A few months ago, I bought a C63 AMG sight unseen from Philadelphia I flew out on a one-way plane ticket with a ton of confidence and a bag full of tools and parts thinking I could fix it and drive it 800 miles all the way back home to Chicago I knew the issue was either going to be a 50 fuel injector or a 10 000 engine and needless to say I lost that bet as the engine was absolutely destroyed and Peter and I had to go back home with our heads down in defeat right after eating some delicious Philly cheesesteak. Now Luckily, my friends at Modern Masters in West Virginia towed the car back to their shop and after finding what was supposed to be a good used engine, I flew in yet again with a one-way plane ticket confident I could build a bulletproof engine in two days and drive home. but yet again I was sent home packing after removing the cylinder heads and finding rust in the cylinders that had deteriorated the sleeves and couldn't just be cleaned up. Now I don't like to admit this, but at this point point I did consider getting the car shipped home, but I decided to give it one more go.

I sourced another used engine had it shipped to Modern Masters but this time I had Rusty and Craig remove the cylinder heads and they verified that the cylinders were good. So what else could possibly go wrong? I bought myself another one-way plane ticket. Now they say third time's a charm, but I can't count on an old saying to get my butt home in this car. Even though we know the cylinders are good, we're assembling hundreds of Parts adding a ton of horsepower and counting on this car to drive 700 miles back home with basically no testing.

So a lot can go wrong and I'd appreciate it. If you guys would cross your fingers, say a prayer, do a little dance, whatever you got to do, and wish me luck. And with that, sit back, relax, and enjoy the madness. All right.

So I'm back with Craig and Rusty We have been reunited again every roughly three months so far. I Come out to try and get this thing to drive home. This is. this is our tradition.

Now it's it's been. it's for this car, it's the last one. I Really do hope that yeah, next time you'll be visiting me in Chicago and I'll have this car at the shop or it'll be given away. This is a giveaway car after all.

the longest giveaway in YouTube history. So you guys can actually win this car. Uh, if you click in the link down below, it's totally free to enter. We have nothing to sell you.

Uh, this is in collaboration with mods and Miles the cool new auction website. Uh, so you just gotta go on there, sign up and share the site and you can literally win this car once once it's running. And speaking of that, this is pretty much all they found when they took the heads off. So normally on the M156 engine, the guides aren't really an issue.

The timing chain is never an issue, but this guide looks a little worn out. so we're gonna go ahead right now and take off this front cover. New chain, new guides. We are going to make this a bulletproof engine.

We're fixing every single potential issue with this engine and we're gonna do this all in about eight hours. And after we're done, this should be about a 600 horsepower natural fully aspirated dual overhead cam V8 engine that's going to rev up to about 8 500 RPM It's going to be a complete monster. All right. First things first: Harmonic balancer needs to come off.

All right. No problemo, get off, come on. I only got like a day to put you together, so of course I've given myself a deadline. That is somewhat unrealistic.

I have two days to do all of this, so that means we only have one day to fully build the engine and then another day to install it. First start tuning. We have larger injectors and everything. so anyway, the balancer won't come off, but we got pry bars and Rusty it's all you need.

Really, no special tools needed I Got the earliest flight I could so I got up at like four o'clock in the morning. It's now like noon and we're just getting right to work. I Say bye Six o'clock right in time for dinner. We'll have the heads on.

What do you think? So I Think so too. I Think we can do it all right? It's water pump time now. We of course have new gaskets and seals for everything. Whoever wins this car? Seriously? I Mean you're getting the best one that is for sure.

We're going to replace all these pulleys as well. We're replacing so much on this. Yeah, these guys get crusty after a while and they can just crack out of nowhere. There we go.

Germany This water pump feels brand new. might have been replaced at some point. I Have to use the AMG specific pry bar tool on that. Seeing some better days? Yeah, good thing we're replacing the thermostat.

This metal part's supposed to clip inside. So okay, that's a thing. All right. time for the front cover now.

Lots of bolts. they're all over the place. Oh, look at that sneaky little guy. All right, we're gonna take the oil cooler lines off as well.

There we go. so a couple more seals we can replace while we're in here. Uh, we're flipping her over. In order to remove the front timing cover, we got to take off the oil pan.

The M156 was the first engine completely built by AMG and practically everything has an AMG stamp on it. Our little trick here guys. If you see a hole in the oil pan that doesn't look like it does anything that is for you to thread a bolt in and it'll pop it up for you most of the time that's not tapped so you can tap it out. Basically with the bolt, it's aluminum and then it gives you a little spot to throw a pry bar into there.

We go. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.

It's gonna be fine. Uh, what is that? Oh, that's a piece of guide. That's a big piece of guide. Dude, Dude, you guys didn't put that in there.

Let's not put that in there. No, no, but that's why it's good we're doing I mean I Know it's good. we're doing the guides. but geez, that is okay.

let's get that out. Wow. This came out of a running and driving car. It ran fine.

Uh, the salvage yard that got me this engine. They wanted to make it right. So they're like we spent two months trying to find the perfect engine in. This thing ran fine.

Everything was great. So all right, we move these little pieces over so we get to the bolt and just take this whole screen out. Okay, that looks really nice in there. That's a good sign.

Yeah, the screen definitely worked. Wow, yeah. this guide really really came apart in there. Uh man, you don't see this.

This wasn't really a big issue at all. I've never seen anything like this on an M156. It could have happened. I Feel like this.

is an accident car. Like the jostling of the accident Coulda could have caused it. Yeah, this is. these are all just pieces of guide.

There's no metal in there or anything. This engine's uh, pretty unique to say it nicely. Uh, there's a lot of stuff going on here. This has a bed plate that's sealed with RTV and then it goes to a large oil pan here and then two little oil pans.

So uh yeah, we're gonna be resealing all that, All right. So the Big Moment of Truth here. Well, we got a couple a couple moments. Lots of moments here, people.

We just don't want to see anything in this part of the pan. So basically this is essentially a scavengine pump. So all the oil that comes down from the front part. Rusty, Rusty, you could be taking a peek on me.

All the oil that comes down from the front of the timing chain and everything. it gets sent through this tube right here back. and this is the actual main sump that's going to provide the engine with lubrication and this is where the oil ends up. It's very important that there are no pieces inside of here.

I Am honestly quite nervous. I've only been here for like an hour and we're already at a point where I might need to go find a one-way plane ticket to get home. This is ridiculous. So before we look inside of that I Gotta go look at another car outside for these guys that will just at least take my mind off of this for a few minutes.

So when I get these one-way plane tickets and fly out here I Usually just bring a backpack with some clothes and these are my essentials: tire inflator, jump starter, and Carly connected car OBD2 Diagnostic Tools The guys have a 2018 430i, BMW and I get requests like this all the time ever since I got one of these, but this will code a bunch of convenience features that not even diagnostic equipment that costs literally multiple thousand of dollars can do. Check this out, we're just going to go ahead and plug it in, you'll see some lights come on, then you just connect via Bluetooth to an app on your cell phone and the layout is very nice and easy. Diagnostic coding, live data, used car check. So we're gonna go to coding and find out which Ecu's we can play around with and then look at this guys.

look at how many options there are for coding sometimes. I've seen hundreds of them in here so you can have a ton of fun playing with this. I Mean seriously, the options are endless. You can set the low range fuel warning from 30 miles to 50 miles if you'd like.

You can turn on and off notifications in the dash. Oh this is a good one with some cars. It starts off in Eco mode. Every time we can just turn that off, we can play around with the iDrive animation, the warning sounds and menu.

Rolls Royce Let's do it. Code the car all right. Check this out. That's a Rolls-Royce now.

so Carly scanned all of the control units. It'll tell you which ones have issues and with Smart Mechanic you don't have to be a pro to understand the issue with your car and a lot of times these aren't super critical and it'll let you know. I could go on for days but you can reset your service and maintenance lights. And probably one of my favorites.

Used Car Mileage check. This one has detected no tampering and it compares the mileage that's saved in multiple control units to each other because the odometer on Modern cars can still be messed with and I Don't know of any other diagnostic software, especially at this price point that we'll check for this now. the best part is if you guys click on my link down below and use coupon code legit23 you're gonna get 15 off your very own. Carly This is a limited time offer so definitely take advantage and when you're on the site, you can check and see what Carly will do for your specific car before you buy.

That's very important. There are some cars that you can code a lot more features than others, so if you're looking for something specific, just check out the site. So a big thanks to Carly for being kind of my little travel buddy and coming with me everywhere. I Go and for sponsoring this video.

Now with that, let's go. let's go see my engine. All right? I Can't run away from this forever. We gotta look inside of here.

This is actually a really cool pickup. I'm surprised more cars don't have this, but basically it picks up the oil and it goes in this little canister with baffles. and that way it's not aerated by the time it gets sucked up into the engine for lubrication. and we don't want to see any pieces of plastic in here.

That means it's sucked up. Guides from all over the place, but that screen I think it caught all of it and obviously oil can get around that little blockage because it's hard plastic and essentially this is just a drain back. So I think I think we'll be all right. You know what? Let's boroscope this to be 100 all right here we go.

Going in with the borescope. please don't have any plastic. So far so good I Don't see anything but oil and these baffles would definitely catch it. We would see it.

Oh this is great. It's like a it's like a little city inside of there. like a modern city with little little balconies of oil. I Don't know what I'm talking about I Just don't want to find anything.

Oh, we're good. We're good. Rusty Oh my gosh. okay.

I think we're gonna be okay and every time you take one of these M156s apart, there is stuff in that pickup just usually not pieces of guide. A lot of times it's RTV or pieces that have dropped in from guys inevitably working on their M156 because they need a lot of work and it's never an issue. but that? okay I'm hoping we just got that all out of the way early early on. in this process, it's a trust trust the process lower oil pan is coming off so we can get the front timing cover off.

Shouldn't be any more scarce, shouldn't Fingers very crossed. There we go. She's coming. Oh yeah, this is looking good.

This is one monster of an oil pump as well. Look at this. Beautiful. We're replacing both of the chains here, so the main timing chain and little guy for the oil pump? all right.

There we go. Ah okay, oh look at that. We found it. We found the guide in question.

All right. Yeah, so it chipped off at the corner and that still would have fully supported the chain. Um, that just happens, you know, with old brittle, timing chain guides and a lot of cars? I Just haven't seen too many on the M156. But oh geez, look at this.

another one. another one broken man. Good thing we didn't just plop this engine in and call it a day. Most of the time when you get an engine from the junkyard, that's what a shop will do.

You got to pay a lot of money for them to strip the entire engine down and replace everything that could possibly fail. but we're giving this thing away. I Want it to be absolutely perfect and bulletproof, so that's what we're doing. and I'm glad we are.

The chain looks good. We could probably get away with not replacing this, but we are definitely replacing it. It's not a problem. this time.

covers work. It looks like someone needed to throw it. uh, taking it off. Oh wow, yeah.

the engine. This is where the power steering pump is. Yeah, there's a it should be a little loop back here, but it's not a big deal. We can take it off at the other three.

And yeah, we have plenty of engines here. There is the mangled one, the first one that came out of the car and there is the second one with rust in the cylinder. So we have a toll junkyard of parts that we can pull off of. so we need a new front timing cover.

Some people buy parts cars I buy part engines. We're gonna take the front timing cover off of this one the original engine so it'll have a numbers matching front timing cover. I Already got the big bolts out of here I think I might take this balancer too. Looks pretty nice.

listen to this bearing on the old engine. that's not good. supposed to sound like that. So this would have failed.

This is why we have all new pulleys for the new engine. This is how the thermostat's supposed to come out with those tabs and the grooves. Ours was not like that, but ours also isn't like this. Look at how bad that is.

All right front timing cover is coming off. There we go. Yeah, these guys have a little bit of wear but nothing. nothing too bad and we destroyed this chain in the first video.

If You guys didn't catch that. It was fun. All right with that, it is time to relieve some pressure and we'll start taking the chain off for the oil pump. There we go.

That guy just slides out. there. We go. now.

We should be good and we don't have to worry about timing or anything with this oil pump. It just needs to spin all right. Here we go. Little chain, let's fit around There you go.

I get you some jewelry. There you go. All right. Let's just take a look at these rotors.

They are good all right. I'll take the main timing chain off. let me grab these gears here before I Drop them There we go. and these guides aren't bolted in or anything.

they're just kind of rest in here. Look at this thing. This part's kind of cool. It's The Idler and it does sling oil from all these little holes around the chain.

so they really focused a lot on lubrication on this engine. It is pretty much a race engine that they put in street cars, all right. So we're just cleaning up all the mating surfaces right now. We want this engine sparkling before we go back together.

You don't want to have to reseal the oil pan once the engine is back in the car. It's a total nightmare. A lot of times guys just remove the entire engine to do this kind of stuff and we're working a lot by hand. This is aluminum.

We don't want to gouge any of the surfaces, so I'd rather spend a little bit of time and make sure it's right and this RTV comes up pretty easily. I Have a little bit of brake clean sprayed on there as well. I'll show you the final results All right. Rusty and I are done cleaning everything up.

Our oil pans are looking really nice and of course we cleaned out this little screen. Just like that, there's no gasket for these you asked. Four tiny little screws and we'll be back in business. So crisis number one averted with that fix.

Next up, we have our timing chains and guides and this is another reason why I'm a big fan of Cpuro.com They sell these really nice kits so this is the timing chain kit with the four guides. and then they have the kit for the oil pump chain with the guides as well. And they have kits set up for everything to save you time and money. So these are the Black Series SLS Black Series lifters that we're installing.

They are coated, less friction, more power. and then we got the head gasket kit and every single nut bolt gasket. It's all put together very, very nicely from them. I'll leave a link down below Lifetime Parts Replacement guarantee.

These guys are the best All right. So we're going to do a little bit of engine assembly Lube here on the guides. Just like so that way on initial start it's not going to have any added friction. We don't need that.

Look at the little guys too. All right. Cheers This guy goes here. This guy goes here.

the other one we'll put on with the head and let me get a slide this guy over and a little This stuff on here as well. All right, Chain me, we got that am I Gonna bring this guy up and right now we don't have to worry about timing or anything like that and this is going to be super loose right now. We don't have a tensioner and I get the oil pump chain on there. We do need to loosen up this oil pump.

So we started off here with the pickup and the return. We just have four of these big guys. This is all we need. Just a little bit of movement like that and we're gonna go around the crank like that.

Get this little guide in there. Okay, you lift up a little bit on there. Rusty Um, Oh there we go. I Got a guy cool before the tensioner.

We're just gonna go ahead and tighten this guy up. Click. Get the little Center guy down there. It's cool.

It helps to have a few different hands. There we go. Okay, cool. yeah.

good tension. Brand new spring that feels very nice. We're golden. It's best to double triple check all your work.

You don't want to ever, ever have to take this part again. Uh, we have a new front crank seal going in so these sit flush but they don't bottom out. so you just need to get a tool that goes over the edge of the seal and you're good. Grease me up here, Rusty, All right.

So we're gonna lubricate all of our seals that are going in. Oh, there's one for the front timing cover seal. These get hard over time. There we go look at this fancy glue gun.

It's brand new out of the box. You ever used this thing before? Nope. We're gonna figure it out right now. Freshly charged.

Oh dude, this is the best. Oh man, whoever wins this car is seriously getting the works done right now. I Mean this is Never Gonna Leak Ever. That's only got one one little bar there.

Okay, that's the speed setting. Oh dude, it knows. Man, it doesn't know. it knows.

Look at that. it stops what it when it needs to stop. This is very satisfying. I Gotta Give me one of these I'll give you the number to call.

it was 19.95 Don't forget to get around these bolt holes and it needs to be sealed up as well. That machine kind of puts a ton of sealant out so we're taking a little bit off. You don't want too much in there. All right.

We're going back on with the front timing cover. Helps to have some extra hands here because you don't want to smear the glue. Okay and there are a couple dowel pins which is sweet. All right looking good.

Looking Good Fellas So the issue here is getting this chain and guide on this side of here and the other one over here. But I think we did a pretty good job and we totally did that with one take. it didn't It didn't take us like four times of doing that over and over again. Max edit those other ones out.

I mean I don't know what I'm talking about. All right now it's bolts time we are going together people. We fixed our clogged screen. we got all new guides and chains.

she is looking good. New front timing cover as well. Foreign something. I Didn't get a good.

opportunity to show you guys when I rebuilt the V12 engine was why we don't really have to do much with the timing right now and why the chain doesn't fall off when we flip the engine around and that is because of this guy right here. It looks like it's up against the chain right now, but there is tolerance there. So when we flip this over and gravity tries to get our chain to fall off, this is going to stop it. And then The Idler in the center is also holding that chain for us.

All right. I Get to use this. Do hickey now. Whoa.

Oh man, you gotta. You gotta act quick. Not this guy. what you doing? Alex I'm using this awesome new gun I Don't know it just stopped.

She's like maybe we're just out. No, we just this is new right? I'm cooking but that stops. It's still got pressure though. and yeah, consistency is not there.

Oh here we go again. Ah, it's insane. This is fun. It's like who can do it without messing it up? Oh, that's bad.

Oh, we're gonna have to level this out. I Don't know about this guys. Look at now. it's getting thin.

There we go. Okay, all right, that's enough. I Gotta I Gotta spread this out now. this is too crazy.

All right guys. Well I'm not too proud of this. That gun was a little a little wild and out of control, but uh. I can make two promises.

One, this will never leak and two, this will never come off again. So here we go. All right. I mean I don't even think we need bolts.

Really, we'll put some bolts in just just for good measure. We did keep the brown oily ones on the inside. I'm just gonna go ahead and say I don't officially endorse this machine guys I'm sorry I know you were both very excited about it, but it is too much even on number one. But we're gonna continue to use it because it is fun.

All right. we're resealing this front sump right here. Thank you! There we go, All right. Rusty's got the other one.

We'll get some of that bolts right there. There you go. This tray of bolts is brought to you by Vrp. This is, uh, what is this like a pie? It's a pie tray.

Cinnamon rolls, Cinnamon roll? Yeah. Phil's mom made cinnamon rolls and brought them to us last time. Thanks thanks Phil's mom. she is sealed and I'm definitely going around by hand here too.

Make sure everything is tight. Little click, click, click. All right. We have all the oil pans back on, we reinstalled our oil lines, and now it's time to clean.

All right guys! So we're gonna put a little bit of penetrating oil on our Rag and these don't have to get sparkly clean. they're gonna get carboned up soon anyway. But I don't like just dousing everything and Brake clean because then you're essentially washing out the cylinders and they won't be lubricated at first start. So we're just going to use a little bit more elbow grease and get them pretty good.

Look at the wire brush in here as well, and just be mindful that you're not gouging a bunch of stuff in the cylinder in between the piston rings and the cylinder wall. That's no good either. Nice looking, good, looking, good looking good. Rusty Look at that! I'm gonna go ahead with our crank pulley here so we can turn this engine over a little.

That's the light goes on one way so you can't mess it up and seat this with the old bolt. and then we have a new bolt for our final torque that we'll do a little later. All right guys! Rusty and I are done cleaning everything before the cylinder heads go back on and it's looking pretty good. So we went from something that looked like this all the way to something that looks shiny and clean like this.

So at this point we can install our freshly cleaned and machined heads All right. We're going back to the old school here as far as our TV before the head gasket goes on. So there are a couple spots on here that you have to put the silicone on. All right.

Then we'll put our gasket on like that and usually the writing here with the part number is up on top and then some more silicone. Yeah, no more, no more Electric gun. Rusty This is this is the old school. It's the way to go all right guys.

We got our cylinder heads ready and these are the heads off this engine. Um, but since we had a little bit of time, we sent them out. I had a five angle valve job done, everything is cleaned out, this was resurfaced and they are practically brand new. All the Springs were checked, everything is in great shape so basically ready to go.

I'm just gonna give it one final clean in the bottom there. all right? I've been up now for I don't know roughly 18 19 hours but I'm ready to go. Ah, there you go, All right guys. So I got the FCP Euro head gasket job kit and it comes with the updated bolts.

Uh, this is another major Factory defect on these engines. The bolt heads would snap on the original design so they beefed them up so these are the updated ones and before this head falls off, I'm going to put a few of these guys in there once. Mercedes Went to these bolts. they never had any issues at all with the head gaskets.

So the M156 came out in like 2007, but it wasn't until mid 2011 that they fixed this issue. I think this used engine came out of a 2010 E63 Uh, and it had like 70 000 miles. so a little bit more than the car. but I Figured we'd spend a little bit of money on getting the heads totally redone.

uh, taking the front timing cover off, doing the chain and everything. So essentially the whole top end is is pretty much new. So right now we're just zipping these in gently. but we do have to torque them in a sequence.

The first stage of torque is only 10 newton meters and the digital torque wrench doesn't go that low. So we have resurrected one. Uh, this is actually from 1850 and it's one of the first torque wrenches ever made. It was my fast torque wrench and his father's torque wrench before him.

This may have been used on the first internal combustion engine ever made. All right, we are in the future now of torque wrenching. So next stage is 50 newton meters and we have the digital guy on here. There we go and there's a specific sequence.

It's kind of sort of a circle, so it's going to be one, two, three, four and then we're over on this side and with aluminum heads. That's so you don't warp it. Some people will just go nuts and just torque them all the way down, but why do that? why risk it? I Do want to make it back to Chicago After all, if you guys need the sequence and everything for yourself, just screenshot right now. Whoa.

All right. So right now we have three 90 degree stages and I always mark them is that you do 190 a little Mark there because if you torque it twice to 50 foot pound, who cares. But if you do extra 90. that's a problem.

So this guy does angle torque as well, which is nice. We're on our second 90 right now. It's definitely getting harder there we go, and we'll put another mark on there every single time, especially if someone's distracting you while you're doing this. because you're basically you.

got the initial torque, the second torque, and then three stages. Hey, what's your favorite color? blue? Why? oh, I was just trying to distract you. Wait? How many? I need to do some angle twerking to try and wake up? All right. So if you guys were going for Big Boost you would put head studs in like this.

Uh, so these are from Victory Road Performance and I'm actually taking these home with me for my big boost 156 that I don't technically own just yet. Um, but this is the end-all be-all Definitely not needed if you're going naturally aspirated, but it looks mean. So after your torque on the large cylinder head bolts, there are four little guys, two in there and two here. Those don't seal the combustion or anything like that, but we've already torqued Those in.

so this side is complete. Well, You know, as far as the cylinder head being held in at least hey, Rusty Do you remember you remember if we did this one three times? what's up? Did we do that three times? We only got two two marks. You sure? Positive there's a line. there's only two I don't know I Want you to do it though? Yeah, I did.

Should we leave that for the next guy? Uh, we'll put the we'll put the Sharpie Park back on. Actually, we could do one better here. This is what we'll do. We'll have four on that one.

and right now let's just do five on this one. And how about this? I'm going to go with Alex and Rusty Or here there we go next guy. All right. Second head gasket is going on.

We have our RTV and some more. RTV All right second head going on. This one is a little bit more difficult because of the guide. just got to be mindful of that.

No biggie, she's on this side, head is installed and fully torqued and I am fully beat. I've been up for about 20 hours I think I could continue on for more. We're gonna go get steaks. I'm gonna get some sleep.

We'll be back in the morning refreshed, fueled up with coffee, ready to finish this engine. All right guys. It's the next morning and I Was really looking forward to getting some sleep. but I got back to the hotel.

edited till midnight and then at 2 A.M We actually had a hotel fire. Well, it's uh, two o'clock in the morning and my hotel's on fire. This is what I woke up to I think the fire's up there 100 sure. I Ran up and down the hallway though.

it seems like everybody's gotten out. can't be anything major, so everybody's okay. We had to evacuate. There was a bunch of smoke and after a couple of hours the fire department just let us back in.

They opened up some windows and said they couldn't find the fire. So needless to say, I didn't really sleep much because I was waiting for the fire to come back. It smelled electrical and it was just a little bothersome that they didn't find anything. There was a ton of smoke.

On My Level Uh, so I'm on absolutely no sleep I just uh, this is my second coffee already. Uh, Rusty's waiting for me in there. This is going to be very interesting I think by the time we're done with this engine, I'll have not slept for the better part of about two days. So anyway, with that, no more excuses.

Let's build us a bulletproof engine some more. Oh, and check out my loner car while I'm in. West Virginia This is the supercharged E63 that Craig owns that we had on the dyno when I was out here last time. Uh, this thing has even more power now I think it's like 700 wheel and then this G wagon is owned by Victory Road Performance.

This has a Whipple supercharger, a built engine, carbon fiber hood, big brakes. Uh, definitely go for a ride in this while I'm out here. All right guys up next in bulletproofing of this 6.2 liter naturally aspirated hand built dual overhead cam V8 engine is the valve train. a very, very important and kind of fragile part of this engine, but we can fix it.

So these are the tappets. These are also referred to as buckets or lifters, but basically they can wear out. So what we have here is somewhat of a normally worn out tappet. so this isn't too bad.

This is kind of the beginning stages of this thing about to fail. When you start seeing these Rings it gets weak in the center and eventually this could happen. This could be from lack of Maintenance abuse and just the fact that these guys just failed Mercedes didn't do the best job. So we are going to do the best job and replace the them with the best habit on the market which is right from the SLS Black Series So the base M156 engine is what's in the SLS Black so they renamed it but there is a large range from a 450 horsepower C63 all the way to I think about a 630 horsepower SLS Black And they decided to use these black tappets and they have a special coating on them.

As you can see, these are very slick and they reduce friction, free up horsepower and they last longer because they're coated so we're definitely going with these. First step though, is dunk them in our buckets of oil. so we're going to soak these guys before we put them in. Just like that.

All right. We can never have enough protection at initial startup, so I'm going to go ahead and use some engine assembly Lube right at the very top of the valve. Just like this. All right.

Then with that, we're going to go ahead and install our Black Series tappets. So the M159 engine, which was what the SLS Black Series engine was designated, was actually the highest horsepower, naturally aspirated engine for quite some time actually, until the C806 came out. So the SLS Black all motor 622 horsepower and then the C806 just came out with 670 horsepower. So it's just crazy to think that they can go from 450 all the way to 622.

A lot of that obviously had to do with tuning, but I believe they ran different camshafts, a different intake manifold, and some other tricks. The bottom end had some upgrades as well on the Black Series Pretty cool to know that we can unleash a ton of power on kind of the more base model engine and we're going to be going with larger fuel injectors because because we're going with a reliable but pretty aggressive tune as well just to squeeze out a ton of power, So this is this is going to put out nearly as much power as that black series did. All right here it is with all the tappets installed and on this side as well. So let's move on to some other nice little valve train upgrades Up next we have our camshaft adjusters.

You can also call these phasers and this is what controls the variable valve timing on the M156 engine. There are four of these, one per camshaft and what fails in these is a plate right in the middle which from Mercedes is non-replaceable You have to replace the entire adjuster for about eight. Nine hundred dollars a piece. But of course my friends at Victory Road Performance have a very nice solution.

So we'll be installing some upgraded Billet plates in here and make these guys bulletproof as well. All right. So first step is we have to remove these five screws foreign, just put them off to the side, then just be gentle when you take this plate off because there is a little black cap and Spring right in here. I'll show you right there that guy will fall out.

So let's remove this portion here and separate these guys and you'll see this little pin hanging out in here. This pin can wear out for sure, but this one is in really nice shape and then what we're replacing is this center plate right here and this only goes on one way. You can't mess it up. So I'm really happy we're doing this.

You can see where that pin sits, this is where these plates wear out and so what will happen is this will start making a rattling noise. It can also set a check engine light as well and if you don't fix it, this could get much much worse. Like this one here that Rusty and Craig had laying around, this is really bad. It's about to let loose completely, so the pin was probably damaged on this one as well and you can see what the difference is here.

On the new one, it's reinforced. It still has a passage on the bottom though, but this is just a much stronger piece. A Billet piece with a reinforcement. So this one should be good to go forever and so we'll just put this back together in reverse order.

See that little hole right there? It lines up right there with that. PIN Just like this, All right. So after getting a little bit of oil on here, you just place this guy in and it goes in like this. It'll only go in one way.

Then you just slide in the pin like so make sure it's pushed all the way down and that you can't turn this. you don't want to be able to spin this now, it's locked in place. Then you install your little spring and the little black cap and just be careful it doesn't fly out on you All right. Then the orientation of this does not matter.

Pop it back on. We're going to lactate these, but I'm just going to put one in there there. We can line it up with the bottom and this doesn't need to be oriented either, just that the bolt holes line up. I'll just start one of these just to hold it together.

Now we're holding the adjuster in a vise a little bit of Loctite on each. We'll zip them down and it's only 15 newton meters. So we'll use the torque wrench that Jesus used so we're not going to be getting any clicks on this old boy. There we go.

All right. Before we put the cams on, we have to put the little idler gears back on or at least attach them to the chain for now. All right. So we just got to fish the chain out from this side as well.

We're going to get both of these in there, all right. So we got this one on this side, this one resting on this side. more engine assembly. Lube First one's always a little bit easier unless it falls on you, All right? So This Guy's in here Dose going in perfect now.

The center bolt gets lock tighted as well. There we go and he said it's gonna be a baby Torque value. All right. Both idlers are in all right now.

We're lining up this guide pin with our guide. Uh, go down a little bit. Rusty There we go. Cool You guys.

Remember when I first came out here? Getting these out with the slide hammer is a pain in the butt. Get them in is much much easier and same thing on this side. Okay, cool. we're in and another one over here.

There we go. All right. So with those guides in place, we can get this last one in there so we just have to loosen up the idler for a second and then one last pin over there. All right guys.

We're ready to install the cam shafts and what we're going to do now is set the crank at 40 degrees. You guys might remember this part from the first video out here a few months ago, but there is a line right here that we need to line up. Oh yeah, there it is, so just keep going. Bam.

All right, cool. All right. Next up is our timing chain tensioner. This is AMG specific and they're super proud of that.

See, definitely torquing this guy. Next up we're installing the camshafts. This one is the exhaust and you know that because it's painted with an orange stripe and these can be a little awkward to install because some of the cam loads are pointing straight down, but you'll get it and this is definitely nothing you want to let go of. Keep your hand on there.

Next we have the intake. This has a black stripe all right and then these caps are numbered. Numbers are on the outside so this is number eight and this guy is number one. So it goes one, two three, four five, six, seven, eight.

All right. So the torque spec is only 10 newton meters on these, so you just want to go around by hand and slowly snug them down. You're gonna feel some resistance that's totally normal. but do not get an electric impact out and go nuts.

You will break these. Take your time. All right with all of them snug down. You know we're going for it.

The old school torque wrench. and I actually had one of these a long time ago at the dealer. A lot of guys do actually because you can set pinion preload on differentials with this because you can't really use a click style for that and for really low torque settings. I Like this a lot better because some of those click ones they're not accurate.

when you're trying to do 10 newton meters. It's not a lot. this guy. We can see the line just line right up and we're good.

You just don't hear a noise. All right. Next up, we need to lock these camshafts so we have a special tool. There are grooves in the back of the cam so Rusty is turning the exhaust camshaft right now and I'm just lining this up.

There we go. That one's in and now he's just going to turn the intake cam. Oh there we go. Perfect.

Okay, cool. All right. Next up: Cam Adjusters and Timing. So we're going to take this guy, put it right here and these are all matched up with the adjuster.

And don't forget these super super thin washers that go in right here and we are going to be using new cam bolts. Okay, so right now what we did was we locked these gears together with this special tool and if you see here it says house, that is exhaust All right. So just make sure that you're seeing these mesh in with the idler and it'll draw it in as well. All right.

So now we can remove this tool and don't tighten this guy up just yet. We need this to free Spin and now we're going together with the intake and you can see here in that means intake in German House And in that's how you say it properly. All right. You guys may not have realized this, but the timing is is done.

We we've already done it. So by setting that at 40 and by installing this tool right here which can only be installed one way, we have timed the engine. That's it. Mercedes does a really good job at making it easy to time an engine.

If you guys saw my V12 series, it was very, very similar. That was a single overhead cam engine without variable valve timing. Dual overhead cam with variable valve timing just as easy. So we've installed a front cam locking tool and this is just because we need to torque these bolts like crazy.

And then the last piece of the puzzle is installing a cam phaser timing tool and this is specific for this engine so that you line these guys back up. That's why we need to leave those bolts loose. so you just turn it around until it goes through and this tool is foolproof as well. I'll leave some of these linked down below, but you might be able to get one on incorrectly, but then the other side won't go on.

but basically it won't let you mess up and these are labeled left and right. Links and rights rights. How bad is it? German People how bad First stage: 45 newton meters and because I think I'm about ready to pass out I'm going to go ahead and wake myself up with a good old 90 degree angle torque. Here we go All right.

Need more coffee? 50, 60, 70, 80. there we go. These tools are so so nice. When I started at the dealer, they didn't have these cool digital ones.

so literally just go like kind of do one of these. I Mean they had they had angle torque tools but sometimes you would just put it right here. go to 90. let's see how accurate is it? Pretty good.

All right. Last up for the long block assembly is a new harmonic balancer bolt. You definitely want to replace this every time because it's a stretch bolt and there's a special tool to hold the harmonic balancer. Rusty has made this even more special by welding some extensions.

So it works on multiple different engines so you don't have to buy a new tool, but essentially it fits into some grooves so you can hold it. Like so all right guys, the torque spec on this is absolutely ridiculous. First, we have to set the crank in there. so 240 Newton meters.

Oh geez, hold on here. We go there, we go. now. we have to loosen that up.

Come on. Okay, now torque it yet again to 200 newton meters. All right. And now the spec says 180 degree turn.

That is wild. All right, let's stretch this. Bolt Oh okay, that was 50. it started to vibrate and with that, Rm156 engine is complete.

Fully updated, fully upgraded a bulletproof V8 engine from Mercedes the way that it should have come many, many years ago and this is going to work perfectly for about 99 of you guys out there. If you're going for some big crazy boost numbers, you might have to build the bottom end. But these things are pretty stout in stock form and even better when you know exactly what to upgrade. So there is the blueprint for you guys.

These things can be problematic, but everything's basically been figured out at this point. and now our 2009 C63 giveaway car is getting one of the nicest M156 engines around. We just gotta just toss it in so that'll do it for this video. But in the next one Rusty and I will continue to put everything back together.

the intake, the exhaust, all the accessories, some more upgrades and modifications and then the engine is going in the C63 and we're gonna start it up for the first time and looking forward at the radar. it looks like a bunch of snow is coming in so we have new tires on order. There is a lot left in this guys. I Hope you guys will join me for the next one and uh, Rusty and I quite frankly are just going to get right to work right now.

so the next video is going to pick up as soon as I walk away from this outro so you guys will get to see how tired I get throughout that one because I'm not taking a nap. we're not stopping. We gotta get this done I Gotta make it home. So with that I Hope you guys really enjoyed this video.

If you did, give it a big thumbs up, share the video with your friends, subscribe if you haven't already, and most importantly have an awesome day! I'll catch all of you in the next video foreign.