? Thanks for you're response.

Ken

theboogers

sabre- AGAIN it would be appreciated if you would post the pulley size you are using on your upgrade. i would help everyone with comparisons. you can get chipping at speedtuningusa.com and a pulley made at aspracing.com. both will cost about $1000.00 max.

stephens

I will get you the dimensions of mine. Boost has been measured at (2030hPa absolute actually) 1bar an increase of only 2psi. I will probably get a slightly bigger pulley made up and increase boost to 15.2psi a total increase of 2.5psi, but I think that will be the limit before compromising the longeivity of the tranny. The CL65 is limited to 1000nm of torque for this reason and my car is already well over 900Nm. You need two pulleys and a belt along with custom software to suit. It will cost you over $1000 for the pulleys alone. The crank pulley needs to be steel billet as aluminium does not work, which requires a lot of machining, balancing etc. The water pump pulley is fine in aluminium billet.
I originally bought my first pulley from ASP, then had to have it all redone locally to get it to fit the car. Tuning the ECU properly will take two or three days. It needs to be done on the dyno firstly to get the base setup correct, then lots of on road real time remapping.
You can get a kit from Powerchip locally in the US for around $3500USD or if you are hung up on names the Renntech kit is a little under $5K but does not have the same performance increase.

onesixeight

stephens... could you tell me who distributes the Powerchip kit in the US?

Thanks,
Chris

stephens

www.powerchipgroup.com
They have dealers worldwide and offices in the US.

Stephen04E55

stephens,

Could you explain more in depth about your ASP pulley not fitting correctly? I e-mailed them and they said they could make a pulley for more boost for $650 with their core and $300 with my pulley. If I send them my pulley, I can't see how that could not work when I get it back. I appreciate any info. Also, what is the max diameter for an upgraded crank pulley without interference from the water pump pulley? Does ASP make this water pump pulley also? I am a little worried because their reply to the first e-mail I sent them stated that they had not made any products for the 2003-2004 E55 cars. They later sent me another e-mail stating that if the pulley is the same as the CL/SL cars then they had something available if my E55 was supercharged....hmmm. Wouldn't you think they would know that the E55 cars 2003 and up are supercharged? I'm also wondering if there would be any trouble with placing the pulley on the car with the stock programming since the stock programming is very rich and 1-2 psi doesn't equate to a huge airflow difference.

stephens

Some general info. My pulley is 185mm diameter. You can go to 180mm without replacing the water pump pulley. The ASP pulley for SL is too big and does not clear on the E55. ASP do not make a water pump pulley.
The cars mixture is set via the O2 sensors and will keep the same fuel mix within its adaptive capacity, no matter how much or little boost is used. The problem is with ignition timing. The standard ECU runs too much ignition advance which needs to be remapped. Additionally there are quite substantial gains available in remapping the target values for the ECU, which make it worth the additional cost anyway.

theboogers

stephen0455- you can get your car reprogrammed by oliver at speedtuningusa.com for about $350.00. this can be done now before the pulley and will adapt to the pulley when you change up. contact him for more info.

aussie- thanks for the diameter info. did you keep your lambo or did i see you changed to the 550. thanks

tjcMBE55AMG

saber - All caps = 'yelling' is a globally-accepted message board standard.


TJC

stephens

With respect I believe your info on the ECU is incorrect. Adaptations only work to have the car self adjust to a pre programmed baseline. An incorrectly reprogrammed ECU can cause catastrophic engine failure.
There is no way the job can be done properly for $350 and to suggest that the ECU will learn the pulley indicates a total lack of understanding of how the ECU works. The range of adaptation in the ECU is far less than the change the increased boost pressure causes.
I apologise if I sound harsh, but your advice has the potential to at best deliver a disappointing end result and at worst engine failure.

theboogers

stephens- when you said the pulley for sl55 was larger. can you tell me what that means. how much larger and in what way. i have a sl and thought the engine was the same in the e55. thanks

stephens

Good question.
I thought at one time, for some reason, that the SL/CL/S55 ran .85bar boost (12.5psi) and the E55 .8bar (11.76psi), however they are identical. I will post a pic when I get the opportunity of the new water pump pulley. It does not change its diameter, it is machined with a different profile allowing clearance of the bigger crank pulley. You also need a longer belt.

Stephen04E55

So, would it be possible to swap water pump pullies with an SL unit on our E cars and use the larger crank pulley without interference? What are you doing to clear your larger crank pulley when you get another larger one? Did you have a custom one fabricated? Thanks.

stephens

It is a custom machined alloy water pump pulley.