Silver E55.

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Thanks for the kind words guys.

With the exhaust manifolds ready, the next thing I wanted to sort out was the exhaust itself. This was also a DIY and took a few good weeks to finish. The manifolds were made out of mandrel bends which I had bent for me locally. For the exhaust I went with popular AMG 70mm pipe which isn't easily available in the UK. I found a supplier in Germany and placed an order for a number of bends that I'd calculated the new exhaust would require. As the parts were on their way to the UK, I've addressed a pair of Brabus boxes that I bought together with the Brabus bodykit to go on the car. The boxes were for E230-500 models and had smaller diameter pipes going to them. I wasn't sure if the piping is any bigger inside and decided to open and refabricated the boxes.

The boxes were welded around the perimeter so I carefully opened them up at both ends with a grinder:

36159766664_82c54b33f1_z_d.jpg


And slid the shell off. Inside was a perforated pipe of a smaller diameter wrapped in wire wool, heat blanket and stuffed with sound insulation material:

36598351330_203571eb82_z_d.jpg


I continued to take them apart by cutting the restricting end pipes off:

36186908353_9861436b5f_z_d.jpg


Then I measured, cut and welded a bigger perforated pipe as well as the ends instead of the originals used by Brabus (or Remus rather):

36159394554_24d796f079_z_d.jpg


Wrapped in wire wool:

36823639222_a40f4a4ce5_z_d.jpg


And welded it all up same as before:

36186542733_727739f430_z_d.jpg
 
Thanks for the kind words guys.

With the exhaust manifolds ready, the next thing I wanted to sort out was the exhaust itself. This was also a DIY and took a few good weeks to finish. The manifolds were made out of mandrel bends which I had bent for me locally. For the exhaust I went with popular AMG 70mm pipe which isn't easily available in the UK. I found a supplier in Germany and placed an order for a number of bends that I'd calculated the new exhaust would require. As the parts were on their way to the UK, I've addressed a pair of Brabus boxes that I bought together with the Brabus bodykit to go on the car. The boxes were for E230-500 models and had smaller diameter pipes going to them. I wasn't sure if the piping is any bigger inside and decided to open and refabricated the boxes.

The boxes were welded around the perimeter so I carefully opened them up at both ends with a grinder:

36159766664_82c54b33f1_z_d.jpg


And slid the shell off. Inside was a perforated pipe of a smaller diameter wrapped in wire wool, heat blanket and stuffed with sound insulation material:

36598351330_203571eb82_z_d.jpg


I continued to take them apart by cutting the restricting end pipes off:

36186908353_9861436b5f_z_d.jpg


Then I measured, cut and welded a bigger perforated pipe as well as the ends instead of the originals used by Brabus (or Remus rather):

36159394554_24d796f079_z_d.jpg


Wrapped in wire wool:

36823639222_a40f4a4ce5_z_d.jpg


And welded it all up same as before:

36186542733_727739f430_z_d.jpg

Now this is attention to detail.
 
Nice one Alex - great to get to read about this in more detail. Will follow with interest!
 
Haha, sorry for the delay. Here comes the next part.

When the stainless steel bends arrived from Germany it was time to start making the exhaust. The car didn't have the original AMG exhahust when I bought it. Instead it had a poorly fabricated single piece exhaust made by CKS. It had no joints for easier dis-/assembly and no mandrel bends so it had to go. To speed things up a little, I ordered a X-pipe already made. Except that it had to be made to order and that took more than a week. I also had a couple of off cuts from the original 219 63 exhaust which made the initial design a little bit easier.

36856039711_434d263939_z_d.jpg


I started going back to front, measuring, cutting, linishing and tacking up pieces in place. When the exhaust took shape, I removed it from the car and on to my welding table to weld it shut:

36996192635_e532867c59_z_d.jpg


Chilling blocks were used to draw the heat from the stainless and minimise the distortion:

36996194555_59af2c73ab_z_d.jpg


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Finished, the exhaust looked like this:

36996207455_726f22ff2c_z_d.jpg
 
The next area of attention was the power. I went with the Weistec 3L supercharger kit. I had some experience running this kit on my other car and was pleased with the results but this time I decided to make things a little different. This particular twin screw supercharger, made by Whipple for Weistec, is very popular in the US. Lots of Mustang and Camaro owners use them with great success pushing sometimes over 1000bhp at the wheels. It's a very capable unit somehow unrealised on the 55K platform. To fix that and to ensure that I can still program the ECU I was going to get a bigger throttle body. This however posed a problem as the single air intake in the car was going to be too big to fit in the engine bay. A good friend threw an idea of fitting two 74mm throttle bodies side by side, I took it further by splitting the throttle bodies and a new inlet manifold was born:

36599957110_3e82fe55e2_z_d.jpg


Of course it took some time before the manifold could look like that.

First, I approached an industrial engineering company that 3D scanned the entire engine bay and created several designs of the inlet manifold (aka shroud):

37197852421_94dafb25ea_z_d.jpg


We then chose the design that was optimal for the application and concentrated on perfecting it to mimimise the turbulence of air entering the inlet. The angles and positions of both throttle bodies were chosen based on the results from the air flow simulation software.

37341075305_09dbbdd1f6_z_d.jpg


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It was obvious during the decision making process that the original ECU would struggle with the presence of one extra TB and lack of the bypass valve. One of the early designs of the shroud incorporated the bypass valve but in the end I decided to go ahead without it.
 
Brilliant Alex, was waiting for this thread. I'm still utterly amazed with all the "unsexy" amount of work that I know has gone into this build, that no one will ever see.

But I also love all the sexy stuff you mentioned, and that which you haven't yet. :D
I was waiting too..looks amazing..can't wait to see more
 
Exhaust work looks incredible, what gearbox is that your running ?
 
When I said "attention to detail" before, I had no idea what would follow. The work which has gone into the twin TB "manifold" is staggering!
 
Alex

Was going back through my posts and found the one where I asked for the detail of your build and you said it was too complicated! Now I understand why seeing the detail in the flesh. Very glad you.are doing this for the benefit of us mere mortals, truly amazing work.

Cheers

Nick
 
Thanks for the feedback guys, glad you like it.

Dave, I was talked out of the sequential even though as you know fast shifts was my plan all along. The biggest downside is daily driving which is big part of what this build is for, would suffer massively. In crawling traffic I would have to build distances between myself and cars in front and cover them promptly. Slow city driving is what would wear the first 3 gears out. It was a hard decision to make but I think what I have now is the right choice between the hardcore track weapon and a fast city cruiser.
 
Hi Alex, awesome build thread, definitely going to follow this. You may remember I bought your spare Kleemann headers and heat exchanger a couple of years ago - believe it or not I still haven't fitted them! Anyway, I saw your workshop and car then and had a sense you were planning a very special project. Great to see that you are finally sharing the details and cant wait to see the outcome. Let me know if you want to sell the car when you finish ;-)
 
Great work Alex, as Bobby has said your attention to detail is a credit to you. A long time has gone by since we first met on that wet and windy meet at Silverstone when you had the ML and me the CL.

Then you bought a CL and I had visions of you doing to the CL what you have done to the E. A matter of interest why did you not finish the CL ?
 
Hi Alex, awesome build thread, definitely going to follow this. You may remember I bought your spare Kleemann headers and heat exchanger a couple of years ago - believe it or not I still haven't fitted them! Anyway, I saw your workshop and car then and had a sense you were planning a very special project. Great to see that you are finally sharing the details and cant wait to see the outcome. Let me know if you want to sell the car when you finish ;-)

Simon Hi. I remember your blue E55. Thanks and I can't believe you haven't fitted the headers!

Great work Alex, as Bobby has said your attention to detail is a credit to you. A long time has gone by since we first met on that wet and windy meet at Silverstone when you had the ML and me the CL.

Then you bought a CL and I had visions of you doing to the CL what you have done to the E. A matter of interest why did you not finish the CL ?

Hey Peter. I still miss the CL a lot you know. I came across this E55 and it was in pretty poor state so I thought it would be a better platform for more 'radical' changes. Still best car I've had to date - the CL55 - just my perfect daily.
 
The gearbox. It's a manual 6 speed with wide ratios, 2 overdrive gears and 700 ft/lbs. The call for the new gearbox was for 2 reasons: standalone ECU and limited ratios of the 5 speed auto. It's easier to do a manual conversion than try to teach the new ECU to work with auto box. With the new box you benefit from choice of gear ratios and general availability of spares and upgrades. Oh, and it's more fun to drive of course.

With this in mind, I've found the gearbox that suited the parameters above and placed an order with American Powertrain. 6 weeks later it arrived on a pallet from the US of A:

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37004216125_0cbe5be1cc_z_d.jpg


Same good friend helped me fit it. He took the measurements and orchestrated the whole process. We started with the flywheel which was designed based on the flexplate from the auto box, machined, treated and balanced:

36210555473_223438f5cb_z_d.jpg


I went with AP Racing twin plate clutch that fitted the specs of the project:

37018735555_c365c091fe_z_d.jpg


The bellhousing was made out of an old manual MB box that came with some M112 engines. It was not a straight swap as part of bellhousing forms the gearbox casing so we cut it and welded a plate that was machined to match the new gearbox:

37018749015_f1351bb25e_z_d.jpg


After a few trial fits, we were satisfied with the results:

36830466506_bda927d0ed_z_d.jpg
 
Am I allowed to post simply to say I'm even more impressed than I was last time I said was even more impressed with the level of detail. Awesome thread. Awesome car. Awesome skills!
 

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