So I wanted to share the reconditioning of my 2005 E55. I've been working on it as I can and thought I would start this thread to show my progress. This all started a couple of years ago.
I read a statement sometime back on the forum that these cars weren’t old enough yet to “restore”. But they are aging and need some reconditioning now.
I’m sure most of you know this if you’ve been here for a while and read older posts of things that happen to these cars.

Before I get started in this thread I wanted to give a little back story of how I bought my car, and what I found out after I got it home.

My son is a MB tech. He would occasionally text me pics of MB cars he was working on and test driving. He had the opportunity to work on a E55 for a local guy that had a few mods and was excited about how the car performed and sounded.
Car came up for sale later on so he decided to buy it........after some fatherly advise of telling him not to buy that junk of course he did anyway.....Haha. It’s all good guys just giving my son some ****. BTW he is 32yrs old.
So he brings his car home one day. Car looks great and sounds great. He takes me for a ride AND then lets me drive it and I’m hooked! I told him I GOTTA GET ONE OF THESE!
My sons E55.
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...3f64626690.jpg



So now I’m on the hunt, and I find a 2005 listed on CL about 5hrs from us. Tons of mods, lowered, sitting on Vossens.
So me and my son set out on a road trip to check out the car!

The PO dropped it off at his local MB dealer for us to do a PPI. The dealership GM was super nice and let my son do the PPI. We found some things that needed attention on the car, made some notes and at the end of the day met with the PO and talked about what we had found.
Unfortunately we came home without the car that day BUT later that week I was able to make a deal on it. So I headed back and hauled it home on a trailer. (Tires we’re unsafe to drive 5hrs back).
Pic of when I bought it.
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...debd6a1435.jpg


Once it was home very little progressed on the E as I was busy in a restoration project at the time and needed to get it completed.
I would drive the E from my shop to my home occasionally.......and since tires were shot it was perfect time for some big nasty burnouts.

Ok, so on to what I found after having it home for a little while.....one Friday night my son was visiting and we were watching YouTube vids (E55s) and this video popped up. I was watching it and told my son, wow that looks like my car!

We watched and were surprised to what we were seeing. This car was hauling ass! We stopped the vid and started looking for details and it being an odd color figured it had to be my car! When I bought the car the PO didn’t mention it, not sure if he knew or just didn't want to say anything.
A few days later we had to replace the CPS and we found evidence this was the car.
I also did some digging here on the forums and found the other PO that did the mods and was racing the car. Which was nice to shed some light on what was actually done to the car and not just something I was told was done by the last owner.

I was now super excited to get on this thing and get it looking nice and get all the repairs done.

So the first thing to do was get some new tires so I could drive it and fear for my life. Lol.
The wheels are Vossen VSF1s. 20x9.5 front. 20x10.5 rear.
Tires 245/30-20 front. 285/30-20 rear.
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...9e474a57c0.jpg



I don't have a set time frame to get this completed. My goal is to get all the car back to like new inside and out. Dyno the car for numbers. Possibly get the tune tweaked if needed. Then to the track to see if it can run in the 10s again.

More to come!

http://www.dragtimes.com/Mercedes-Be...lip-26334.html

this is the car I believe ,

Thanks for the link. Yeah that’s it. I found that shortly after I saw the video.



Thanks. I’m extremely happy with this car. I knew what the mods were on the car before I bought it and you would have to expect it had been ran some in the past. With the mods, the car was built to haul ass.
It doesn’t bother me that the NOS has been on there. We’re gonna find out if it can handle it again. I can tell you for sure it hasn’t slowed down on the highway.

I can’t take credit for the times it ran. But it was exciting to see it run those times.

Oh, the car only has 58k miles on it.

With 2 E55s in the family, buying an SDconnect seemed like the best thing to do. The loaner program :D wasn't always an option from my sons dealership.


Found this set up from a forum member. I haven't spent a lot of time on it but so far it's been invaluable.
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...f123d64e2b.jpg

Ridden....driven.....seen the taillights...Hahahaha :D




Future runs?

Plans for now is get the cosmetics any mechanicals squared away and go from there.

Didn’t get to work on my E this weekend. Spent some time finishing up the detail job on my Impala. The last couple of weeks I’ve been doing the mechanicals for our trip on the Hot Rod power tour in June.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...773844dbb.jpeg


I did spend some time sanding/polishing the headlights and park lights on my sons (aka chubby buddy) E55.
They had been turning yellow and getting hazy. Wet sanded them with 1000-1500, then compounded and polished them with a 3in polisher.

BEFORE

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...d49ab833d.jpeg

AFTER

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...0c6928874.jpeg
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...6a28d65da.jpeg

Thanks for the info guys.
Yeah I know, this is just a temporary fix to see better. The plan is to replace the lenses for sure.
They just needed a little help for now.

So I'm replacing minor broken parts and some that are deteriorating. One being the headlight switch.
One of my downfalls is OCD. Haha....


https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...23b33ec80c.jpg


I'm sure most of you know how the headlight switch becomes sticky and almost like it's melting. I've heard people say it comes from cleaners used over the years. I don't buy it. There are way to many of them doing that and not just in our E55s.
So I got on a quest to get a nice used replacement. Turns out most I looked at on eBay and in local salvage yards all the switches were at somewhat that stage of stickiness.

So im sure most are saying by now "why not buy a new one"? Well the way I see it, why pay more money and have it do the same thing. I doubt seriously MB has done anything to improve the quality of materials used to produce the headlight switches.

So....I searched for a while and finally found a nice used one. And as long as I don't wipe it with anything to try and clean it it should look decent for awhile.
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...4bf92701c.jpeg


***Part number incase someone is hunting one.***

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...fdae78ca2.jpeg


Also this had to come off to get the switch installed.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...1b02839ef8.jpg


https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...5f11df95a7.jpg

The thing about buying a used one is most sellers don't tell you the ones they are selling are sticky in their description. The pics will show it in most cases.

Chubby buddy (my son) has a CLK also and we noticed that those center dash vents are doing that too.

man mine looks like that, I think I’m going to hydrodip my whole interior trim. Maybe that too

Getting more of the little things replaced that are wrong with the car before repairing the bigger things.

Swapping more parts.......The side dash cover was cracked and stained sometime in the past. Not sure what happened.

Simple pop off and snap back on!

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...48706cb6af.jpg

Old cracked up one.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...dfe60a1efe.jpg

Part number reference.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...91fdcfb189.jpg

MO BETTER!

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...1f066d8a5.jpeg

Fancying up the shop!

I bought these a couple years back from a member here. Not sure if he is still doing them but here is his ad.
https://mbworld.org/forums/market/703520

Tell the wife for Christmas!


https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...71b71d586.jpeg

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...8b0573b52.jpeg

Haven’t updated in awhile. I have some progress details and pics I’ll get up soon.

But a quick post for now....I got these for Christmas from chubby buddy. He told me about these when he started working at the dealership. He knows how particular I am with my car so he knew I would get some use from these.

Perfect for the car guy that doesn’t want to skin up the wheels and painted calipers!


https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...961382c28.jpeg

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...f92b89e8a.jpeg

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...99c688e71.jpeg

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...cce68257e.jpeg


Close up of the knurled end.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...d0d289654.jpeg


Picked up a few key tags from Alex @ legitstreetcars.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...da6eb1847.jpeg

Some updates on the Recon. When we did the PPI ourselves on the E we knew there were several mechanical issues that needed to be repaired. One being the right rear axle boot split and leaking out the CV grease. Axle and CV joints seemed to be fine just leaking the grease out on the inner boot. Did some research looking for a boot kit and the only thing I could find was mostly FWD and some RWD boots but none for the E55. Also it doesn’t look like an easy replacement on these particular axles.
New axle was in the $600-$800 range. Started searching wrecking yards and found a replacement from a crashed E55 for $100. In great shape and since install haven’t had any issues with it.

If anyone knows of a place that specializes in axle rebuild for the E55s let me know. I would like to get the bad one repaired and keep as a back up.


Lost the install pics but here are a few before and with the axle out.


https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...013f0c6a3.jpeg
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...fbe9b480a.jpeg

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...0764b1f11.jpeg
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...e4dd2944d.jpeg

Amazon

Amazon

You Tube

Oh yeah. It was a blast on the test drive. I knew what mods had been done before I went to look at the car. Although the seller didn’t say anything about NOS previously being on the car or that it ran a 10 sec quarter mile. I don’t know if he knew or just didn’t want to say. He didn’t do the mods or race it.
It didn’t bother me to find that out and it definitely hasn’t slowed the car down any.

That split boot looks nice. I like the matched grooved seem.
Thanks for the info. I will look into it.