jumph4x

I'm afraid I don't know what that is.

StarvingArtist

That makes me feel old! At least I can still pull stunts on my mountain bike.

StarvingArtist

Just watched your motorcycle videos all the way through. Cool stuff man! I might need to get another dirtbike.

PJmak

Do you know how much he ended up paying?

jumph4x

Team hardtail! The season is upon us! Can't wait to hit the cardio routine again...
There's more out there and more coming.
I actually just corrected my post, car had 320K on it! I do not know how much he paid, but he's been slowly working on it for 4-6months now he said.

PJmak

Nice. I want one of those.

There was one with maybe 180-190k miles for 8ish grand for sale recently.

jumph4x

Based on what he said, he just replaced front shocks, fixed the paint up and put a new steering wheel on it. I'm sure there's lot of small things but it sounded like the engine was strong.
I think his name is Tak.

jumph4x

Ladies, gentlemen, everyone in between.

Feels good to be back at it. Car lines posed a couple of limitations but overall I am quite satisfied.









The frontal POV is definitely the money shot.

drothgeb

Does look nice from the front! Hows the rear view? I was wondering if it would look a little goofy not going to a real fat tire with the wider stance. 255s toooo skinny?!?! More pics haha. Good job.

jumph4x

These are 245mm to start, will experiment up from here.

Besides, most people would just run a 10.5" in the rear with some 285 bull$h!t over it.
I insist on keeping it square for rotation purposes and tire costs.
Definitely wouldn't look dorky at that size.

Strigoi

Any side or 3/4 shots? It looks tough from the front.

actech

car looks great! love the wider look. total cost of the mod? only suggestion maybe paint bolt heads black? really nice job, im jealous.

mondo

very reminiscent of the CLK 63 Black

jumph4x

Soon.

Not 100% done yet, can't say.

ty ty

jumph4x

Test Flight 001! Needs more work, even on current spacing and 245mm. KW were on full stiff and bumped into stuff at current settings. Oh well.
Enjoy the pics meanwhile:

bbirdwell

You've performed some quality design, analysis, and build on your project car. Most excellent work and my compliments to you.

jumph4x

Thank you kindly!

Just a couple of items left now before I focus on content production and parading this thing around. I'm pretty happy so far, this will be an exciting summer.

jumph4x

Still unsure whether or how far my fatter tire dreams will materialize because keeping this fitment and the chassis happy is proving to be work as is.

• trimmed and shaped some more flare material
• removed more metal
• adjusted the rear suspension twice
• widened the front track some more
• removed stupid chrome outlines on the DR (inner) lights
• adjusted front ride height
• tried three compression settings on the KW variants
• realized that the bottom contour of the bumper does not allow for things like RhinoLip (damn shame)

As the car sits currently:

• Front track: +70mm
• Rear track: +90mm

As far as KW Variants go:

• Long haul: 12+ clicks out
• Town: 10 clicks
• Mountain road: 3 clicks
• Event: 0 clicks

KW themselves recommend owners set the compression to 6 clicks and tune from there, a solid starting point.
Definitely make the time to cut the rear trunk liners like I did, adjusting all 4 corners takes only a couple of minutes.

As for the right height, fronts are wonderfully adjustable as is, just remove the wheel, but the rear is where it gets a little more complicated.
Last two times I was tweaking it, I was unbolting the LCA (biggest mountain points) to get access to the spring, due to a couple of factors: passenger side spanner access is completely blocked by the fuel line routing and more.

But, I finally had a bright idea! I was tinkering with the car and noticed the new LCA (from the E350) have coil spring-centric holes on the bottom.
All Mercedes do this, and Mercedes provides a specialty tool to compress the springs that can reach through the middle of that opening and suck the spring down to the arm, releasing the load from the adjustment perch.
Ta-da! Here is what it looks like, can be had for $50-100 for non-Genuine MB replicas:
I "rented" the OEM 27035 from Autozone to do this is, which isn't actual renting, it's free. They charge you the full price of the tool and upon return, refund the full amount. So you might as well do that if you don't care for ability to do this at events and such: https://www.autozone.com/loan-a-tool...nal/555573_0_0

Took some photos I will post soon! It's still raining here on and off. Waiting to wash the car and document it visually some more. The wider front track makes it look better, I wish I could push the rears out more, but I'm, at the limit of the tire-to-metal cut line clearance right now.

StarvingArtist

Sounds like you're getting it figured out. A few others will be real happy about that spring compressor thing. Keep in mind your toe-in changes quite a bit with ride height. I built a wooden jig to check the edge of the rims front to back to dial in my alignment.

MikeE63

let me know the next time you head up to sonoma, i was there Saturday.

jumph4x

Bit by bit, more friction than anticipated on this one.



Hoping to get the car aligned today to normal toe settings.

I'll try to post up here ahead of time. I bought that ticket same day because chance of rain and all. Just a little R&D effort, it did end up revealing some things.

jumph4x

Took out and washed the car today. Fell in love again.

Verified that my radiator needs replacing as per: https://mbworld.org/forums/w211-amg/...-2003-e55.html

jumph4x

Dat wide track!

tlambert

jumph4x

Yup, photography is one of the things I do.

These are taken with Sony A7RII, but I was taking same pictures with my a6500 and to a lesser extend the a6000.
Warning: if you go out and get the cameras above and shoot in these conditions, you won't get these colors.

As important are the optics, I always shoot with bright primes, in this case the f/1.8 85mm Sony FE.
But the colors above is a result of playing with curves and hue wheels.

Thanks for the kind words.