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I have considered it, but it’s still almost 10 years old car. The turbo upgrade is about 12k USD on top of already 30k+ paid, transmission upgrade is about 5k, cooling upgrade a couple of grand. We are talking another 20k on top of this repair. I just think it’s a madness. I will probably sell it and get myself a Continental GT, which I had before and never had a single issue with it.
Still waiting for the crankshaft to begin the engine assembly process (almost 3 weeks of waiting now). Car was brought to service on April 22nd, today is August 11th, at least one more month before it's done.
All parts are finally done, crankshaft is straightened and balanced. Now the process of puting all together will begin. In about 4 weeks it should be ready.
I just watched this video and it explains how the M157 bend rods. It's not the material, it's the design - from the piston all the way to the way clearances are on the rods:
although I have M157 S63 Coupe, I have decided to create a separate thread over here, as this section is more alive than the C217 section and we share the same engine and transmission. The reason is that I believe my experience will be very valuable for those who have not yet decided whether to modify their cars or not.
Well, where to start - I have bent my connecting rods.
My car is 2015 S63 Coupe with M157 engine and I have covered precisely 31k miles with these mods (55k miles on this car right now) and here is the list of my mods: - RENNtech Stage 2 ECU Tune - this ECU tune only brings according to RENNtech - 699BHP/1050NM - Weistec TCU Tune - HMS Tuning Turbo-Backs (bridge pipes) - Downpipes with Gesi G-Sport Racing Cats - Full 3" El. Valved Exhaust incl. Mufflers - Weistec 1-Step Colder Plugs - Best 1/4 mile run with Dragy: 11.3 sec / 127 mph, 100-200 KM/H in 6.88 seconds
- Dyno attached (although my best dyno run was this): 740BHP / 1100-1150NM, I run 1.25 - 1.4 bar of boost
- I changed oil every 6k miles (about once in 9 months), I once had Liquid Molly, but mostly it was OEM AMG 5W40 oil, oil consumption up to 1 quart per 600-700 miles with spirited driving (it always had this oil consumption)
- During last three years I ocassionally got Cylinder Misfire on Cylinder 5, but since I changed spark plugs from OEM to Weistec 1-step colder it never happened again
What happened: I was driving with the speed about 100MPH on 7th gear for about an hour, then I went WOT, reached speed somewhere between 120-140MPH, it was supposed to engage 5th gear, but did not, instead, there was some mechanical noise that came from the engine, I am not sure (don't remember exactly), but maybe my revs went even beyond the redline (not exactly sure, happened very quickly), all warning lights on the dashboard came on (I've never seen anything like that before) and white/blue smoke came from the exhaust - not much, but really noticeable from the rearview mirror. Also, the oil went up through the closed oil cap - see the attached photo. When I stopped my revs were going crazy - up and down between 1800 - 500, there was a blinking check engine light, engine kept running for about 30 seconds, then shut itself down. When I briefly started it again revs went all the way up to 3000 and then just dropped to below 800, but engine kept running, there was a lot of engine vibration on idle, very rough idle. Also massive white smoke coming from the exhaust. I got it towed, didn't even try to drive on the ramp of the tow truck. My mechanic says i've bent my rods most likely.
When engine is started, there is no knocking noise, maybe I didn't scratch my cylinder walls, we will see. I will know more later, once it's fully stripped apart (next week - I will upload some photos here). Well, I guess I knew this was going to happen. I am now thinking on what to do - either repair it with OEM parts, remove my ECU/TCU tunes and sell it, or go all-in and do the italianrp rods/pistons, darton mid sleeves + hybrid turbos. It's a 2015 car with 55k miles - I am not really sure it's worth doing a hardcore engine build. I am leaning more towards repairing it with OEM parts and removing tunes. What a shame, what a car that was. For now all I have are fault codes that I have uploaded here, but that is coming from my Carly diagnostics app on my phone. I ran diagnostics immediately after this happened. At first I got only cylinder misfire 1, but when I cleared the codes and ran it again - it showed misfires on cylinders 1, 3 and 5.
I have watched hundreds of videos from Tasos on YouTube and I knew that something like this could happen, but I've never believed that it's going to happen to me, as I thought that very hot and sandy Dubai environment pushes our engines beyond their limits with these aggressive tunes and cold & dry European climate would be of no concern. Boy I was wrong. At the same time, I never really pushed my car to extremes - I did a couple of drag pulls from zero (maybe about 10-15 in its the entire existence) and in total maybe about 50-100 WOT runs on highways with speeds between 60 - 180 MPH. In Europe on unrestricted parts of autobahn it's completely normal to go with these high speeds, especially on weekends on late evening hours. During last three years a couple of cylinder misfires occurred, maybe 3-5 times on Cylinder 5.
That's all for now - of course I will keep you updated. Waiting now for what my mechanic says. If anyone would want to buy some mods off this car, let me know, I haven't decided what to do with it yet, but if I decide just to repair it, I might sell some mods, although I believe ECU/TCU is tied to my VIN, so not much to sell actually.
That is exactly what happen with my CLS63 M157 engine... if you get boosted you have to replace rods and no any problem... Now i am rebuilding engine with forget piston and rods , i will insert dry sleeves , i could not find mechanical shop who can insert mid Darton sleeves.
ARP L19 bolts came from ItalianRP, don’t know the part number. These are for rods, I didn’t order ARP head bolts, because they are needed only if you run hybrids and have lots of boost. On stock turbos not needed. I know one workshop in Germany that knows now to install Darton MID sleeves, it’s about 4000 USD, you can ship from the US. It’s called “subi-performance”, look them up on YT.
My car will be ready in 3 weeks, I will make some photos.
Same as your story.. Stage 2 on 98 RON cold intake, intecoller , BOW , DTC turn, boost 25 PSI... i did around 20 000 km on this configuration and end up with bended rod.
1st sing was misfire on cylinder 5 and getting more often and often finally spark plug dead. so replace with new one and it survive another 2000 km and also get same dead. few dead spark plugs. and oil consumption reach one LT per 1000 km... deacid to disassemble engine and as was expected cylinder 5 wall scratched and rod bended .. all others are in good condition. no will rebuild with forged internals and will sleeve with dry sleeves. Let see how it will work.
Same as your story.. Stage 2 on 98 RON cold intake, intecoller , BOW , DTC turn, boost 25 PSI... i did around 20 000 km on this configuration and end up with bended rod.
1st sing was misfire on cylinder 5 and getting more often and often finally spark plug dead. so replace with new one and it survive another 2000 km and also get same dead. few dead spark plugs. and oil consumption reach one LT per 1000 km... deacid to disassemble engine and as was expected cylinder 5 wall scratched and rod bended .. all others are in good condition. no will rebuild with forged internals and will sleeve with dry sleeves. Let see how it will work.
was that 25psi boost on stock turbos? Thought max boost on stock turbos was like 23-24psi??
So this was a gradual process with your engine. With my engine it just blew up and tore parts of cylinder wall. After inspecting of cylinder walls, they were not scratched really. I suspect faulty injector in my case, because what else would cause an explosion like that.
I have one question guys, maybe you can help me out. There is a manual that comes with conrods, there it says that ARP L19 conrod bolts must be tightened with the 51ft-lbs torque value. That’s what we did, we torqued it gradually to this value. We have never measured stretch value as below you can see that these bolts don’t require it. My mechanic says that he finds it little bit odd that the torque value is so low, but did it anyways. Tasos never spoke about this in his videos. So we are going by the manual, but any opinion would be helpful.
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Fuel pressure pumps replaced as well. Literally everything new besides turbochargers and crankshaft.
