C63. Talk to me.
Discussion
Soovy said:
AdYa said:
Soovy said:
wtdoom said:
Well done Soovy congratulations
Cheers. Very excited and it's been a long time since I have been about a car!!
AdYa said:
Soovy said:
AdYa said:
Soovy said:
wtdoom said:
Well done Soovy congratulations
Cheers. Very excited and it's been a long time since I have been about a car!!Sorry mate (well, I'm not, but you know what I mean!
)If it helps, I've PMd you and I have done a LOT of research on these cars which you might find useful, including a couple you should avoid like the clap due to hidden pasts.
Soovy said:
AdYa said:
Soovy said:
AdYa said:
Soovy said:
wtdoom said:
Well done Soovy congratulations
Cheers. Very excited and it's been a long time since I have been about a car!!Sorry mate (well, I'm not, but you know what I mean!!)
If it helps, I've PMd you and I have done a LOT of research on these cars which you might find useful.
Enjoy the car
AdYa said:
Soovy said:
AdYa said:
Soovy said:
AdYa said:
Soovy said:
wtdoom said:
Well done Soovy congratulations
Cheers. Very excited and it's been a long time since I have been about a car!!Sorry mate (well, I'm not, but you know what I mean!!)
If it helps, I've PMd you and I have done a LOT of research on these cars which you might find useful.
Enjoy the car
I notice some posts re the tuning potential of the C63 so thought I'd pipe up with a bit of a summary on my story dying to modify my C63 PPP....
I had a C63 PPP (487bhp) but not the drivers pack (all that does is increase the limiter to 174mph and send the first owner on an admittedly very good track day). The PPP does have some forged internals from the SLS but it's still a significantly different engine in that the induction and exhaust systems are totally different....the SLS has about a foots worth of elaborate induction work before air gets into the engine and this, combined with different manifolds (tubular on the SLS rather than 4 into 1 on the standard C63) allows it deliver the big power increase above the 6.2's in other models. I remember seeing both the SLS and C63PPP engines next to each other at the AMG factory and they are most deifieitly not alike - the SLS has 8 big 'trumpets' that sit on top of the engine to 'inhale' the air which just doesn't feature on the C63 engine....I'm sure theres a proper word for them other than trumpets but I can't think what it is now.
Anyway, I was curious to see what the (expensive) Brabus B63 upgrade would do...it was effectively a remap and filters and was 3x the price of say using DMS but it did have the benefit of being fitted at a MB dealer and therefore have no impact on the warranty. If it produced the extra 10% in power it may have been worth it. Good job I dyno'd the car before and after then because here's the outcome...
As you can see, the Brabus mod (apart from a largely irrelevant 4bhp extra right on the rev limiter) actually made the car slightly worse than standard across some of the usable rev-range...and this was higher flow air filters! Armed with this info, I complained directly to Brabus in Germany who looked at all the evidence I had and as much as admitted that their modification was designed for the standard C63 and there was little more they could do to the higher-output PPP version. They agreed to give me my money back and return the car back to standard! It's also worth noting that there was no perceptible difference in how the car felt but it should also be considered that my C63 PPP in standard form dyno'd particularly strongly (showing 507bhp as opposed to the claimed 487bhp).
I would be very surprised if any tuner can extract more power and torque out of the C63 PPP by just a remap because it's limited not so much by the mapping but more the physical surroundings of the engine....induction system, restrictive exhaust and most importantly, heat.
I actually know one of AMG's development drivers who is based at the Nurburgring and he said MB had a nightmare engineering the C63....there just isn't the room in the engine bay to manage heat properly and the exhaust was a particular pain point as it there was no room for it when it expanded with heat! So, whilst a remap could potentially deliver more power, in reality, as soon as the heat builds up the ECU throttles back to potent the engine so you end up with less power than you had in the first place!
My answer to this was to try modifying the exhaust and I had considerable success with this (I say success but I have no proof of this other then my butt-dyno! I never got round to re-dyno'ing the car....I just didn't need to because it was perceptibly quicker!). I had a set of larger manifolds and 200 cell primary cats fitted (the latter of which made the biggest difference in comparison to the 700-cell standard cats). They made the car sound incredible too....no louder inside but my God, outside it was ridiculous!
I actually got the AMG guy to sort this for me in Germany where one of his contacts custom-make the bits - they even put the new cats in the existing cat housing to keep it looking as standard as possible! This wasn't without problems though...their first attempt saw the slightly larger exhaust just touch the steering column when the car was under load in bends - it wasn't anything serious but it was probably a couple of mm too big as there seriously is limited space where the manifold and steering column share between engine and chassis! All it did was cause a slight knocking as the engine moved about in bends so they had it back and made another one with a very slight kink in it and the problem was fixed. Had I kept the car into the following year he had a plan for the induction side but alas, I sold the car for a 911 Turbo (and wish I hadn't!). What was never promised by anyone in Germany was big claimed power outputs - whatever is done to a C63, it's still ultimately limited by the fact there's no room in the engine bay to have an effective cooling solution so unless someone doctors the ECU to remove the failsafes built into it (which believe it or not, I have heard has happened) then the CU will always knock the power back when the engine gets too hot.
So in summary, I can confirm that in my experience, without changing physical parts theres very little left in a C63 PPP to deliver more power than standard just from remapping it. This obviously doesn't apply to the standard 457bhp C63 which should see similar power levels to a PPP car after a remap (a lot of which is changing the throttle opening which is easily 'corrected'!). Some of the US guys on MB World are doing some crazy things....they have proper tubed manifolds out there (how they get them to fit I just don't know!) and that can appear to generate some impressive power claims - it'd be interesting to see if their more elaborate modifications actually deliver any real-world performance benefits.
I've posted a few of these pictures before but for new readers, heres some photo's of the mods and work being carried out....
Making the exhaust parts from scratch
The lack of space between manifold and steering column
Standard and modified manifolds
Putting new cats in factory cat housing
New cats ready to be fitted back to the car
Erm....putting it back??
Not engine related but probably the best (and most frustrating) mod I made to my C63....
KW V3 coilovers....the best mod because they transformed the car from OK dynamically to pretty good. Still not M3-like in agility but the body control these afforded was incredible - it made the car feel so planted and kept the wheels in contact with road surface like little else I've driven. Frustrating because they had about 30 settings on each damper so I was forever 'tweaking' and never satisfied!
Hope this helps a bit.....
Andrew
I had a C63 PPP (487bhp) but not the drivers pack (all that does is increase the limiter to 174mph and send the first owner on an admittedly very good track day). The PPP does have some forged internals from the SLS but it's still a significantly different engine in that the induction and exhaust systems are totally different....the SLS has about a foots worth of elaborate induction work before air gets into the engine and this, combined with different manifolds (tubular on the SLS rather than 4 into 1 on the standard C63) allows it deliver the big power increase above the 6.2's in other models. I remember seeing both the SLS and C63PPP engines next to each other at the AMG factory and they are most deifieitly not alike - the SLS has 8 big 'trumpets' that sit on top of the engine to 'inhale' the air which just doesn't feature on the C63 engine....I'm sure theres a proper word for them other than trumpets but I can't think what it is now.
Anyway, I was curious to see what the (expensive) Brabus B63 upgrade would do...it was effectively a remap and filters and was 3x the price of say using DMS but it did have the benefit of being fitted at a MB dealer and therefore have no impact on the warranty. If it produced the extra 10% in power it may have been worth it. Good job I dyno'd the car before and after then because here's the outcome...
As you can see, the Brabus mod (apart from a largely irrelevant 4bhp extra right on the rev limiter) actually made the car slightly worse than standard across some of the usable rev-range...and this was higher flow air filters! Armed with this info, I complained directly to Brabus in Germany who looked at all the evidence I had and as much as admitted that their modification was designed for the standard C63 and there was little more they could do to the higher-output PPP version. They agreed to give me my money back and return the car back to standard! It's also worth noting that there was no perceptible difference in how the car felt but it should also be considered that my C63 PPP in standard form dyno'd particularly strongly (showing 507bhp as opposed to the claimed 487bhp).
I would be very surprised if any tuner can extract more power and torque out of the C63 PPP by just a remap because it's limited not so much by the mapping but more the physical surroundings of the engine....induction system, restrictive exhaust and most importantly, heat.
I actually know one of AMG's development drivers who is based at the Nurburgring and he said MB had a nightmare engineering the C63....there just isn't the room in the engine bay to manage heat properly and the exhaust was a particular pain point as it there was no room for it when it expanded with heat! So, whilst a remap could potentially deliver more power, in reality, as soon as the heat builds up the ECU throttles back to potent the engine so you end up with less power than you had in the first place!
My answer to this was to try modifying the exhaust and I had considerable success with this (I say success but I have no proof of this other then my butt-dyno! I never got round to re-dyno'ing the car....I just didn't need to because it was perceptibly quicker!). I had a set of larger manifolds and 200 cell primary cats fitted (the latter of which made the biggest difference in comparison to the 700-cell standard cats). They made the car sound incredible too....no louder inside but my God, outside it was ridiculous!
I actually got the AMG guy to sort this for me in Germany where one of his contacts custom-make the bits - they even put the new cats in the existing cat housing to keep it looking as standard as possible! This wasn't without problems though...their first attempt saw the slightly larger exhaust just touch the steering column when the car was under load in bends - it wasn't anything serious but it was probably a couple of mm too big as there seriously is limited space where the manifold and steering column share between engine and chassis! All it did was cause a slight knocking as the engine moved about in bends so they had it back and made another one with a very slight kink in it and the problem was fixed. Had I kept the car into the following year he had a plan for the induction side but alas, I sold the car for a 911 Turbo (and wish I hadn't!). What was never promised by anyone in Germany was big claimed power outputs - whatever is done to a C63, it's still ultimately limited by the fact there's no room in the engine bay to have an effective cooling solution so unless someone doctors the ECU to remove the failsafes built into it (which believe it or not, I have heard has happened) then the CU will always knock the power back when the engine gets too hot.
So in summary, I can confirm that in my experience, without changing physical parts theres very little left in a C63 PPP to deliver more power than standard just from remapping it. This obviously doesn't apply to the standard 457bhp C63 which should see similar power levels to a PPP car after a remap (a lot of which is changing the throttle opening which is easily 'corrected'!). Some of the US guys on MB World are doing some crazy things....they have proper tubed manifolds out there (how they get them to fit I just don't know!) and that can appear to generate some impressive power claims - it'd be interesting to see if their more elaborate modifications actually deliver any real-world performance benefits.
I've posted a few of these pictures before but for new readers, heres some photo's of the mods and work being carried out....
Making the exhaust parts from scratch
The lack of space between manifold and steering column
Standard and modified manifolds
Putting new cats in factory cat housing
New cats ready to be fitted back to the car
Erm....putting it back??
Not engine related but probably the best (and most frustrating) mod I made to my C63....
KW V3 coilovers....the best mod because they transformed the car from OK dynamically to pretty good. Still not M3-like in agility but the body control these afforded was incredible - it made the car feel so planted and kept the wheels in contact with road surface like little else I've driven. Frustrating because they had about 30 settings on each damper so I was forever 'tweaking' and never satisfied!
Hope this helps a bit.....
Andrew
Edited by Palmball on Monday 2nd January 19:36
Chad_Hugo said:
This was my suspicion as well- Mercedes charge around 7000 Euro for the ppp option giving 30+ bhp, while DMS can apparently offer 60+ bhp for circa £1500 via a re-map?
Have any C63 owners used DMS or any other company for tunning and and achieved the 520 bhp reported plus the dramatic torque gains mentioned on their site?
Sorry i only just saw this:Have any C63 owners used DMS or any other company for tunning and and achieved the 520 bhp reported plus the dramatic torque gains mentioned on their site?
Yes i had my C63 tuned by Rob at DMS, from memory my end figure after tuning was 525bhp
The difference was night and day, i left the workshop in Southampton with a massive smile on my face.
If you are considering this upgrade ring DMS and speak to Rob he will explain exactly what he does and what changes to the ECU are made. It was very nerve racking watching the ECU being opened up so that the tune could be uploaded.
From memory in addition to the tune Rob added the Gearbox Tune from the CLK 63 Black
I did have a few plays with a friend of mine who had a standard C63 with the PP and the my car was clearly pulling away from him, needless to say he got his car booked in soon after
I know that initially there was a problem tuning the cars fitted with the PP as something had definitely changed from when my car was tuned. After half a day of investigating Rob had cracked it though.
2 5HAN said:
Chad_Hugo said:
This was my suspicion as well- Mercedes charge around 7000 Euro for the ppp option giving 30+ bhp, while DMS can apparently offer 60+ bhp for circa £1500 via a re-map?
Have any C63 owners used DMS or any other company for tunning and and achieved the 520 bhp reported plus the dramatic torque gains mentioned on their site?
Sorry i only just saw this:Have any C63 owners used DMS or any other company for tunning and and achieved the 520 bhp reported plus the dramatic torque gains mentioned on their site?
Yes i had my C63 tuned by Rob at DMS, from memory my end figure after tuning was 525bhp
The difference was night and day, i left the workshop in Southampton with a massive smile on my face.
If you are considering this upgrade ring DMS and speak to Rob he will explain exactly what he does and what changes to the ECU are made. It was very nerve racking watching the ECU being opened up so that the tune could be uploaded.
From memory in addition to the tune Rob added the Gearbox Tune from the CLK 63 Black
I did have a few plays with a friend of mine who had a standard C63 with the PP and the my car was clearly pulling away from him, needless to say he got his car booked in soon after
I know that initially there was a problem tuning the cars fitted with the PP as something had definitely changed from when my car was tuned. After half a day of investigating Rob had cracked it though.
the clk black series has INFERIOR gearbox software . the clk cannot blip on downshifts , if your car is blipping still on downshifts you dont have black series software . if it is no longer blipping sorry for saying this but you are insane as us black series owners have been trying to put c 63amg software on the black to make it blip for years . ( check american forums for our eternal quest ) .
i know rob very well but this sounds very very wrong .
wtdoom said:
What gearbox mod from the clk black series ?
the clk black series has INFERIOR gearbox software . the clk cannot blip on downshifts , if your car is blipping still on downshifts you dont have black series software . if it is no longer blipping sorry for saying this but you are insane as us black series owners have been trying to put c 63amg software on the black to make it blip for years . ( check american forums for our eternal quest ) .
i know rob very well but this sounds very very wrong .
Definately blipping on the downshifts still, perhaps i am wrong but i am sure that is what he said, perhaps it was the shift points as i am sure the red line moved with the re-map the clk black series has INFERIOR gearbox software . the clk cannot blip on downshifts , if your car is blipping still on downshifts you dont have black series software . if it is no longer blipping sorry for saying this but you are insane as us black series owners have been trying to put c 63amg software on the black to make it blip for years . ( check american forums for our eternal quest ) .
i know rob very well but this sounds very very wrong .
As mentioned to the OP call and have a chat with Rob he will be able to explain it all
2 5HAN said:
wtdoom said:
What gearbox mod from the clk black series ?
the clk black series has INFERIOR gearbox software . the clk cannot blip on downshifts , if your car is blipping still on downshifts you dont have black series software . if it is no longer blipping sorry for saying this but you are insane as us black series owners have been trying to put c 63amg software on the black to make it blip for years . ( check american forums for our eternal quest ) .
i know rob very well but this sounds very very wrong .
Definately blipping on the downshifts still, perhaps i am wrong but i am sure that is what he said, perhaps it was the shift points as i am sure the red line moved with the re-map the clk black series has INFERIOR gearbox software . the clk cannot blip on downshifts , if your car is blipping still on downshifts you dont have black series software . if it is no longer blipping sorry for saying this but you are insane as us black series owners have been trying to put c 63amg software on the black to make it blip for years . ( check american forums for our eternal quest ) .
i know rob very well but this sounds very very wrong .
As mentioned to the OP call and have a chat with Rob he will be able to explain it all
Id be very careful of a gearbox mod using anything from a black to a c 63 as the c 63 box was very slightly different mechanically also .
I know this because my black series is currently in germany having the gearbox modified .
Edited by wtdoom on Monday 2nd January 22:39
wtdoom said:
2 5HAN said:
wtdoom said:
What gearbox mod from the clk black series ?
the clk black series has INFERIOR gearbox software . the clk cannot blip on downshifts , if your car is blipping still on downshifts you dont have black series software . if it is no longer blipping sorry for saying this but you are insane as us black series owners have been trying to put c 63amg software on the black to make it blip for years . ( check american forums for our eternal quest ) .
i know rob very well but this sounds very very wrong .
Definately blipping on the downshifts still, perhaps i am wrong but i am sure that is what he said, perhaps it was the shift points as i am sure the red line moved with the re-map the clk black series has INFERIOR gearbox software . the clk cannot blip on downshifts , if your car is blipping still on downshifts you dont have black series software . if it is no longer blipping sorry for saying this but you are insane as us black series owners have been trying to put c 63amg software on the black to make it blip for years . ( check american forums for our eternal quest ) .
i know rob very well but this sounds very very wrong .
As mentioned to the OP call and have a chat with Rob he will be able to explain it all
Id be very careful of a gearbox mod using anything from a black to a c 63 as the c 63 box was very slightly different mechanically also .
I know this because my black series is currently in germany having the gearbox modified .
Edited by wtdoom on Monday 2nd January 22:39
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