DadMoto gets an R63! Let the adventure begin!

Just picked up my 2007 Mercedes R63 AMG. Found this car after seeing Doug Demuro review it and i couldn’t think of a better vehicle for a car nut that’s nearly 40 yo and still has to cart around 4 little boys and a wife.  

In the research process I found the Unicorn thread here and, while it did scare me a bit, wasn’t enough to turn me off to the model.  

Nothing better then a Uber rare “sports car” inspired wago-vano-suv. 

I like to be unique, I like big displacement high horse power, and have a family so it ticked all boxes. 

Dealer serviced to 107k miles but last 15k were a bit dubious. 

Motor mounts are SHOT, already on order.

Oil change pending arrival of Motul 5w-40. Blackstone Labs bottle ready and waiting.

need to research transmission and differential changes as I figure if I do it I’ll at least know when they were done last.

SRS light on due to broken connector under rear of driver seat. Bought new pins to crimp on and rebuild connector. $7 a piece from dealer!!!

Front left air bag or strut seems to slowly leak down in rest mode but rides normal height. Will be replacing both front airmatic strut assays with Arnott rebuilds. Will assess need to replace air pump and relay.

left license plate light out and already replaced it.

iCarsoft MB ii and factory service star DVD incoming.

Used MB Parts World for motor mounts and tranny mount as local dealer cost was bonkers. Also dealer quoted a different part number for left and right motor mounts then what every other (at least 10 separate locations) reference called for which had me concerned.

Rear auto hatch and latch don’t currently behave even after sleuthing to find “hatch height limit” in settings and turning it off. Hatch will auto up full height but on way down reversed back up at about halfway. Not clear on why yet. Quick line of hinges and springs didn’t help. Latch won’t full engage unless you manually close it “firmly”

besides that stuff it’s a 124k mile old rocket ship that can carry all four of my boys and the wifey.

will be documenting everything on YouTube on my soon to be up and running channel “DadMoto” and will be a fun journey but nowhere near as epic as your experience. 

Heck yeah! I love seeing people tackle these supposedly impossible German performance cars. As somebody that's owned a Range Rover, an X5, a dozen 540i's, an M5, and a 944, I'm a glutton for punishment as well.

What are the production numbers? I think 200 world wide and 40 in the US? 

Of that, 2 are on GRM? 

That's 5% of the US production and 1% of the world production.  Does this make you guys the real 1%ers?

What color is this one?

GRM, the only site on the internet where the R63 is played out. 

A couple of things popped into my head. First, order a set of jack blocks. There aren't any jack points under the car other than the factory points and those require the goofy blocks. The whole rest of the underside is covered in plastic, so not really any options. Second, have you looked at the procedure for changing the motor mounts yet? You'll love it. I'm glad I did mine when the motor was out. Also, if you want to borrow the cam tool, let me know. It's pretty cheap on Amazon ($130 maybe) in the grand scheme of owning one of these but I'm happy to share Pay attention to the alignment, they can be brutal on tires if  you don't and you have to find a shop that knows how to align the car because it's always trying to adjust itself with the air suspension. The guy who did mine finally did it with the car running.  

Lastly, have you put the transmission in sport run through the first three gears to 7k? It's glorious. 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

This one is 040 Black with black leather.

I saw the blocks but didnt order yet so that will be today. 

I have not seen the procedure yet but I’m sure it’s a real treat considering how stuffed this motor is in the R’s bay. Does it say anything about special tools or just removal of a bunch of stuff to get to bolts topside?

it will need tires soon and I have 3 independent Mercedes shops within 1-2 hour drive so they will be my calls for alignment after tires and front strut replacement.

Mazdeuces game brought me here. Facts are there’s probably only a couple people in the county with any experience pulling one of these apart and 1 is here! 

The guy at the Mercedes dealer parts counter  had never heard of an R63 and said he had no clue they did an AMG version of the R. 

Oh by the way I changed my profile name. Never thought I would post much so didn’t put a lot of thought into the original name.

The engine isn't attached to the unibody at all. Normally this would mean loosening the mounts, picking up the engine a smidge and swapping mounts. Mercedes seems to think the way to do it is suspend the engine where it sits and then drop the subframe a couple inches. This probably has something to do with the 43 different coolers that are attached to the engine by 86 different hoses. I'm pretty sure you can leave the struts attached during the procedure, so it's not thaaaaaat bad, but it's pretty involved for a pair of squishy rubber bits held on with two bolts each. Have fun! 

Someone needs to say it...does this one have the head bolt issues?

maschinenbau said:

Someone needs to say it...does this one have the head bolt issues?

They all do. Every M156 through a certain serial number in mid 2010 has the old design that is succeptable to cracking, and since every R63 is a 2007, well, there you are. Having said that, nobody knows the actual failure numbers or whether the liklihood of failure goes up or down beyond a certain number of heat cycles. It's just fatigue cracking of the bolts, so maybe some motors are less likely than others to actually pop the heads off? Mercedes certainly wasn't forthcoming on any information they had collected when I was inquiring. 

I thought that there wasn't an "issue" with the old head bolts.  MB just started selling new ones for no reason whatsoever, right?  

"An updated part doesn't mean the old one was bad, just that the new one is better. Sometimes we switch from metal to plastic, sometimes we make a design change for cosmetic reasons or for ease of manufacturing. There is nothing about a revised part number that suggests anything about an old part."  

Mercedes has a pretty solid corporate answer on this. 

Listen to the SETH (been there done that-believe it)

Depending on what comes back from Blackstone in oil analysis will prompt me to check them earlier or later. The plan is still to pull the head covers and cams and do a 1:1 swap but I don’t have a fancy Grosh yet to do that in. 

Im crossing my fingers and everything else that crosses besides my man bits that I can wait till spring to do the swap and skate by unscathed.

I'm very interested to see if it's possible to do a 1:1 swap in an R63. I just measured and the bolts themselves are 7 1/4 inches long. I'm not entirely sure you have that much room to snake a bolt in the drivers rear corner. I can't find any evidence that anyone had done a 1:1 on an R63 or and ML63 both of which are the narrowest bodies that got this engine. I know the AMG tech said that he didn't think he could lift the drivers side head off the engine with the stub of the broken bolt in place and he wasn't willing to try. 

Just remember, these are fine right up until they're not, so if it's fine now, then it's fine. Enjoy it. 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

Well I always wanted a lift. Would make so many things more convenient. Think I could lift it and then drop the subframe down enough to get at it without having to completely pull the motor?

You can do the motor mounts like that, but the motor needs to come down a good 18 inches at least before it's away from the front frame members. The fully dressed motor is less than an inch away from solid metal on both sides going in and out, and the heads are the widest part of the motor. Honestly, if you have a lift, the job isn't terrible and it's a hell of a lot easier to do the work with the motor out.

Having said that, you can pull the valve covers off fairly easily (all things considered) which means you can pull the cams fairly easily, which means you can start at the very back bolt and see if it will work. I kind of want to watch you do this, for science, because as far as I can tell, nobody knows if you can do it and I didn't attempt it because I knew I was pulling the motor anyway. 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

18 inched, yikes. I meant like 4-5.  Seeing you have it apart and the front end removed. Think the driveshaft, exhaust, fuel lines be disconnected and the motor dropped a bit then pulled forward in bay? Obviously all front end radiator etc taken out.

If you have to drop the motor itself  more than about an inch you might as well pull the whole thing. You need to pull the exhaust and rear drive shaft which require pulling all of the undercladding. Then you pull the front wheel well liners, all of the front undercladding, pull the calipers, and you disconnect the struts from the knuckles . You can't really just disconnect the cooling system, you have to pull it (that part I tried, you really do have to pull it to disconnect it all) Then you disconnect the steering shaft, fuel line, two big electrical plugs and one ground (the electrical is the easiest part) and now you can take out the four subframe bolts and lower the engine 3-4 inches. If you really only wanted to drop it 3-4 inches you could probably leave the driveshaft connected and maybe leave the struts connected to the knuckles. So the difference between dropping it 3-4 inches and all the way is maybe 8 bolts? You could maybe pull it forward 4-6 inches but that wouldn't really change the fact that you've done all the work to properly drop it and the sides of the engine bay are still in the way. 

There are ways to raise a unibody off a motor without a lift using cribbing and patience. A bunch of us here have done it. If  you use small wheels and a home made engine dolly you can probably get away with lifting the back 18 inches and the front not quite three feet. I think the geometry would work. 

I do think it might be possible to do the bolts from the top and I'd love for you to prove me wrong on any of what I typed above. I've only done this once so I'm far from an expert. I pretty much just followed the manual with a set of hand tools, so if I could do it, anyone can. 

Check on this page and you can see the motor going back in. I should have taken better pictures (remember, at the time I thought it was just 20 guys on GRM watching) but there really isn't any room. 

https://i.imgur.com/82yF968.jpg

no idea how to post images here but this is the link to a pic

In reply to DadMoto :

Man, that thing looks good in black.

I dropped that picture in for you with my Mod Powers but you can do it too, here is how.  

Rather than putting the Imgur link directly into the body of your text you have to use the icons above the witting area.  The icons start with B for Bold and I for Italics, etc.  The 7th icon over is a picture of the sun of a mountain.  This is how you add pictures. Clicking on the sun/mountain will open another message window.  Drop that Imgur URL into there and hit okay.  Viola, your picture is visible to all.  

Welcome to GRM.  Some oddities exist here but overall it is a great place.  

PS: Man, that thing looks good in black!

Yes, this sweet machine looks great in black! Looking forward to following your thread. 

Cant do that with too many 507HP family haulers! 

Figured out the picture thing. Thanks for the tutorial.

Agh, you still have the protective plastic on the chrome trim at 125k miles!

Matthew Kennedy said:

Agh, you still have the protective plastic on the chrome trim at 125k miles!

Yeah how about that? Pretty crazy right? I tried picking it off but it’s been on there 11 years or so and will need goof off to get it off.  Not sure I should mess with it. 

Any opinion from the community?