1999 Mercedes E55 AMG

Hi Everyone- I have been meaning to write this new car up, but need to take a step back and explain my previous daily driver.

Old daily was a 1999 E300 with the OM606 turbo engine.  I converted the entire car to E55 specs on the car aside from the engine- suspension, body kit, seats, brakes, etc.  I work in sales and put a lot of miles on the car.  I got a hybrid stock turbo and ecu tune so it was roughly 250hp.  The only bad news is like a lot of W210 cars is rust.  It was definitely not horrible by any means, but was not going to go away unless I spent some serious coin on fixing it.  The 606 turbo engine is going to be swapped into a really clean 1995 E300.

With COVID happening, I am not traveling nearly to the degree that I was so any loss in fuel economy was gained in grins with the added power from the V8.  This 99 E55 was bought really inexpensively for what they sell for. as prices on these are generally climbing  The car was the same silver color that the diesel was making the purchase a no brainer.

Here is the E55 when I got it home.  The car definitely has some needs, but largely I have the parts needed for it.  

First thing I did was sell the 18" monoblock wheels and recouped a good amount of money.  I transferred the 17" BBS RK wheels that I ran on the diesel which are much lighter than the monoblocks and have the ability to rotate tires.  When swapping the wheels, I noticed the car has H&R springs on it which may or may not stay.  It also has a resonator delete which seems to be universally suggested mod.

The car has the two tone designo interior option, but somewhere along the line the white part of the seats have been dyed gray.  I am not a fan of the tuxedo interior so this works fine for me.  It took a little while to figure out, but the steering wheel was dyed/painted to look solid black.  I swapped it for a 1997 C36 wheel which is the same shape, but did not have any of the paint chips the original had.  Sold the original on ebay and recouped all costs for the new wheel.

My buddy was able to help me swap the hood from the diesel onto the E55.  The paint hood on the car was completely toast so this was a easy change.  The paint on the fenders is no good so they need replacing as well.  The passenger diesel fender is perfect so I only need to source a good drivers fender.  Unfortunately, finding rust free 96-99 fenders is surprisingly challenging here in the Northeast.

The list of things to do on the car are:  swap shocks from diesel, possibly swap stock E55 springs back, headliner (which I have on hand), valve cover gasket and breathers, swap the front brake pads from diesel as the ones on the E55 create a massive amount of brake dust, sort out the xenon headlights as one side is a totally different color than the other.

I will post some more pictures of the car tomorrow.

Sweet I owned one for 3 days last year and it was the perfect amount of time to own a Mercedes for me.  Ran the $2000 challenge and sold it to Dead_Sled 

i will say with the fresh tuneup the violence of acceleration was unexpected and intoxicating 

Beautiful 

sad to see you sold the monoblocks. To me, that makes the car, visually 

ccrelan (Forum Supporter) said:

First thing I did was sell the 18" monoblock wheels and recouped a good amount of money.  I transferred the 17" BBS RK wheels that I ran on the diesel which are much lighter than the monoblocks and have the ability to rotate tires.

When I first read this I thought it was an hilarious comment against the rotating mass of the monoblocks 

Then I realized it meant the difference between a staggered vs square set-up... I still prefer my original interpretation!

Love the car, classic shape even though it's relatively young you don't see many these days.

Yes, the staggered monoblocks look cool, but are really heavy.  I  was able to sell the five of them in two days for $1100 so it was a no brainer for me and made the car that much cheaper.  The 17x8 et35 BBS wheels barely clear the front brakes.  I have a 15mm spacer on the rear which helps out a lot.  You can see the two tone interior that was done by a previous owner.   The other appeal of this car is that while the body was not perfect it came originally from Nevada so it does not have the underlying rust issues that so many of these car do that have lived their whole life up this way.

I would be surprised if you could find a rust free fender for a 20 year old car in the Northeast at all, not the opposite...

I've got 17x8 RKs on my Avalon.  One of my favorite wheels of all time.  That they're 16.5lbs doesn't hurt, either.  

Love the way the W210 drives but damn if the rust isn't real. We bought a NOVA car in 2016 that had some structural suspension rust. What happened to your E300?

buzzboy said:

Love the way the W210 drives but damn if the rust isn't real. We bought a NOVA car in 2016 that had some structural suspension rust. What happened to your E300?

My best friend's dad growing up special ordered an '01 E320 with some special champagne color and black and green Designo package. Really attractive car. That was the first car with those early HIDs which I knew the owner. Anyway, it was babied, washed religiously and still rusted away to nothing unbelievably fast. 

In reply to buzzboy :

The 99 diesel is still in my driveway.  It will be parted out later this fall.  The engine is going into a 95 W124 after it gets a mechanical pump. 

The car has surface rust all all the door bottoms, wheel arches, and under the trunk.  I tried to fight it away, but the stuff never sleeps! 

Right now, I am trying to sell the AMG body kit on the car.  Here is a picture.  Passenger fender is mint and will be swapped onto E55.  The drivers shown here is not horrible to I may end up repainting it and swapping on the E55.  The BBS wheels on it are destined for a different project- a 93 300E sportline with a 3.6 AMG engine and 5 speed trans.

Oooh, nice! Love me some 80s/90s MB. That's a good destination for those parts. A friend of mine has a manual E36 AMG. It's a fast car!

I love w210's, but the rust has mostly scared me away from owning one. 
My uncle had an e55 AMG that he bought brand new. To a 7 year old, it felt like a rocketship and started my love/hate relationship with German cars 

In reply to Turbine :

It is still a pretty quick car in my book.  I can't see a reason why I would need more than 350hp/390tq for 99% of the time.

I would imagine the W210 rust to be far less of an issue down south or other parts of the country where the roads are not salted like up here in the Northeast.

Good day today.  Sold the OM606 turbo engine as plans changed with my friend on the swap.  A couple of young guys came and pulled it.  They were all said and done in a hair less than four hours.  I will get off the last bits I need from the diesel car and send it to the scrapper.

I installed this modified air box onto the E55.  You can see the added volume in the box compared to stock.  It has gotten universal rave reviews.

Turbine said:

I love w210's, but the rust has mostly scared me away from owning one. 
My uncle had an e55 AMG that he bought brand new. To a 7 year old, it felt like a rocketship and started my love/hate relationship with German cars 

I bought my 01 in 04 and really loved it. Luckily it had a warranty lol, but yes...it was a rocket ship for a sedan at the time.

So with the engine out of the diesel E300, there was easy access to remove the E55 front sway bar.  I also got the E55 front brakes off and a couple other odds and ends that might be sellable. 

The front spring perches are an issue on these W210 cars.  I sure am glad that I decided to take the route that I did in acquiring the E55.  Here are pictures of the driver's side perch.  It would have let go in the not too distant future.

Next weekend the front fenders are going to be swapped over.  Headliner is going to be tackled soon as well.

I had this week off of work so I was able to tackle some projects on the E55.  The old 99 diesel shell was towed to my buddies place.  I only need to pull the E55 stock springs and E55 rear sway bar and the car will be ready for the junkyard.

I did the valve cover gaskets, breathers and hoses, crank sensor, and spark plugs on the car Tuesday.  Two plugs per cylinder on these M113 engines means pulling a lot of plugs.  Got a late start and ran out of daylight as some complications popped up as well. 

The crank sensor that I bought had mounting tab in the wrong location for my plug so the original had to go back in for the time being.  The breather tube kit did not include this one small $7 piece that plugged into the top of the throttle body.  Of course, the piece cracked and essentially stopped work for the day.

I was able to source the breather piece the next day.  Of course, when removing it a small piece of fossilized rubber fell down into the throttle body.  Taking off the throttle body was not hard, but of course we did not have the correct throttle body gasket to reinstall so we reused what was there which was some jerry-rigged sort of goop gasket.  I ordered a new gasket from the dealer and will grab it on Tuesday.  We started the car and all was well except for some noise coming from the belt tensioner.  Oh well, add it to the list of parts to look into....

I was driving yesterday morning up the Merritt Parkway to my wheel shop and thought that I noticed a strong burning smell.  A few minutes later the battery light came on the cluster.  Fortunately, I was right near an exit and was able to pull off and find a park and ride lot.  Turns out the belt tensioner completely seized up and the drive belt was like a bundle of twine around the front of the engine.  Got the car towed home and was able to source a tensioner at a local store and got the new one on without too much trouble.

Last weekend, I was able to get this Continental radio installed which looks a million times better than the garish silver radio that came in the car.  This looks close to OEM.  We were also able to get the good E55 shocks from the diesel swapped onto the E55.  The old ones were very tired so ride is much more pleasant now.  Hoping to have some time to do the front sway bar bushings and upper control arms today.

Those radios look nice but mine failed after a couple months of use.  I mostly liked the E300D I had for a couple years, with the key situation now I would be a little afraid of buying another one though. 

I was able to tackle a niggling issue that I noticed.  The drivers door speaker and tweeter were not working at all.  It turns out the factory amp was bypassed.  My local radio shop was able to trace the issue to a break in a wire going from the trunk to the back seat so now all is well with the sound system.

I am breaking down and bringing the car into the local euro shop to replace a couple suspension pieces that hopefully will tame this highway vibration issue that has been plaguing the car.  I might tackled the headliner this week as well as I am off of work.

In other good news, I believe the AMG body kit, AMG sway bars, and AMG springs that are leftover from the 99 E300 have found a buyer so I really do not have any pieces leftover.

Some progress today.  We got the front stock E55 springs installed on the car.  The H&R springs had 1 pt spring pads so the car was too low for my liking.  Front brake pads were swapped out at the same time.  Hoping to finish the rear springs tomorrow along with the rear brakes and fuel filter.

You can tell this was originally a Nevada car by the front spring perches.

A w210 with shocktowers is a surprise for sure. I didn't know what they looked like until now

I meant to say spring perches....Long day and could not think straight.

They are known for separating from the body like what was happening on one side of my old E300 a number of posts up this thread.  I cleaned them up and took these pics when swapping back in the stock springs yesterday.

This is a very good thread about these older AMG's.

I've always kind of wanted an AMG sedan, but I'm not sure if I'll ever subject myself to it.  I mean, if that's what they come up with for the spring perch design, who knows what else is hiding in there!

Nice E55!

Rear brakes got done yesterday so the car is really taking shape.  It is riding and running excellent.  I just have to swap in the replacement headliner and different drivers fender.

Here is the ride height on the stock E55 springs

I was able to sell the remaining stash of parts I had from the old diesel- amg body kit, amg front brakes, amg sway bars, and h&r springs were sold.  It was very timely as I am in the process of buying a 1997 Mercedes C36 with a 6 speed swap in California.  Payment was sent yesterday so I will be working on shipping the car back to the east coast soon.

The current fleet of Mercedes looks like this right now

1) 1999 E55 

2) 1995 C36 5 speed swap- in storage and needs repairs

3) 1993 300E Sportline- is in the process of getting a C36 engine and auto trans swap

4) 1997 C36 6 speed

I will definitely have to thin the fleet down to two cars at some point.  The E55 will likely go up for sale in a month or so depending on how the swap comes along on the Sportline car.  One of the C36 cars will go later in the year once the 1995 shifting issue is sorted out.

Dropped off spare E55 drivers fender for paint late this week.

This 1997 C36 6 speed swap arrived yesterday from California.  Really excited about this one.