R63 AMG The Unicorn of my Destruction

In reply to mazdeuce :

Get the license plate holder that screws into the tow hook, two birds...

A very good friend of mine is leaving Houston in a couple of weeks, so we decided to carpool to one last Cars and Coffee here in Houston in the R63. The main parking area is reserved for really cool stuff, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, a bunch of McClarens including a P1. Unsurprisingly we were waved away to the common car parking. We walked and looked at stuff, our favorite car of the day was a minty fresh mid 80's 26k mile 4wd short box Toyota pickup. It was seriously cool. 

And then we walked back, and on our way I saw a couple groups of people stop and look at the R63. They pointed, a couple took pictures. I thank Doug for letting people know what these are. I don't really have pride in ownership, Mercedes gets the credit for the car, I'm just a caretaker, but it did feel really good firing it up and driving away. It runs. It runs well. And I did that. 

I'm sure there are dozens of R63 owners all over the world with a competition itch that needs to be scratched. Maybe autocross is the place to start? Maybe? Probably not, and let me explain why.

First, it's hard to be subtle. These things don't exactly blend in. Expect some funny looks and people asking you why, why would you do this?

And then you drive. Admittedly the 500tw Nexen tires aren't the best choice for autocross, but even looking beyond that, it's not a pleasant experience. Put the transmission in manual, spin it up to 5k in first, tap the back of the wheel for second, the engine knows no bounds. Glorious. Eventually, near the first corner, you need to slow down and turn, and this is where your run starts to become unfun.

The brakes work great, but there is just so much mass. You're attempting to stop a freight train. And then your turn. Well you turn the wheel, the tires bite, and they try to move the front of the car over, but they really just move the wheels and suspension over while the whole top part of the car mostly continues going in a straight line. This eventually translates to significant lean, but it takes a while. I finally learned that you need to initiate a turn about a full car length ahead of where I want to make the turn. This works, sort of, but in autocross you then need to make another turn, so you need to turn, wait for the car to turn, and maybe turn again before the car has really turned the first time. We had an eight cone slalom. Eight cone slaloms are bad.   

I still think everything that can be autocrossed should be autocrossed, at least once, but the R63 is on the list of vehicles that should be autocrossed once, and only once. 

Yesterday morning I loaded the kids in the van and fired it up. As I started backing out of my parking space under the overhang of the Grosh, the Check Engine light came on. Berk. Still running just fine, I pulled it back in, loaded the kids in the truck and headed to school. Thank God for spare vehicles.  

I hooked up my code reader yesterday afternoon and it told me I had a P0410, secondary air injection malfunction, generic. This morning I finally got to poking around and found this. 

Which is the vacuum line that attaches both of the units (because of course there are two air injection units) together and to engine vacuum. Luckily Mercedes left plenty of slack in this particular system and I could just pull off the offending broken bit and push it all back together. Now we wait to see if the code returns. Fingers crossed. 

I forgot, you have just the reader for this  and not the codeclearer thingy right?

Have you put enough miles on the R63 since the rebuild to have regained confidence in it or is there still a big 'Pucker Factor" every time you start it?

You DID autocross it! I saw the stickers in the Ferdinand thread and wasn't sure.

That's awesome- I too believe everything that can be autocrossed should be. I'm surprised the unicorn wasn't better! I get that it's a massive piece of machinery, but I would've thought a touch of the AMG brush would make anything capable between cones. 

In reply to 759NRNG :

I have the halfway reader. I can read all of the systems, HVAC, brakes, transmission, but I can't force the systems to do self checks. For this it's just reading off the regular OBDII system and then I can do a reset, thought it needs to be ignition on but not running to reset the CEL.  

In reply to SaltyDog :

Hard to say. I've got something like 1500 miles on it and seven autocross runs. If there was a problem with my work I think it would have shown up by now. That's the logical side of me. The emotional side is still listening closely to the engine, checking the oil a little more than usual, not taking it on school runs when Mrs. Deuce isn't in town and I don't have her to rescue me. I've never been totally confident in the van. Just the fact that a minor breakdown in the wrong spot means a long tow to a dealer makes me want to drive the truck across the country instead. It's a complicated relationship. 

In reply to Gunchsta :

The tires were a huge issue as far as times were concerned. There were a couple of long sweepers that were just slow because the lateral grip wasn't there. I was just riding around the circle on the edge of traction, slowly. But dynamically the van just can't transition quickly. It takes a looooong time to take a set. It's a little like a 4800lb NA Miata on stock shocks/springs. It's not that it's bad, it's just so much worse than you want it to be. I think it would be better on a road course, but it would be such an exercise in managing momentum and weight transfer that I'm not sure it would be fun. The R63 is truly a road car. 

It's time you start trusting your work and use this thing a little more.  It's a lot of money and insurance sitting around underused.  Continue to check your oil and other fluids as a responsible dad should but pile everybody in and go.  You got this.  Your build may be the most scrutinized build of all time.  If you did something that was not what one would term "best practices," someone somewhere in the world would've called you on it.  Don't think for a moment there wasn't a few Mercedes techs lurking in the background who would jump in if you got in trouble.  You didn't, they didn't, and the rest of the automotive world didn't.  So enjoy that thing.  Be secure in the knowledge you own the hottest minivan on Earth.  If you drove the thing in Botswana, people would be pointing and yelling "mazdeuce!" and asking you about something from page 52.  There are probably people out there now driving white AMG minivans and claiming to be you.  Take your lovely bride for a long distance shakedown weekend somewhere.  That should make you feel better.  Unfortunately, I can't help with finding a babysitter.

In reply to Jerry From LA :

I'm there in my head. It's the family car again. The only thing I don't do is take it to pick up the kids because that involves sitting idling with the AC on for the better part of an hour in 90+ heat and everything heat soaks enough as it is. Getting there emotionally is tough. The van still feels special, not because I fixed it, but just because of what it is fundamentally. 

Speaking of things that should not be autocrossed, I'm thinking of taking my BMW 540i wagon to an autocross. I've drag raced it, now I want to see how it does when turns are introduced. It's 4000lbs with roughly 300hp and has a full Koni suspension setup so it's pretty firm.

In reply to dannyzabolotny :

Do it! Big wagons are fun. 

Oh nice! How'd your CTS-V do on the track? Seems like all the hardcore autocrossers obsess over making their cars 2000lbs or less, but I like my full interior and AC.

In reply to dannyzabolotny :

It's a good track car. It was a superb One Lap car. My biggest issue is that it's damn fast for three point belts and stock seats. We were seeing 135-140 on the big tracks, and for me that's too fast to feel comfortable without a step up in safety equipment. I'm not willing to cage it, so it's been mostly retired to autocross duty where it's a bundle of fun, but the weight/tire ratio isn't good enough to come out on top locally. It's amazing what having a couple of national level guys in your class will do to calm down your ego. 

The R63 can tell me that the left license plate bulb is out. There is no way this ends well.

My BMW's all love to remind me about that kind of stuff. Currently my 540it keeps telling me about my washer fluid being low and my rear lights needing to be checked (I'm already aware of both).

“Open the pod bay doors, HAL.”

”I’m afraid I can’t do that, Seth.”

In reply to mazdeuce :

It's been a while, but it's alive. I fired my truck up today for about 5 seconds (no coolant yet) just to make sure it would go before I put the front end back together. I'm heading to town tomorrow to pick up coolant, trans fluid, etc, and I'll probably go for a short drive if all goes well. Most of the delay was waiting on the machine shop to actually get around to boring out the block and doing the heads. I'm I to it for around $3500 vs. over $10k at the dealership. 

It's no AMG, but this thing is pretty cool how it's built too.

Good to see that the R63 is doing good too.

Kristian

In reply to turbo_bird :

Thanks for the update and I'm glad to see that it seems to have worked out. That is a very cool motor, so much family engineering going on. Interesting that they went with an iron block.

mazdeuce said:

We had an eight cone slalom. Eight cone slaloms are bad.   

good gravy, why??  an eight cone slalom just sounds super boring.  where's the flow?  that's not a regular fixture, is it?

In reply to bluej :

It's a site thing. Houston has a couple of AX sites and one of them is the Houston Police Academy. It's a combination of a small/medium size parking lot and a small multi configuration road course training section. Depending on how the course designer wants to connect the two parts you often end up with a farily long straight. Much too long to just let it go. The question of how to slow down the cars isn't easy to answer. Offsets, slaloms, and using both in combination are really the only way. An eight cone slalom is sort of interesting when you have a competent car, you have a lot of time to show whether or not you know how to backside cones. When you're in a bad car, the whole thing is a nightmare. 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

It's a truck that weighs 7000lbs, so not much point putting an aluminum block engine in it to save 50 lbs or so. I didn't weigh the bare block, but it's pretty light. My dad used to build engines back in the 70's and 80's for guys, and used to race a Falcon with a 427 SOHC that he built up. He had a look at my lowly 5.4 when I was working on it, and said guys would have killed to have stuff like that back in the day. Deep skirt block with cross bolted mains, dowels between the main caps and the block so fit is perfect. The intake ports are a straight shot down to the valves. The valve train is insanely light and tiny, so it can handle some rpm. The timing chains and tensioners are pretty simple and tough, and easy to work on and set the timing compared to his 427. Here's a link to a different forum I'm on where I detailed what I did a bit better, hopefully that's allowed here. http://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=18853

Kristian

Those were some cool pictures. this is clickable link for those that don't want to copy and paste. Totally worth looking at if you like engine guts. It looks to me like racing really has improved engines though time. 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

Thanks, I didn't know how to make it clickable. I did have fun tearing into it, hopefully it holds together. I've cleaned up and re-bearinged an engine before, but this is the first time I've gone this far into one.

Kristian