V12 twin turbo? Here I come!

Nice SEC, always liked the c126. You can run cool rims on the 126, not like the gen2 r107. Good luck with the fleet.

First test drive went.....fair. It ran, drove, steered, and stopped, but had little power....like my 300sd might actually have outran it. Now, these cars can be quirky, so I thought maybe it needs to get through some learn features after all the battery disconnects etc. Well, after 20 miles it was the same, so back to the house and connect up star. I had a current and stored code that pointed to a discrepancy between a couple of sensors and an intermittent code that pointed to one sensor in particular. Well it turns out I had recently replaced that sensor on the s600 because I had broken one while doing the coils. I swapped the sensors between cars and just like that...power and more importantly BOOST!! I put another 20-30 miles on the CL and it's really driving well, so now it's time for tires, which I plan to order this evening or tomorrow. Once I do tires and alignment I'll probably start driving it to work to see what other bugs need to be worked out. I have a 105 mile round trip commute, so things should shake out quickly. That sensor was $30 off amazon and very easy to access, so nice to have an easy and cheap fix. Current picture:

Yay for cheap fixes!

mazdeuce wrote: Yay for cheap fixes!

Definitely. I'm generally a pessimist, so the easy fixes are a big relief.

New Michelin pilot sports went on yesterday....245/45/18 front and 275/40/18 rear. New front and rear ABC accumulators will go on over the weekend. I had the dreaded ABC light coming on over bumps and through a little testing determined both accumulators were shot. There is a 3rd, which is the return, that is probably bad too, but I'm starting with the two main ones.

I got a deal on the tires and they ran me $740 mounted and balanced, but they broke one of the TPS sensors in the process. I found an aftermarket replacement sensor for under $30, so may try one of those.

Accumulators were $300 shipped for the pair.

Also, interestingly enough I have to take a last minute trip to Houston next week for work.....and Eurocharged is in Houston. I had bought my tunes from them for black Friday and the TCU actually has to be mailed in to be flashed, while the ECU can be done remotely. I had been holding off sending the TCU while I was working through the transmission problems, but now I'm ready to have it done. Now, as opposed to shipping it, I'm going to take it with me and swing by either on my way from or to the airport. They said it would take about 20 minutes and it will be fun to check out their shop. After that I have to go to Austin for work the following week, then hopefully I'll have a chance to shakedown the car more and dyno.

Cant wait to see those dyno tune results. I really want to know if these companies are accurate in their claims. The bi-turbo v12 tunes arent THAT expensive compared to actual mods.

The accumulators did the trick. The CL rides much better and no more warning lights going over bumps. It took me around an hour and a half to do both. The front went much quicker because you have to partially disconnect the exhaust to do the rear.

However, on the test drive it threw a misfire cel again. Looks like the right side coil is going out. I will replace that once back in town, then hopefully will be ready for the dyno.

How finicky are those coils?

Does the cl600 seem harder to work on than the s600?

In reply to yupididit:

Replacing the coils isn't a bad job , but it's all the 'while you're in there' that can be time consuming. On the s600 I did both sides coils, plugs, and valve cover gaskets. On the CL I may take a different approach and replace just what is necessary, which seems to be the right side coil pack (the left side has already been done at some point). To do that I need to remove the engine cover, right side airbox, and unbolt the right side intercooler to flip it out of the way, then it's just a matter of unbolting the coil pack and removing it. Just doing that won't take very long...especially since I'm now familiar with the process.

The CL and S are so similar it feels like I'm working on the same car. No significant difference between them that I've seen other than the extra doors. I like the practicality of the S, but I now prefer the CL after spending some time with it. It's just a beautiful design and looks even better in person imo.

At this point what I'd like to do, I think, is buy a good parts car and sell the S600. Keeping two of these beasts going in the long term, along with the rest of the fleet, is just too time consuming. I also find myself looking at the S and wanting to rob parts off of it for the CL, like the coilpack I need, but it's too nice of a car to part out. It is super nice to have two of these though to swap parts around, look at for reference, etc, which is why a wrecked, but running parts car would be the ideal solution.

The seller of This car offered to trade for my xjr + cash from me obviously. Not sure if I want to. I'm still kind of attached to my xjr. But, I've been looking at v12 mercedes for years. I can find a few cl600 that need a ABC pressure line or coil for under $7,000.

Which STAR diagnostics did you purchase?

And thanks for keeping this thread up to date.

What do you think you'd sell your s600 for?

If only I could find a black on black or white on black.

yupididit wrote: The seller of This car offered to trade for my xjr + cash from me obviously. Not sure if I want to. I'm still kind of attached to my xjr. But, I've been looking at v12 mercedes for years. I can find a few cl600 that need a ABC pressure line or coil for under $7,000. Which STAR diagnostics did you purchase? And thanks for keeping this thread up to date.

If I still had my XJR I'd make that trade in a heart beat - assuming no unmentioned Gotchas.

yupididit wrote: The seller of This car offered to trade for my xjr + cash from me obviously. Not sure if I want to. I'm still kind of attached to my xjr. But, I've been looking at v12 mercedes for years. I can find a few cl600 that need a ABC pressure line or coil for under $7,000. Which STAR diagnostics did you purchase? And thanks for keeping this thread up to date.

That looks like a nice s600. It appears to have the amg appearance option too, which gets you the amg ground effects. My CL has that option, but not my S.

I got the full star c3 package with the laptop and all cables from mbstartool.com. They were really great to deal with and everything worked perfectly right out of the box.

yupididit wrote: What do you think you'd sell your s600 for? If only I could find a black on black or white on black.

Probably in the 6k range. I gave 5500, then did the work previously mentioned, but I never bought it expecting to actually make money. I would only sell it if I can find a decent deal on a wrecked parts car. I'm on the hunt though, so we'll see how it goes.

The seller wont let me check the car unless I'm willing to make the purchase at the same time which seems weird to me. I havent even presented the idea of a PPI being done yet. People are strange.

In reply to yupididit:

That would be a big red flag to me.

If I'm selling a car I'm happy to let anyone look at it who wants, assuming I have time and I have talked to them enough to be reasonably sure they won't get nasty if I won't take a really low offer, so I also don't deal with people that say they won't even let you touch the car until you show them a stack of cash, or 100% firm prices. Not worth the time.

Through text he was really cool and seemed very interested. Then this morning I asked him if he was available for me to actually see the car. His reply, "I'm ready to meet when you're prepared to buy on the spot". We live less than 2 miles from each other.

Cotton I'll trade you an XJR

Also, Cotton does the 03 have an aux input for the stereo? I know I ask you a lot of questions.

yupididit wrote: Cotton I'll trade you an XJR Also, Cotton does the 03 have an aux input for the stereo? I know I ask you a lot of questions.

More info on this XJR if you decide you want it gone?

yupididit wrote: Cotton I'll trade you an XJR Also, Cotton does the 03 have an aux input for the stereo? I know I ask you a lot of questions.

No problem on questions. I'm happy to enable! Yeah, mine does have the aux in the glovebox. Mine also has an aftermarket stereo, but the steering wheel buttons still mostly work and it has a backup camera.

That dude with the 10k s600 sounds pretty odd. I will say though that some of my best deals have come from weirdos because they scared everyone else off. If I knew he was flexible with price at all I'd be tempted to take some cash and check it out. Ideally you would have a STAR setup you could take with you to check it out and do a quick ppi of your own.

I would be tempted by that XJ-R normally, but currently I'm trying to trim down the fleet a bit. By spring I hope to be ready to sell about 10 or so cars, then buy one more nice car. That's the plan at this point, but I hate selling cars, so we'll see.

I stopped by eurocharged in Houston and got my TCU tuned....great bunch of guys there and they had this in the shop:

Twin turbo 458! Super cool car. They also had a twin turbo Gallardo and several high HP Mercedes. Anyway, TSA didn't have a problem with me carrying on my tcu, so that all went smooth. I got home, installed it, and the shifting is crisper, it holds gears longer, and seems to downshift quicker. The bigger benefit though is it modifies the torque management, so once you have a tune the computer doesn't limit torque to save the transmission.

And in more exciting news, baseline dyno is scheduled for next Friday! Now I haven't fixed the misfire issue, but it is intermittent, so I feel like I can at least get a couple of pulls in for a baseline.

I have ordered 24 spark plugs and valve cover gaskets, so once the baseline is done I'll tear into it and do vc gaskets, plugs, one coilpack (right side), then apply the ecu tune and go back to the dyno. Oh, also I found my intercooler pump is dead, so I ordered the upgraded Bosch unit ($107 from amazon) and will install that when I do the other work.

Finally, I guess this has turned into a build thread, so if a mod sees this maybe they can move it to the builds and projects section of the forum.

Those still have the 722.6 transmission?

In reply to Tk8398:

Yep, that's the one. I've read some of the internals were changed to handle the power of the TT v12, but I don't know the specifics.

I've had the pleasure to flog a "normal" 458i a few times, and it's a pretty amazing car, probably more so if I'd ever figured out what all the buttons/knobs/switches do. That thing just looks batE36 M3 crazy!