R63 AMG The Unicorn of my Destruction

Man, mazdeuce - I'm just a little panicked about this. Not sure if I should push the car hard to have these fail under warranty or just drive like normal (which I'm not sure is all that different) and hope they don't fail. I had a low coolant issue when I first got the car. Had the radiator and overflow reservior replaced. Haven't seen any low coolant warnings since. If mine go next year after my warranty expires, I'm flatbedding this baby down to you.

As an aside, are you replacing with the OEM bolts or are you upgrading to the Weistec ones?

NOHOME wrote: To mazdeuce I'm feeling a bit woozy...How you holding up?

Calming my brain down enough to sleep is going to be difficult for a bit. I know I can get it apart anyway.

In reply to arsveloce:

I have no advice for yours. Like dating a drug lord, just enjoy the good things and try not to dwell too much on the future.
Head bolts are to be decided. If it goes back together stock then the new design bolts work fine, if decide to supercharge it, or think I might in the future, then I'll get the ARP studs. Lots of investigation and decisions before that.

I thought there was a hard (engine) number at which the failures stopped?

There are. They switched head bolt design mid 2010 and after that there were no more failures. If you're shopping something that spans that time frame it's worth it to look up the number and compare. If you have an R63 then you're kind of hosed. The head bolts that MB sells now are the 2010.5+ bolts.

I keep thinking about this for my CLS63. It is at 109k miles now so "should" be past the prime failure time, and it survived One Lap and doing 140 at track days. Part of me wants to leave well enough alone, part of me likes to do preventive work on my own schedule, and part of me wants to see if I can just replace one bolt at a time, leaving the rest torqued, to make it much less work. My car has great engine access, especially with the hood in service mode.

In reply to Sonic:

I'm not sure there's a right answer. Failure is far from a sure thing. It looks like lots, maybe most, of the 63 cars will live a long life with other expensive fixes taking them down before the head bolts do. The failures don't seem to be as certain as IMS failures anyway. It is tempting to just pull the cams and do one bolt at a time. There is evidence that it works and the disassembly is relatively minor, but you also risk breaking something that's not currently broken. The difference in labor between pulling the cams and pulling the heads makes it tempting though.

Redonkulous. Silly Germans. Sometimes they get things very right, and other times they can't design an ass that can be found with both hands.

mazdeuce wrote: Cams have to come out to remove the head bolts.

smokindav wrote: Redonkulous. Silly Germans. Sometimes they get things very right, and other times they can't design an ass that can be found with both hands.

mazdeuce wrote: Cams have to come out to remove the head bolts.

Aren't most OHC heads that way?

mblommel wrote: Aren't most OHC heads that way?

Honda Civic engines come apart nicely with the cams still attached. That's not the right-and-proper way to do it, though.

I don't know about most of them - but you can pull a DSM head (and you'll need to if you don't change the timing belt on time) without taking the cams out.

mblommel wrote:

smokindav wrote: Redonkulous. Silly Germans. Sometimes they get things very right, and other times they can't design an ass that can be found with both hands.

mazdeuce wrote: Cams have to come out to remove the head bolts.

Aren't most OHC heads that way?

Also, for normal (not Mercedes-Benz) manufacturing you would have the head assembly sitting on the line and when the block rolls by you just drop it on and bolt it down.

Keep in mind this isn't a Mercedes engine really, it was designed in house by AMG because they wanted an engine to go racing with and Mercedes didn't have anything they could build off of and be competitive. They were supposed to be hand built in low numbers, which they were. It was then up to Mercedes to figure out what they could cram it into to help reduce costs. They figured out how to make it fit in a minivan. That doesn't mean it's a minivan motor.

Brett_Murphy wrote:

mblommel wrote: Aren't most OHC heads that way?

Honda Civic engines come apart nicely with the cams still attached. That's not the right-and-proper way to do it, though.

Miata heads come off with the cams installed as well, and it's endorsed by the service manual that way.

Honda B series need the cams out to pull the head, it isn't that much extra work

So do Nissan SR series engines, and the mighty X22SE. Similar setup to the B series actually.

Lexus 3uz-fe motor (and by extension the 1uz as well) needs the cams removed to pull the head. It's not uncommon. Torque sequence for the cams is fun too. Adjusting the valves involves doing it a few times which was a blast.

Disconnected the cats from the manifolds (they stay with the heads for now), took the alternator off and flopped it to the side. Took off the AC compressor and the water pump with it's octopus of hoses. Removed the other two cams. That's a lot of cams. Now that I have things apart I need to measure them and get some storage boxes to put things in. It's getting absurd in the Grosh.
The timing chains, two on each side, go around this gear and that's what the cams mesh with. I can't decide if it's elegant or needlessly complicated. The timing gear spins on an axle of sorts that is pressed into place and retained by an allen screw deep in this hole. I don't have any allen sockets long enough, need to grab some tomorrow. Once you have the retaining screw out you thread a special Mercedes part into the axle and use an equally special tiny Mercedes slide hammer to yank it out. My guess is that the threaded hole in the axle is the next bigger size than the retaining screw that passes through it. So hopefully I can get a long bolt that fits and improvise my own tiny slide hammer. It 'should' slide right out, right? I think the special Mercedes stuff is more important for installation. It's only $60 in special tools (though I need to order the cam holders too) but I was hoping to order this with all of the parts I figure I need. Hmmmmm.......
That's it for today. At the orthodontist with Deucekid#3 for a bit and then house/dad stuff for the rest of the day.

I'd remove that sensor before it gets broken.

Otherwise...

Damn...

I have to pull that sensor and the one at the back of that head before it comes off. As far as , it's like any other engine, just with more parts that are more expensive. At this point it's really quite fun.

Silly question, the funny bolt at the bottom of that hole, is it left hand or right hand? When doing some stuff to the BMW VANOS there was a funny little hidden bolt and it was left hand.

Good question. I don't think the book said anything about left hand threading but I'll check before I get a wrench on it.

In reply to mazdeuce:

Looking good so far, the motor looks pretty clean inside.

I just changed the oil in mine tonight, all 9.3 qts, and am sending a sample to be analyzed to check for coolant in the oil, cheap information at $28.

I'm going to spend the rest of my life wondering if I should have sent in an oil sample from that fist oil change.......

Hmmm, that cam drive looks oddly similar to the S2000