R63 AMG The Unicorn of my Destruction

Keith Tanner wrote:

mndsm wrote: In reply to rslifkin: Very true. Especially in this age, where literally anything is on youtube. Now while I don't think anyone has r&red thEir own amg van, its not really that different than other cars. And when I can find a whole video on how to do a starter in a corolla so I don't have to pull the service manual, ima do it. All I really need is bolt locations anyhow, but that's not the point. You can learn anything online if you want to.

You do have to be careful with your sources online. Usually those videos or forum posts are being made by someone who has done the job once and may or may not have any clue what they're doing. Amateurs teaching amateurs. Some of the stuff I've seen on Miatas is hilarious. I'll use them to get an overall picture - the lay of the land, so to speak. Like you said, bolt locations. It's no coincidence that the first thing I buy for any vehicle is a proper factory service manual.

True. Maybe I'm lucky that I jusy sort of get it, but i csn generally tell if something is bullE36 M3

The combustion chambers on the first head are clean so time to clean the outside. The valve cover and cover that holds the phaser solenoids were both a bit leaky. Those gaskets will be replaced. And then we have these guys. Tappets? Or is there a more proper term? The things the cam presses on to smush the valves open. They fail and eat the cam. Or maybe there were some bad cams that failed and ate the tappets. Consensus is that the tappets go first, so they deserve a looking at. They're interesting. The smoothest ones have a series of circles in them. They clearly rotate as the cam hits them. You can see some of the circles on this one. What you can also see on this one is that at some point it stopped rotating and the cam hit it over and over on one place. If you drag your fingernail across it you can just feel a groove starting to form. This is probably bad. Probably right on the edge of very bad actually. These will be replaced. This is where I encourage the mbworld guys who are reading to chime in on what they know about these failures, I fully admit to not reading everything on it, so I might have missed something.

I'd call those lifters. Interesting picture of the stuck one! I know how they're supposed to rotate, but never seen the result of it not happening.

mndsm wrote:

Keith Tanner wrote:

mndsm wrote: In reply to rslifkin: Very true. Especially in this age, where literally anything is on youtube. Now while I don't think anyone has r&red thEir own amg van, its not really that different than other cars. And when I can find a whole video on how to do a starter in a corolla so I don't have to pull the service manual, ima do it. All I really need is bolt locations anyhow, but that's not the point. You can learn anything online if you want to.

You do have to be careful with your sources online. Usually those videos or forum posts are being made by someone who has done the job once and may or may not have any clue what they're doing. Amateurs teaching amateurs. Some of the stuff I've seen on Miatas is hilarious. I'll use them to get an overall picture - the lay of the land, so to speak. Like you said, bolt locations. It's no coincidence that the first thing I buy for any vehicle is a proper factory service manual.

True. Maybe I'm lucky that I jusy sort of get it, but i csn generally tell if something is bullE36 M3

It's not the bullE36 M3 you need to watch for, it's the well-intentioned clueless amateur. They're the guys who are cutting timing belts in half on the Miata, where all you need to do is not skip the last factory step in the installation. Everyone skips that last step...

Also, the overzealous forum purist who likes to make everything sound harder than it is - see BMW oil discussions for an example.

Those look like buckets (shim under bucket)? Hard to tell without seeing the other side.

mazdeuce wrote: The combustion chambers on the first head are clean so time to clean the outside. The valve cover and cover that holds the phaser solenoids were both a bit leaky. Those gaskets will be replaced. And then we have these guys. Tappets? Or is there a more proper term? The things the cam presses on to smush the valves open. They fail and eat the cam. Or maybe there were some bad cams that failed and ate the tappets. Consensus is that the tappets go first, so they deserve a looking at. They're interesting. The smoothest ones have a series of circles in them. They clearly rotate as the cam hits them. You can see some of the circles on this one. What you can also see on this one is that at some point it stopped rotating and the cam hit it over and over on one place. If you drag your fingernail across it you can just feel a groove starting to form. This is probably bad. Probably right on the edge of very bad actually. These will be replaced. This is where I encourage the mbworld guys who are reading to chime in on what they know about these failures, I fully admit to not reading everything on it, so I might have missed something.

May want to get a dial indicator onto the cam to check for excessive lobe wear. I doubt you're going to find the cam specs anywhere but should be able to compare to a matching lobe on another cylinder. Though I'll be honest in that I find that a very interesting wear pattern in that it doesn't extend to both sides. Is the lifter convex?

-Hans

If they're shim over bucket, then the piece that the cam touches is the shim. If they're shim under bucket, then it's the bucket. :)

The lifter is flat and that mark is exactly as wide as the lobe. I was at least aware enough to organize the lifters properly so that I can match each lifter back to it's lobe. I'll throw a caliper on them the next time I get them out of the box.

codrus wrote: If they're shim over bucket, then the piece that the cam touches is the shim. If they're shim under bucket, then it's the bucket. :)

Oops!! duh. Edited my post. Looks like you can buy new ones, hopefully thats a set and not for just one... https://www.horsepowerfreaks.com/weistec-m159-valve-buckets-mercedes-benz-clk63-amg-m156-07-08-p-150907076.html

The lifters shown for my van are $18 each online. So 18x4x8...carry the three....add some.....redo because that number is big.....$576 for all of them. I need to see if those are the old style or the newer M159 ones that Weistec has.
Weistec is awesome and I kind of want to just write them a check, but their parts prices are silly. They do know their clientele.

In terms of parts identification and true technical knowledge Im not the greatest, but my understanding is tappets, buckets, lifters are all the same in this motor, no matter the terminology used. I will look around on mbworld and see if I can find you a typical parts list for this project.

The lifter bucket thingies are all one piece. They sit upon the valves and are mushed by the cam. All of the hydraulic adjusting must be internal to the little guys. Very simple in a MB sort of way.

Edit: this is a picture of the bottom. If you push on that little button in the middle (which rests in the valve stem) you can feel it move up and down. The oil comes in on the side. It really is compact and clever.

Here is a rather large list of links to articles on there, inc a DIY:

M156 headbolt problems

and there are a lot of part numbers available in this thread here, which isnt on that list:

AMG3.2's DIY headbolt adventure

I am putting phaser solenoids in my VW. Just because it sounds so frigging cool.

Even if they only make pew pew noises or something silly...

If you have a VW with VVT you already have phaser solenoids! If not, swap in a VVT engine, done.

I have seen that lifter wear before on some VW as well. The top isn't perfectly flat, there's some pitch ground into it to get it to spin and wear evenly. The damage is usually caused by the lifter getting stuck in the bore due to debris. If it's a common problem it could be that the lifter is just too tight in the bores from the factory. Probably worth measuring the old vs new ones. Having them tighter gives faster recovery times to pump back up with the downside being what you experienced.

Long time lurker really enjoying your thread. Just thought I'd pop in and let you know that not only are you internet famous, you are radio famous from coast to coast in Canada. I jumped in my car to drive home listening to CBC Radio 2's Drive and a brief summary of your story was told as an interesting tidbit between songs!

Keep up the good work!

Adam

mazdeuce wrote: The lifter bucket thingies are all one piece. They sit upon the valves and are mushed by the cam. All of the hydraulic adjusting must be internal to the little guys. Very simple in a MB sort of way. Edit: this is a picture of the bottom. If you push on that little button in the middle (which rests in the valve stem) you can feel it move up and down. The oil comes in on the side. It really is compact and clever.

The Cam follower for the Mercedes designed engine in my Porsche 924 (Mercedes designed it for Auto Union before they broke away and it evolved from there) looks very similar. The Ca followers are $89/ea. and you only need 8 of them. So that's $712 for just the followers, which doesn't include the adjusting screws or shipping or lube. Oh and you get to use it on a lowly 110hp SOHC engine. So yeah you could have it worse my friend :)

mazdeuce wrote: The lifters shown for my van are $18 each online.

Look at the bright side. The lifters for a Saturn are way more than twice that much! (If you want ones that aren't garbage and you have to take the top end of the engine apart again)

adam525i wrote: Long time lurker really enjoying your thread. Just thought I'd pop in and let you know that not only are you internet famous, you are radio famous from coast to coast in Canada. I jumped in my car to drive home listening to CBC Radio 2's Drive and a brief summary of your story was told as an interesting tidbit between songs! Keep up the good work! Adam

I had to quote this because it's making me smile. Being famous in Canada has been a dream of mine since I was an exchange student at the University of Waterloo briefly. That's actually where I first learned about the Speed Channel back when it was cars and planes all day. Look how far I've come!
Thanks for reading along and telling me about the radio. Sending warm thoughts to you from Texas.

As to the lifters, yes, $18 seems like a fantastic price to me. See, not all parts are brutally expensive, the ones you need dozens of are fairly priced.

Have you received a royalties check yet?

Speaking of royalties......spacecadet was just messaging me about the views of the video he shot of us doing laps at TWS. Apparently something like 1200 people from all over the world have watched it in the past several days. Finland, Japan, all over the place. 3000 minutes of valuable work time in the US alone was spent watching me chase a Corvette in my van.
I know there are a lot of people on GRM but I always assumed there were maybe 20 people who paid attention.

Small world, I was listening as I drove from Stratford back to my place in Kitchener-Waterloo

Adam

The head of P.R. for Mercedes Benz USA, Rob Moran, is a friend of mine and has actually been to one of our Challenge events. I have made him aware of all this, and suggested that Mercedes might want to get involved. I hate to see them be the goat in all this, when they could most likely easily be the hero.

By all means tell him I said hi and feel free to contact me. I love my R63 and I love that Mercedes built it. Even if I was a little frustrated at times you have to really love a car to go through all of this. The more time I spend inside this motor the more I appreciate what AMG and Mercedes did. It's really neat.
They still build properly foolish cars. They don't get much love from motorsports people in the US, at least from those of us who actually drive instead of watch motorsports, but their current lineup has an attitude of "AMG all the things!" which is pretty cool.

In reply to mazdeuce:

I'm a bit late to the naming party, but yes they call those tappets if I recall correctly. Would suggest you replace those since a failure in those will def kill your engine. I saw a valve go through one of those once. Still have the keeper as a memento.

I can only speak from personal experience but MB does make good engines. I have a guy with 09' SL63 that currently has 290k miles and they are mainly track miles, yes track miles and it's a daily driver. Granted, he is already on his 3rd engine, I must say they take the beating. He drives it to the race track, races and drives home. The vehicle is mainly bone stock aside from some stickers and bedazzling.

By the way, who built the engine on your R, I'm curious...