I'm gon na make you proud, mr g s, t something huh, i'm gon na go with gunta strauss strauss yeah. That sounds german enough. Mr gunto strauss. I'm going to make you proud, welcome to legit street cars and welcome to the madness.

Today we begin de-mechanically totaling. My 2005 cl65 amg, or is it un mechanically totally? I don't know this probably aren't words at all, but today we begin fixing the crazy v12 engine on my cl and if you're new here is the super short version of what happened. A guy named tyler bought this car for thirteen thousand dollars dumped seven thousand dollars into repairs all in preparation for a show called car trek. It was wrapped red driven really hard through a desert and when he returned home, the wrap came off and not to surprise the car needed another ten thousand dollars in repairs, mostly due to a failing hydraulic suspension pump and this a one dollar oil o-ring.

That requires about 50 hours of labor to replace he deemed the car. Mechanically totaled basically put out a bat signal in one of his videos for me to come, buy it and ten thousand dollars later and a really really sketchy 700 mile drive home to chicago the car is mine. Now the reason this requires 50 hours of labor is because the cylinder, heads and everything around them need to be removed to replace this o-ring and, as you can see, there isn't any room to do anything on these engines, while they're in the car. This can be kind of a big mess to work on, but an even bigger mess was my garage.

I'm gon na have this engine in hundreds of pieces and that in itself will require a ton of mental organization and cleanliness. So i started from scratch. Removing everything drawer by drawer and evaluating what i really needed in my toolbox, i decided to organize the box from top to bottom solely based on what i use the most now. This also meant my toolbox went on a diet and i boxed up anything i hadn't used in a decade or so like drum brake tools, old, bmw and mercedes-specific tools and lots of standard stuff, that's good to have, but it's rarely used oh and check out my Old speed ratchet this is what was used before fancy electric impacts.

I actually used this a ton in high school. I labeled this box properly and off to the attic she goes. I ordered some tool, organizers and a bunch of tools. I've lost over the years, but overall, i'm happy with the tool box now and the rest of the garage is looking a hundred times better than it did a few days ago.

Okay, so the garage is not done. Obviously, but this spring i'm gon na make a garage makeover, video, where we do some black and white tile paint the osb walls. Maybe even some outlet covers we might get a little crazy, so stay tuned. For that, and i think if my mom saw this garage she'd be proud of me.

She always used to yell at me for not cleaning my room via pulida la tuastanza. Oh no. She would say to me, which is go clean, your room or you don't eat in italian, and if i wanted that good italian food, i would do it so mom. I'm gon na bring you over here one day i think you're gon na be proud.

This is looking pretty pretty good, so without further ado, we have to start to remove this engine, so i've never done this job. So i'm going to start by draining all the fluids. I've already disconnected the battery we've already sucked out the ac refrigerant. So we're going to drain some fluids, we're going to remove basically the entire exhaust and kind of see what we can see, and hopefully we can see something because it is tight, very, very tight in here all right guys.

So i've been at this for a couple of hours and the name of the game here is: do whatever it takes to save time. So, in the past, i've lowered subframes with engines and i've brought pretty much the entire braking and suspension system along with it. In this case, i'm going to do it a little different, i'm going to leave the abc struts with the body of the car, so i've disconnected them here, and i've used a plastic wedge to kind of hold these lines away from the subframe, so that when this Lowers they don't get in the way this time around, i also removed the brake rotors and i'm leaving the calipers with the body of the car as well. That way, when this is hanging on the ground, we don't have a ton of weight, dragging it down and wearing out our joints and bushings uh, not a big deal, but just something small that i wanted to do other than that the down pipes look impossible to Get to there's no room for anything, especially over on this side um, so i'm going to attempt to lower the entire engine, trans and everything with this section of the exhaust.

So with the catalytic converters and the downpipes, i know you can do these without dropping the engine, but again i want to save time. This is coming down anyway. So why not? I removed those lines as well they're, just kind of getting in the way of things here and i may end up replacing those, and i also removed the engine fan. So we actually have a little bit of room here to disconnect whatever we have to disconnect um and also when the engine's going back in i'll have kind of some room to play with when i'm trying to line everything back up now.

Another method of saving time is to put back bolts and brackets whenever you can so i put the radiator brackets back on. These are the bolts for the thermostat housing those go back on and if you can't put it back on bag it up and label it. No matter what that is, the only way to stay organized during a job like this, so even the fender liner, nuts and clips the bottom engine panels, i'm gon na label everything so that when this thing goes back together could be a couple weeks from now. I'm not playing around looking for little bolts and brackets now, if you guys are into saving time and you're into saving money, i know i am hence why i'm doing this crazy project in my garage, then you're gon na love.

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It works with all the browsers, and all you got to do is go to joinhoney.comlegitstreetcars or click on my link, so they know i sent you big thanks to honey, for continuing to support automotive content creators like myself now, let's start taking apart some of the stuff On the top end, here i want to remove the air boxes and the inner coolers, so we just get a good idea of any little connectors or anything we need to disconnect before this thing drops down, so it doesn't get snagged um and most of the harness Will stay with the engine? There are big bulkheads, as you can see here, this big wire right here, um. So a lot of it'll stay with it. This is gon na look pretty complete, even resting on the ground. So do all right.

I think i found the last piece of the puzzle behind this cover that has got to be it. I have been looking around for where the power wires uh go in for the starter and the alternator, and i believe this is it because we very much so need to disconnect these from the bottom of the vehicle or when we drop the engine. We're just gon na rip them out. That would probably be a very expensive mistake.

All right, let me put the camera down here and there we are. There are the big lugs we need to remove, so this gigantic harness stays with our gigantic engine. So let me show you guys around. Let me show you where i'm at, because i think i'm pretty close to dropping this entire thing.

Okay, so at this point i'm looking for anything that is connected to the body of the car and the engine or the transmission or the subframe anything that's coming down and we're disconnecting it or getting it out of the way. So we don't snag anything. So i think this is a two-man job. Actually, it's going to be a man in a woman job, because i'm going to call my wife out here to give me a hand, so she is going to lower the car or i'm sorry she's, going to raise the car, the body uh.

While i'm looking around - and hopefully i didn't miss anything so things like the steering shaft is disconnected any ac lines, abc hydraulic lines, uh harnesses, as you just saw okay, so i love bungee cords. As you can see, we have our caliper suspended here. So it's not hitting anything and scratching it all up, and here is the suspension - that's going to come down with the entire subframe. So i've disconnected the abc hydraulic, strut right here and i've disconnected the line from right here, and this line actually needs to kind of go like this, because it's going to come down with the subframe as well, and it's going to make a mess.

It's going to make a mess. I know you are look at that just wanting to leak yeah everything is leaking all over the floor. It's ridiculous! So anyway, uh so yeah. Everything looks pretty clear over here and you can see the subframe a little bit.

There is the engine mount that the wizard replace you replace both of them actually, okay, and here we have the other side. So we have our suspended caliper floating in mid-air um, and then we have. This uh line is just gon na stay with the body, and i use this little wedge here, as you can see just to kind of move all these lines away. We had to disconnect a couple things right there, but everything seems clear.

This ac line right here is coming down with the engine, so i'll probably need to kind of position that so it doesn't get caught on this. Oh no! This is coming down too. So we'll get this one out of the way and there we go that's out of the way and then under the hood here. Basically all you got to do is just look in here.

If you see anything attached to the engine, it's got ta go. So we had uh just uh one harness on this side. That was right here that went down there, so that is gone things like o2 sensors and everything are just coming with the engine, and then this is really nice, most modern cars. You can do this, but you have this entire chunk of harness that went over here and it's just going to come down with us as well, so we don't have to mess with any of that.

We can see pretty clearly uh where the transmission is. There's really nothing attached there i mean by really i mean nothing. We can't have anything sort of attached or we're gon na have big big issues. There was a ground going right here that is disconnected uh.

We had an ac line in there and everything looks pretty clear. Okay, so those two big leads are disconnected so now. This harness is gon na, come down with the engine, so we're ready to crack loose uh these subframe bolts and i think, there's only two per side and they're really small. So you got one right here, um and one right here.

This is the one for the engine mount which we don't need to touch that um, and it's interesting to note that on the caprice, the bolts were probably double the size and there were six of them or maybe eight of them all right moment of truth. Here, people we're not lowering anything, don't worry, we're just going to crack these free, because once i set up all the jack stands and everything if one of these is stuck, i'm not going to want to try and get it out with it on the ground, with No room so right now we're just loosening everything and you got to pick the right size socket that always helps all right here we go, i'm sliding everywhere. Oh i'm not worried just yet, i'm literally sliding everywhere, so can't get any good, getting good muscle. Okay, all right when in doubt grab some fire map.

Gas works much better than propane. Oxy acetylene is the best obviously, but i want a big tank in the garage. Okay got some towels on the ground for traction. I brought a shorter extension this time for more muscle.

Oh jesus, no no not happening. I i seriously thought this was just going to come right out. Ah, cool, not cool, more fire, all right! We got our half inch big berth out here, reduced down for an e14. I don't have a half inch e14, but whatever um.

Let me try this one. Oh, are you kidding me, look at that wow that one's like loose practically all right? Let's zip that back in, i got an idea all right, so we're to put some upwards pressure here on this part of the subframe, that is, the wood cracking, not the car. Oh geez. This thing is, in there man, okay, torching the area around the bolt head, see a couple more minutes of fire.

No, don't use an impact when a bolt is stuck you're, going to break it right off. But what i'm going to do is i'm going to gently. Give it some taps just to kind of shake it up a little bit see if that does anything the other way, some hammers. The idea is just to loosen up whatever corrosion are on the threads, and if we do this little by little, we won't destroy uh.

The threads in the frame of the car we want to take our time, even if this takes us an hour to get this bolt out, it's worth it. We don't want this breaking off. It's going to take us way more time to fix it. Look at that guys, it's coming right out! All right.

I got it supported. I just want to show you guys wow. This thing is totally clean, but there you go, looks perfectly fine. I can't believe it was that stuck, but a little bit of heat a little bit of hammering a light impact not to actually break it loose.

In this case, it eventually did, but i wasn't going for that. What we want to do is just shake everything around it, but anyway it's out. Let's uh do the same on the other ones. Okay, so i was able to loosen the other subframe bolts as well.

This one gave me just as much trouble as that one. So i did go through the same little procedure there, but after about 10 minutes we got it. So we are ready, guys we're ready, we're ready to drop this thing. So i just want to show you because you're not going to be able to see this from the bottom um, but i'm going to use jack stands underneath the subframe and the transmission.

So, for example, we're gon na put two up here in the front um and then two over here in the back, so we'll have a total of four uh for the subframe and then for now for the transmission. I'm just gon na place a block of wood right here. Uh we'll do a jack stand under there. You can do this, it's not going to crush the pan or anything as long as it's not.

You know right in the middle of the pan, but later once we have this all down i'll, remove this wood from here shift it over to here. But i just need to keep this cross member because at this point we're going to lower this entire assembly. I'm going to set up all of the jack stands. I might have to do some leveling, possibly with some wood and whatnot, we'll get this perfectly level, and then i can just crawl underneath there now that everything is loosened up and undo the bolts and then we're just raising the body up all right guys, we're almost There all the jacksons are there just gently resting on the subframe.

I had to go with the trans jack. I couldn't fit a jack stand, so after the body is raised uh i will get that out of there and put a jack stand there. Just for for more room, and so we're not just using a jack to hold it up for a few weeks, it's hard to tell, but it is going down a little bit. Oh there we go yeah, so we're almost there and we're just going to keep on going around just little by little until they're all resting on there, nice and gently all right guys.

All four of the bolts are out. The subframe is fully resting on the jack stands now and uh the floor, jack back there. So it is time it is time to lift the body. My wife is tending to one of the other kids, so we have my other helper right here.

You ready to hit that button. All right go ahead, all right little by little, just little little! Okay, stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! I heard some some crunching hang on baby. I need you up there all right, so we just had this line here that i forgot to disconnect. I just pulled the steering shaft all the way out and everything is looking you're gon na get down soon.

Baby, don't worry all right, give it another hit. Little little one, okay, a little more baby, okay, you're doing great all right go ahead! Okay, let's make sure this, oh yeah, solid, solid, we're not hitting anything on the firewall. So that's good. A little more okay, keep going! Keep going! Okay, stop heard something just got! Ta, look around figure out what it is.

Oh, i think i disconnected this hose, but i forgot to reroute it. Oh okay, there we go okay, so this the steering shaft right there is uh is not cooperating. Is the steering wheel moving? You can see it yeah. I got ta get this out of the way okay, so we got that down.

You guys can start to see. Everything looks like we're. Gon na be okay with the exhaust. That is awesome.

Let's just go check the other side as well. It's better to you know, take 20 minutes 30 minutes if you need to look around make sure nothing's gon na snag. So all that's coming down with us go ahead: okay, good all right! So we're clearing that steering shaft! Now, okay, a little more in hindsight, i think it would have been beneficial to remove this coil pack because it looks like that's where the steering shaft is hitting. So you live and learn i'm going to just kind of guide that for now, okay go a little tiny bit babe a little more! Oh, okay, again good! Keep on going! Okay! Good! Get a little more all right! We're clear of the steering! Shaft! Look at this turbo uh: this is so cool.

I don't think we're snagging on anything. Thank you. My little helper, all right everything looks clear, so we're gon na go ahead and let her rip all right here we go looking good, looking good, looking good. Okay.

Let's stay with the body, we're looking good she's out our twin turbo v12 is out. This is really exciting. Oh my gosh wow! This is so much easier to work on now, jeez, i'm so glad i didn't try to mess around with these downpipes. This is cool.

All right come on, come on i'll, show you and there you have it the legendary m275 engine. I believe mercedes is still running a variant of this engine to this day. If not, they ended it. Maybe last year, pagani has used a version of this engine as well they've been around since, like late 2002, when these cars first came out, it was such a good engine.

Mercedes didn't really see the need to change too much. It's gone through some little updates here and there the newer ones have individual coil packs instead of these gigantic thousand dollar ones, one on each bank, but little things have changed. The newer newer one has a few other improvements. I think cylinder head design and whatever, but at the end of the day, it's the same basic design, it's kind of like how they improve the ls engine or now the lt engine, so the power output out of these things is ridiculous.

I mean, as you can imagine, as 12 cylinders and two turbos, but they just run so smooth. The bottom end is stout. There aren't really any issues with the lower end, like bearings and whatnot, and their issues were just a few. So any engine with hydraulic engine mounts they go bad.

These were just a complete nightmare to change so some of the earlier ones you had to drop the engine to change out the engine mounts on this one. I don't believe you need to. They had some o-rings at the turbos that would leak, that was a pain to get to um, and then we had the coil pack issues no big deal. You can do that in the car.

The valve covers would leak no big deal, but one of the biggest issues was like a one dollar o-ring which sits somewhere in there. So we're gon na have to remove the intake manifold, the heads uh to get to it. I'm not sure if we have to remove the front cover specifically for this job. But there are some seals in the front cover that can leak as well and while we're in there there's going to be a lot of while we're in there's uh we're going to reseal the front cover.

Maybe do a new water pump, some new pulleys, i'm going to attempt to find out more of the history of this vehicle just to make sure i'm not replacing stuff. That's already been done and we do have to keep some kind of budget here. You can go crazy, replacing everything on an engine while you're in there um, but you got to draw the line somewhere, but we are going to be replacing the turbochargers with bigger units, and i need to take these downpipes off right now to send them out. Because i have a company, that's going to make me custom downpipes based off of these and then i'll get these right back as well.

So let's do that all right! Downpipes are off. I got to package these up and ship them they're gigantic. It's probably gon na cost a fortune um, but i couldn't help myself. I had to start disassembling, even though i have to leave for work in like 10 minutes, but i got the coil packs off um and i just wanted to show you guys some of the engine oil leak, which i believe is coming from this o-ring, i'm not 100 sure, though, i'm not super familiar with this there's basically like a valley plate in here a kind of an oil distribution block.

If you will um that leaks, so we have some engine oil right in there, but i think the telltale sign here is the oil back here. I think that is why i was diagnosed as having that o-ring leaking see all that that is, engine oil, so we're gon na find out we're gon na find out in the next episode uh of the next cl 65 episode. We are ripping the engine apart, we're gon na start taking it apart. We're gon na find that oil leak um.

We are going to start disassembling the front cover we're we're going to town people are going to town. We got to take these turbos off. I have to send the turbos in a little crazy on this one. Here, it's not going to be your typical cl65 anymore, although i'm going to keep it looking exactly the same way as it looks now, it's going to look totally stock.

It's in this pewter color, which i love, but it's very unassuming, there's really not much on this car, especially to today's standards that let you know it is a wild wild 600 and something horsepower v12 except you know for the badge right there and the wheels and The brakes and everything, but anyway um here's my engine, it's going to be okay, little buddy, i'm going to take good care of you. Mwah yes go to will be proud once i'm done with this thing, so that will do it for today's video. I am quite disgusting, so i got ta. Go back in shower, go to work and do this whole thing over again, but it's what i love to do, and this was not that bad of a project.

So far so i know it looks like a lot, but i have about six and a half hours into this. I've never done it before so. If i had to do it again, i could probably do it in four uh, but this is the easy part that is gon na, be the hard part taking that all apart and trying to get it back together and running properly. So i've never done this before, but we're gon na follow some good work instructions we're gon na, do it all properly and i'm so grateful to have all of you guys watching and thank you so much to all the new subscribers.

We've gained a lot lately. So if you haven't already hit that subscribe button, while you're down there hit the thumbs up as well, it really helps us out share the video, most importantly, have an awesome day and i'll catch. All of you in the next video you.