Thank you for that. It's a facelift car by the look of it, and I think the facelift M157s had 550 hp as standard. It COULD be genuine, then.
I'm looking into the provenance of this engine:
MERCEDES E63 AMG M157 5.5 L V8 Bi-Turbo COMPLETE ENGINE,550,bhp,2013,30k | eBay
I smell a rat, though; the engine has supposedly done 30K miles, but it was on eBay on May 4 when Will posted it. Strangely, BG63YNK passed MoT on 26 April, only a week earlier, when the mileage recorded was only 18,156 miles...
Even stranger is the reason the seller has given me for the engine being for sale: "engine was removed with suspected timing chain failure but turned out to be faulty ecu"
. If - big
IF - that is correct, just what sort of back street bodger could possibly diagnose a faulty ECU as timing chain failure, then remove the engine without doing any dismantling to check? And who would take such an expensive, complicated low-mileage car to a back street bodger anyway?
Interestingly, the piston slap on no. 5 which was the cause of my top-end rattle could easily have been mistaken for a timing chain problem. I wonder what the con rods are like on that engine...
I originally asked the vendor for the engine number, but he hasn't given it to me. I've asked again, but I don't think I'll get it.
