Driving a CLK63 Black Series MANUAL — The Carmudgeon Show w Jason Cammisa & Derek Tam-Scott — Ep 185

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It's a product of the Hagerty Podcasting Facility. Or sit where they're about. Approximately. Today, Jason Camisa is going to share with us insights from a day spent on the dynamometer.

Junimuminer? Well, his cars were on the dynamometer. I was technically also on the dynamometer. How many horsepower at the wheels did you make? I was only there to strap down more powerful vehicles.

I was not actually. So we don't. So the spoiler alert, we're not going to find out how much power to measure once my peak output hold on.

We did a bike thing, a bike comparison when specialized came out with the turbo, which was their first sort of workout e-bike. They sent me one, and I refused to send it back.

I absolutely loved it, and I did a long-term test for it for a road track, and I put a couple thousand miles on this bicycle. I adored this thing, and we raised me against this guy, Jack, who worked for us who was like a semi-professional bike racer to see if my fat ass on a 50 pound e-bike could keep up with him to 30 miles an hour.

And the problem was the specialized petered out at 28.6 or whatever it is. And so up until he's pretty fast on a bicycle on level ground, but I, from 28 to 30, I'm on my own, and I don't think I was going to be able to make it, but we did put V-boxes on the car.

Why did you say 30? Why didn't you just do 25? I think we just didn't do one of doing 25 or whatever, and he beat me. But we were able to measure his horsepower output and my horsepower output. And for the life of me, I don't remember what it was.

But I feel like I was something like 500 watts over the course of the race, probably even a little bit more than that, which is a horsepower.

So I'm as powerful as a horse. Also as fat as one. I think we should get, so I went to the dyno with three of my cars, all of which scored on the embarrassing board of the least power ever recorded on that dyno.

I have three spots on that, so we'll get into that. You, because you're a rat bastard, showed up in a six-speed manual Mercedes CLK 63 AMG Black Series, one of the most amazing drivers cars of the last 25 years.

Wait, it wasn't automatic. As an automatic, and you went and changed it. Now it's manual. We'll find out whether it ruined it or unruined it.

So we did a ruin. Yeah. So, okay, stay tuned for that. And now we have the time for applause.

Just one applause. Whatever the singular applause is.

The volume was okay, tone was not. Yeah. Okay.

This must be the car engine show. According to the signage, there's a margin and there's a car.

This is on the mud. Mud? Mud? Mud? Mud? Mud? Mud? Mud? Mud? Mud? Muddy? Oh. Maybe I'm Muddy. I mean, I did have Shake Shack for dinner last night. Parts of me should be Muddy.

Well, wow. Oh, no. Really? You didn't know what happened. All right. Well, I guess that's the start. No. Please not. I think it is. Okay. Well, there it is. Fine.

Yes. Here we are. Here that is. That is. That is. Welcome to California. Welcome to a CLK 63 Black Series manual swapped. Yes. That's the important part. Yeah. Manual swapped black series. I think that is going to be the first thing that we'll talk about today. Okay. Start there.

We did a whole episode about the black series when we first bought the car when it was still an automatic. For reminder, quick synopsis, we decided, we meaning my company, my co-founders and I decided to instead of paying ourselves by a CLK 63 Black Series in Florida and then drive it via Atlanta where we stopped with Randy Popes and did some lapping of this car and one that was ready manual swapped and then we ended up in Nashville where the car got a manual transmission swap by quick classics.

Who is also the fellow who engines swapped my W-124 station wagon. He's been a guest on the show and has been a guest on the car list anymore because there's no wall here. Yes.

There's a wall here. Yeah. Instead there's a black car. Yeah, would you rather have a car? Yeah, a car than a wall with a list on it. So I have that car. Yeah. I'm a big fan of it. Any time you put a car in Jason's hands, there's always a question mark about what is he going to find to despise about it.

So Jason has now driven the car for a grand total of seven minutes probably. But that's enough. Who's to say? I was not enough. I'm going to take it home. You don't get it back.

I really kept thinking how much do I want this relative to all the other things I could have or that I would have to sell to buy that? And if it wasn't black, we could sell a bunch of cars.

We can make that happen. We meaning Matt. Matt can make that happen, swap me a car. Yeah. I don't know if I want something that big and by big, I mean like it's a big car. It's a, you know, it's important car.

It's a lot of money. You have a car that's exactly this big. That's a V12.

Hey, I love and so so what?

That's just that sentence that phrase in French. I think it's so perfect. It should be used in English. I love means and so.

I guess you can do it in English. But so what? It means so what?

So what is that I have too many cars, most of which are in some stage of broken at the moment. Nothing. I mean, everything drives.

But I just don't know if I want to invest that much money into another car and then have something that's that good.

Remember, I don't have a commute.

Really? And so isn't this exact rationale that you would use to argue against the purchase of an eight series, which you have purchased?

I want it. Yes. Okay. Okay. But but let's be very clear about something.

I love the ship box, right? I love a car that's a Mike.

So now the E31 is a ship box. No, no, but I like cars that are not great at being cars.

Right? You and I have discussed this at length many times.

Good cars make bad collectibles.

Porsches make bad.

Oh, yeah. That's why they're worthless. Yeah, exactly.

No, I mean, if I had one or two or three old cars and not nine of them.

I don't know. I mean, I'm in cars. I have approximately not somewhere somewhere along the lines of nine old cars.

I want them to be experienced first.

And that is an amazing experience we'll get into the details in a second.

But it's also a really good car. And I would just want a daily that shit out of it because you don't have a commute.

So you can't. So every drive becomes special.

Wasteful. So I'd rather have something angry and cantankerous and you do already.

They're not mutually exclusive.

Black. I don't want to.

Don't get me wrong. It looks amazing in black. I just don't want to have to clean.

Yes. I agree. It's fine.

You know, I finally got rid of the Lotus. That was my last.

Every sports car I've ever had has been black and annoyingly because I never.

I don't actually care about color. I'll just buy whatever.

Whatever car. And so my nine eight six was black. My nine six.

My Miata. Like all of my and the Lotus, all of my like sports cars have been black.

And then they look so good when they're clean and it's all bad when they're not.

Yeah. And they're only clean for 46 seconds right after you wash them.

Right. Generally by the time you reach the back of the car at the front of it,

it's like the gold bridge. They paint it from one end to the other.

And then they just start over when they get to the end.

JRG is or all silvers are nice because it's the same color as dirt.

Yeah. So.

Yeah. So anyway. So you did a swap on that car.

This is 28,000 mile car. Yes. That's right.

It is all Mercedes Benz parts with the exception of the clutch.

The clutch is proprietary. He found some supplier who would make something that fits the needs of this car.

But everything else in the swap is a Mercedes part down to like hydraulic lines for the clutch

and the pedal cluster and all that stuff.

The best compliment I can give that car as it feels exactly as it should.

It feels like a car that left a Mercedes Benz factory.

Yeah. I agree with that.

With one exception.

Which is?

It threw up a...

It was annoyed at stability control or something.

Yes, ESP not available. Yes.

That's true.

But that's your guys are aware of where you coded it out, right?

Well, supposedly. But then the message came up. So maybe not.

Other than that.

And you know, I have no idea what the hell that thing would do if I had floored it while the message was coming up

or you know, tried to get into ABS because it said ABS in traction control or ESP not available.

But the clutch throttle everything feels perfect.

And that's often not the case when you put a...

You manual swap a car. You know, you're making linkages first of all.

This is not the case here.

And you have throttle mapping.

Pagani.

This is a perfect...

Yes.

Perfect opposite.

Pagani manual swapped the V12 for the Zonda.

And it feels it because the throttle calibration is very much what you get on a Mercedes automatic.

Yes.

Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. A little bit more, a little bit, a little bit more.

And everything.

They put it all at the end because they assume someone who's driving a Mercedes 600 is not actually interested in going fast unless they put their foot down.

In which case, they need to blow the doors off of like F16s.

Yes.

Well, I think it helps that this engine is an AMG engine.

And so the calibration on the throttle was done in a more sports car away because it was designed by AMG.

This is, once again, the only AMG engine clean sheet design ever made.

The M156.

You're going to get fights from people in the comments again on you who are wrong, but they're going to fight with you, right?

Yeah, I mean, I just...

I want to unambiguously state that this is the only AMG dedicated clean sheet engine designed by AMG.

And no one has ever...

Well, I shouldn't say no one has ever...

It does still have, I don't know if you noticed this, kick down.

There's a little kick down button at the end of the trip, the travel.

That's the only vestige of it being an automatic.

I would wire that to a sound thing that just makes like an open...

It just does...

Just makes a profane noise.

Or turns it into straight pipes.

It opens a valve that is the dump valves ahead of the cats.

Yes.

Or an extra injector in the exhaust that pours fuel out.

And then it has a spark plug and just...

Afterburners.

We never have gotten to interact with this M156.

As a manual.

Mercedes never once made this M156 available with a manual.

And so often what you find is when you...

When there are cars that are swapped, you don't...

Or cars with automatic, you don't actually understand what the engine's capable of doing.

In the best example there, Audi R8.

You get the R-tronic or S-tronic on the V8, which is the tool clutch or single clutch automated manuals.

And you just use it as an automatic, it's torque request pedal, it does what...

What you're missing is the difference between the V8 and the R8 and that V8 when it was in the RS4.

Because in the RS4 it was sort of slow to rev and deliberate like most cross-playing V8s.

And then you...

In the R8, they got rid of the flywheel, they retuned everything.

And it was sort of...

Magical.

Magical engine to interact with.

I love an RS4, right?

We said in a couple episodes ago, I think we had the actual, the insert of the wrong RS4.

Oh yes, we meant B8 and a 7.

Yeah, but a B7 or a 4 is wonderful and I own one.

But that engine as configured in the R8 is...

Like, call a priest and have an intervention like it's amazing.

That was something that surprised me.

The first time I ever drove a manual V8, which was RSR8 V8, which was not actually that long ago.

And I thought it was going to be sort of sterile and inert and the engine really impressed me.

Yeah.

And it makes me exceed my expectations by...

Engine is the best part.

Other than styling, the engine is the best part of that car.

And it's very different than it is in an RS4.

So I expected this to be sort of RS4 in its laziness to respond and nupe.

The throttle response is...

You could tell me that has ITBs, and I would believe it.

Instant throttle response, strangely though, it will not let you come off the gas quickly.

So if you tap it, you get this...

You get a huge thud through the whole...

The whole traction boom.

And then it fades out throttle over probably three quarters of a second.

And that's the only weirdness, but it doesn't result in uncomfortable revhang in normal use.

Yeah, I mean, if you put the clutch in and blip it, it's very, very...

Yeah, right back down.

I would say the clutch feels...

It's a heavier sort of...

It's more effort than I would have expected out of a Mercedes clutch in probably a good way.

Yeah, it's not heavy.

I think that when a clutch is too light, I feel like it's not gonna hold the power.

And this has a sort of reassuring heft to it where you're like,

this is a meaty clutch, but it's also very progressive.

If it's a non-original clutch, you always run the risk of something kind of racy and non-progressive.

And for those motorists, listeners out there who've never driven a racing clutch

and think it's a good idea, it sounds cool, it's awful.

Trying to use one of those in like regular street use is miserable because they're so unprogressive.

And this feels like in terms of engagement, very OEM.

It perfectly OEM.

The shift feel.

Like, I don't know if I'm allowed to even ask where that transmission and linkage comes from.

It's a Mercedes transmission.

It's not from a crossfire.

Everybody thinks, you know, because crossfires are often used for manual Mercedes swaps,

but it's a different Mercedes transmission.

It's spectacular.

It's a great linkage.

It's cable.

It feels like halfway between like a GTI and a 9-11 in that there's a really big build-up in effort

as you're moving through into a gate.

And then it falls into that gate with a very positive sneak.

I am in love with it.

I think the clutch shifter gas is 9 out of 10 and typically swaps are a 2 out of 10.

And a lot of OEM things are score lower than 9 out of 10.

The whole score zero is often.

I think the only OEM that probably does it better.

I think this is better than an E46 M3 or an E39 M5.

The engine certainly responds better, quicker and with far less delay than E39 M5.

I'll give you that.

I mean, nobody does it like Porsche.

Yes, Porsche is the gold standard.

Absolutely.

I think that, you know, I might argue that even this is better than the gated Ferrari's from the...

I would argue in fact that this is...

I prefer to drive this over a...

Any 6-speed gated Ferrari.

Pretty much.

I don't know.

In terms of just shift quality.

And the way that the whole everything coalesces in terms of like flattering you

and feeling doing what you want it to do is opposed to feeling like you're having to accommodate and work around it.

I basically have work boots on at the moment.

And so it was...

I felt a little bit clumsy in there, but the car does work with you.

So I'm embarrassed at it.

My shifts is what I'm saying.

Sorry.

You probably were judging me silently from the passenger seat.

You hold yourself to a higher standard than I do.

But no, it is...

I'm trying...

So CLK Black has always been one of my favorite Mercedes ever.

Yeah.

We've given the option of the automatic, which frankly ruins the car versus this.

I don't know what I'd be willing to pay more, but whatever it is, I would...

Yeah.

I wouldn't consider owning.

Yes.

That's right.

It's the difference between not wanting to own one and being like this car is extremely difficult to fault.

Like, everything about interacting with this car, I like...

It feels familiar and I couldn't quite place it, and I still don't know exactly what it is.

In some respects, because it's so much displacement, you know, it's not in the era you want to compare it to an E90M3,

but it has so much more torque and power and sort of responsiveness.

And the other thing about it, and I think there's a black-series thing, is that they did all these sort of pretty serious upgrades to the car, especially for back then, you know, triple-adjustable coilovers.

And obviously, at that time, the brakes were a really big deal.

It has a diff cooler.

The seats feel really like aggressive and sporty.

The steering weight is quite heavy.

And so the whole thing feels kind of like spiritually much closer to a Porsche GT car than you would expect for a Mercedes like this.

It doesn't feel, you know, because you drive other AMG products that have the M156, and it's going to be like an E63 or whatever that has...

Or a C63, and it just has this sort of like...

It's a big comfy car that they've put a big motor in, and this feels like it was sort of coherently designed as a purposeful sporting device in the way that a Porsche GT car does.

And so it's like a rear-wheel drive V8 Porsche GT approach to things.

It really does feel different as opposed to like a derivative of a regular car.

Yeah, a lot of AMGs will often feel like, you know, a Mercedes with a rocket trapped in the back.

This engine and sand in the dampers.

This does feel like it has sand in the dampers.

We have it, I still set up in the track setup, and these are triple-adjustable.

So we definitely need to get rid of that because it's like intolerably harsh for street use around here.

Oh, I mean, really you would call that intolerable?

Well, compared to what it should be like and what it's capable of being like, it's like if you could just turn a few knobs, we just have to get it up in the air and do that.

What I want to know is, what was the suspension setup and alignment setup that Mercedes used for the press cars back in the day?

Because the first thing I remember noticing about the black series, I went on the launch, we've talked about this.

And we left some parking lot and I made it maybe 50 feet and I was like moved to almost here.

I was like, I never experienced anything like this steering, steering wise in Mercedes.

And this car doesn't have that.

This car is great steering, great, beautiful waiting and it's communicative, but it doesn't do the snap immediate to center and tell me every little thing about the road trip.

So whatever you guys do, I would see if we can find out from Mercedes how they set that up and just emulate that because it was perfection.

It's absolute perfection.

And because everything's adjustable, I'm sure Mercedes did.

I think that they certainly did.

But I loved those cars.

I don't want to say nice things about this car.

I find myself, why?

Because I don't want to not be able to afford one.

I mean, it's definitely on the list.

I could see like this or a V8, or V8 Vantage, Aston, no contest this one.

This or V12 Vantage, which is a lot more money, I think.

It's literally up there with the most desirable cars I can think of.

It's amazing that it turned out that way and that it uses Mercedes parts and that they didn't do it.

What a fuck up.

Like what an absolute, if every part existed to make this car from the factory, how dumb was Mercedes in not making this car?

And they only made 500 of these cars, too.

And they're not worth very much because of the transmission, I would argue.

Incidentally, they made exactly 500 Lexus LFA's and that's a car that's also let down by its two pedal transmission.

No one's ever swapped one of them to manual that we know.

I don't think that parts exist on the shelf to do that.

But obviously this is derived from a regular old car and the LFA is not and there's reason why LFA is so much more.

But it's interesting to think that they made exactly the same number of these things as they made.

I would rather drive this than an LFA.

I would too.

That's crazy.

I definitely would too.

Even as an automatic, I don't, I would be interesting.

I have to think about it for a while.

The chassis of this car to me is really, it feels familiar.

I feel very at home.

It makes me feel the same way I do in an E36 M3.

It has this sort of rear-wheel drive purposeful rightness to it that just is coherent and makes me comfortable and feel at ease driving the car quickly.

And the LFA made me feel ill at ease.

Really?

And I never felt quite like I trusted that car.

I drove one around an autocross course at some point or for filming 100 years ago.

And it was a handful.

It was once you did.

It was once you did because it was mostly the feedback that it gave to the engineers because it was a prototype was.

It needs a stronger spring in the throttle because it rode stiff enough that just little bumps were making your foot move.

I think that's what it was.

And that was enough to get that thing totally unsettled.

Not just, you know, like, oh, I want to go.

They would explode around sideways.

And so once, if you sort of positioned your leg correctly to not.

Yes, to drive with one toe instead of your whole foot.

No, I do like the way the LFA drives.

But yeah, no, give me that.

This is a car I feel more comfortable going fast in the LFA.

Did you track that this car when it was?

I didn't.

I didn't personally know.

Did Randy describe it as a handful?

Yes, a handful.

Yes, they don't.

Randy and Taz both lapped the car and both found that it was a handful.

Yeah, they are quite.

We've talked about it quite lively.

Spicy.

Yeah, at the limit.

It was interesting also to do the lap time comparison.

I don't know if we're going to.

We're going to.

We're going to beat the punchline here because we're doing a video about this too.

I've no idea when it's going to go live.

Do you have a thought on which configuration was faster?

The automatic was a seven speed, correct?

And those ratios were pretty closely spaced.

Was that the first Mercedes that swapped out the torque converter for multi clutch?

Yeah, I think so.

I actually don't know.

So the big losses in an automatic come from very, very high speeds and high revs on the torque converter side.

So if you eliminate the torque converter side, you're eliminating the sort of the drag that you get from all the fluid.

So I don't think there'd be a huge difference in power to the wheels.

And my guess is that the seven speeds ratios are more closely stacked than this.

So in theory, other than the weight difference between the two, on balance, I would say the automatic.

My expectation would be the automatic would be faster.

It was not.

I know this because you told me this back in the day, but I have to be honest.

I got it wrong.

I'm genuinely shocked by that.

And it was a big difference, right?

Yeah, it was a second and a half.

And that was not down to suspension tuning.

I mean, we set the cars up exactly the same allegedly and we ran the same wheels and tires on them also.

What was Randy's feedback that he just didn't trust the...

That the transmission was recalcitrant and often ignored requests.

That it would sometimes grant a downshift when it felt like it or when it decided.

There's apparently some ECU in there that does a bunch of calculations that decides whether or not to grant a downshift.

And so it doesn't always comply with your requests.

That is obvious when you drive those cars.

Yes.

And then will occasionally comply with your requests when you no longer want it.

Yes, also true.

It stores it and then it'll redeploy it later which is obviously...

Well, Gene Jennings, who passed away a couple months ago, I don't think we talked about that.

Did we not?

I don't remember.

But yeah, she looped the black series on a two-lane because it just fucking downshifted on her.

Yeah, probably hours after she'd requested it.

Four to six weeks.

Wow, a second and a half.

That's probably the difference between a black series and a regular COK 63.

That's a huge difference.

Yeah, substantial difference.

We were not expecting that at all.

We were like sort of orienting ourselves toward writing some conclusion about how it's the experience that matters.

No.

Well, it didn't need it.

It turns out...

Well, just goes to show that an automatic...

Especially with a talented driver who knows what he wants and asks it to do it and it makes it happen.

Listen, this happened to us with the BMW M3 M4.

We had Randy Popes in a coupe that was a...

I don't remember which one was which.

I'm pretty sure the base M4 was a manual coupe.

And then we had an M3 competition, which has more power and more everything, as an automatic.

And the coupe was quicker.

The manual was quicker than the automatic was.

And there was one spot around the track where the automatic would refuse to give him a downshift.

And I love Angry Randy.

And he was like, you bitch!

And I know I don't have the video anywhere.

It exists somewhere.

I won't be able to find it.

But it's just hilarious, like watching him get angry about that.

But for the rest of the time, the manual is not geared all that well.

It's got long...

All of that time difference was from that one place.

No.

Even if we undid that and looked at the rest of the track for whatever reason, the manual was faster.

And it could just be a simple matter of the long, widely spaced ratios,

gave that turbo a long time to settle in in each gear, get to max boost and hold it there.

But for whatever reason is, peak speeds were higher in the manual.

Everything was better in the manual.

And he actually liked the way the manual handled better, too.

We all did.

It was just a weird thing.

But I just don't subscribe to the idea that an automatic isn't necessarily faster.

And that is a great automatic in the three series.

In fact, I prefer the automatic in the three.

But this was a bad automatic.

It was just not a not tuned problem.

It was 20 years ago, almost.

But that point, Porsche had great PDKs.

Great tuning.

Almost.

Oh, nine.

Okay.

Third point.

Yeah.

R32s had great PDKs starting in 2005 or whatever.

Great.

Whatever the first PD.

Dual clutch.

Yeah.

VW group.

Yeah.

Alluminating.

I mean, I think.

I'm.

I have very curious to know how the market feels about this, obviously, because we own the car, but also because it's.

The one thing that transforms the car from being a non-contender.

It's been removed.

It's one of those cars where there's only one thing that keeps it from being like a genuine contender.

Usually there's other stuff.

You know, you.

Identify.

It's like whack them all.

You solve one problem.

And then the next thing that makes it suck rises, but that's not the case with this car.

I mean, at this price point, I would like to have functioning ABS and stability control.

Yes.

To be honest, and I'm sure there is a fix for it in one way or another.

But at the same time, I would consider buying this car from you guys.

And if it doesn't sell, I would consider denying it from us too.

But we would have to pay ourselves with the money from selling it in order for me to afford it.

So that I think is this one of those.

Well, you could just non-seller for a while and save up, slowly.

Yeah.

Sure.

I sell that fucking 9-11 of yours.

The nice thing is that...

The who's down and who knew they were making their list?

But some didn't know.

Walmart has the best brands for their gifts.

What about toys?

Do they have brands kids have been wanting all year?

Yup.

Barbie, Tonys, and Lego.

Gifts that will make them all cheer.

Do you mean they have all the brands I adore?

They have Nintendo, Nespresso, Apple, and more.

What?

Uh-oh.

So the who answered questions from friends till they were blue?

Each one listened and shouted, from Walmart?

Who knew?

Chuck Gis from Pop Brandt, or everyone on your list in the Walmart app.

Uh, it's, you know, reproducible.

I mean, there are only 500 of them.

There are only 500 and 350 or so in the United States.

Uh, most are black, are silver.

There's a few red ones and a few white ones.

I was a rock of white.

I'd rock silver.

The red on the red.

I like the red.

Yeah.

I think it's one.

For me, it's just memory structure.

You know, the one that I drove back in the day was silver.

Um, and I, I think it looks, it's really hard to light black cars in a black studio.

Yes.

Um, so I'm sure I just, everyone, there is a car behind us.

I don't know if you can tell.

We threw a couple lights on it just so you could see the grill and the headlights

and the, we, those amazing wheels.

Yeah, the alkoas.

I'm so cool.

Yeah.

So cool.

Um, well, if I, if I, now you know, it's good.

It's really good.

Yeah.

It's fantastic.

Um, so yeah, I, I want one.

Um, but I probably have to sell the 850.

And I don't know if I could have a cylinder count drop, you know, that's significantly.

This is more displacement.

And this is a lot faster.

A lot faster.

And it's a lot more sort of sporty in the chassis department.

Yeah.

I did, um, I did Dino the CSI.

Uh, so I was a little bit convinced that my car was slow.

And sometimes, but Dino's lie.

Uh, and I drove a Euro car.

So interestingly about the 850 CSI, US cars had 372 horsepower.

Euro cars were 380 PS.

Is that the same thing?

375.

So they were 3 horsepower.

And I believe four pound feet of torque apart.

So there was a tuning difference.

But same parts, same hardware, same hardware, same everything.

Um, and when I went back and looked when I did the, uh, research for the, for the revelations video,

you could see they're very two discrete clumps of testing results, both in the US and Europe.

There were cars that did zero to 60 and five three were thereabouts.

And there were cars that did zero to 60 and five nine were thereabouts.

And if you put their charts together, it wasn't about the launch.

It was actually in gear power.

So you could do, you could look at a 40 to 100 damn of those cars and see that some of them just had way more power than others.

Car driver's, uh, car driver got the, they got a five three out of theirs to 60.

And it was one of the first, uh, road tests of it.

So I thought, oh, well, that's just a Euro motor.

And so my theory was that the Euro cars were stronger.

And then I went to look at, uh, UK testing.

And they got mostly five nines out of their cars.

Or, you know, what would be a five nine if they didn't do the rollout stuff.

So like 606162.

Um, and then occasionally they would get a fast one.

One of the magazines would get one that was in five threes.

And I just, I, that sort of blew my mind and I didn't know what, uh, what to think.

So, um, I know a local guy who has my cars identical twin.

So my car is the only one US car.

Except it's Euro.

Yes.

Mine's the only US car in this color.

It's the same exact color combo.

Um, and I asked him, but could I borrow his car to do a dyno back to back.

Same day, same dyno, same everything.

So we threw his car on first.

He's got chips in his car.

Um, chips because it has multiple ECU.

Two ECU with three, but two engine control units.

Yes.

Uh, one for each bank.

So he's got a chip in it that, uh, bought from a guy named Ed,

who V12 Throttle.com.

Um, he sells them.

I don't know exactly where they came from.

They came from Europe somewhere.

They were 400 PS chips.

So supposedly went from 380 to 400.

Um, and, um, the owner of the car said, Matt, his name said, yeah, no huge difference.

Plugged it in.

And I'm like, oh, no, your car is even faster than mine now.

Meanwhile, I got those same chips from, from Ed, but they're done for,

that chip was done for a Euro car.

So the US engine gets a check engine light because it's missing the sort of

check engine circuit, which I didn't love.

Uh, and then I got a Jim can 40 chip and can 40 chip was, uh, hold on.

Let me just look this up because I'm the Mr. BMW chip guy.

Um, yes.

Has it been forever?

Uh, at least 20 years.

Yeah, he did them.

And he did this 100 years ago.

Um, uh, and, and there's a dynamite.

So it's Turner Motorsport.

Oh, yes.

Uh, so I contacted Turner.

I said, hey, listen, I'd like to do an experiment.

I want to compare this to the Euro chip, um, or the Euro stock computer.

Would you, you know, do you have them available?

And they sent me a set of chips.

Super cool.

Um, but can 40 showed only 12 horsepower peak gain at the wheels?

Um, and apparently he used to tune them at very high altitude.

So I was told expect a little bit more than that from people who know Jim.

Um, so what we did was dynoed Matt's car first.

And then my plan was do his car first.

And then my car on, uh, on the same chips right away,

just to see if there's a difference between the two engines, right?

Maybe I'm, uh, my engines bad and his isn't or whatever.

Turns out his car put two.

Oh my god.

Now I gotta look this up.

Um, his car did really well, like surprisingly well.

Often these cars only put between 280 and 2, 290 horsepower of the wheels,

which is not a lot given what they're rated at.

So either they don't, their rating was, um, optimistic or the,

that big set of BMW today.

Well, BMW today everyone calls the engines underrated.

And it's, it's because they rate them for worst case scenario with heat soak and,

you know, very, very poor conditions.

Um, Matt's car put 297 to the wheels, which is unusual, right?

Um, and, and 335 pound feet of torque.

Really, really healthy numbers.

So I said, you know what?

Let's just pull his off right away and just get a baseline on my car.

Um, and my car has Ferrari 599 mufflers.

So I did a custom X pipe and then 599 mufflers.

But I put the stock computers on it.

Um, and I beat them with an even 300 at the wheels.

And I thought, okay, the difference is, um, was all over six 5,000 RPM.

So 5,000 off system flowing more efficiently.

So what I then did was say, okay, well, now it's, I'm not,

this did not go the way I expected it to because I genuinely expected, you know,

my car to make 20 or 30 less horsepower than it is.

So then I put the, uh, can 40 chips in it and it gained, uh, some more power,

put 304 to the wheel.

So four more peak horsepower.

However, if you look at the curve and we'll have an insert here,

if you're looking over 5,000 RPM, that green line is Matt's car.

And you can see that over 5,000 RPM, it just drops precipitously so that,

even though it's making, uh, I'm only looking by the way at torque.

I never, uh, I'm sorry, at horsepower on this.

But even though, um, it's making 300 as peak, it's down to like 262 horsepower by,

by red line.

Um, and my stock engine, which is, um, the stock programming,

which is the red line is still 280.

Um, and then the blue line at the top is with the chips.

So I am 25 wheel horsepower above a chip Euro car at red line.

Um, and through most of the 6,000, 5,500 to 6,200 RPM range,

which is massive.

I mean, that's 35 horsepower.

Interesting.

Chip plus exhaust.

Chip plus exhaust is the way to go.

And so when I, when I put the numbers in, you do the,

he's with the Euro chip in it or you only did, no, I,

I didn't want to hold him up.

He was doing me a favor and he just showed up at the steno.

Uh, what I really would love to have done is put his Euro,

put his car back in the deno with his Euro stock chip in it,

and then a chip set in it, and then my car stock.

But there are plenty of other ones where, you know, people are seeing 28290.

So the fact that he put 295, 297 to the wheels.

Um, it's healthy.

It's healthy already.

But now I realize that like I've probably got at 304 to the wheels,

I probably have a peak 25 horsepower gain, um, or, you know,

20 horsepower at the wheels.

Um, but the big huge gains up top huge.

So now it calculates out at a 4.6 to 60, um, instead of, you know,

the 5.3.

Well, that means you have to use the, uh, upper part of the tech

ometer.

Oh, I do.

Good.

Oh, I do.

Um, and I just met a guy at a cars and coffee,

who swapped an 8.50 CSI motor.

So B56, an actual CSI motor with a 6-speed into his E34.

Um, M5.

M5.

Yeah.

So the swap is already done, I think, before I got it,

and he's just cleaning up and making work.

I've seen this car years ago.

Oh, my God.

Super cool idea.

Super fucking fast.

Really?

Like it lit up the rear wheels in first gear like boom.

And then second was fighting for traction.

It is a monster.

Um, so he's, um, I think his, uh, Instagram is checkmate E30.

Um, I'm going to, he's my new best friend because he's working

with someone to make equal length step headers for it.

Oh, that's going to give the magic noise.

Yeah.

Uh, well, whatever.

I mean, that's the magical noise.

That's the Mercedes thing that people did on W and 40s.

That's going to be pretty dang cool, pretty cool.

So I am going to contact the company that he's working with and saying,

well, if you'd like to expand the offering to just, you know,

uh, 70 swapped E34s of which there are probably two,

um, to all eight series owners of each well owners.

Use my car as a test.

I'll work with them.

I'll have to pull the engine to get the exhaust in sadly.

Worth it.

Entirely worth it to have that kind of noise.

I love how it sounds already.

I love how it sounds until 4,000.

And then it sort of gets quieter again.

Um, I can actually, uh, for, I have video of the stock exhaust,

uh, from Matt's car.

And then the, um, my exhaust.

And what you'll hear is that from the front, you really kind of,

which is where we have to video from, you kind of have more intake noise,

induction noise than anything else.

Um, and then at low revs, my car gets this fizz and it just makes all this noise

and then sort of fades out.

There's not that much of a difference between.

It's kind of the, I don't know, I guess you would like it Matt,

when you're really pressing on, you want the noise and it just goes away.

I want 6,000 RPM V12 screen.

You know, it's, it sounds amazing.

That car sounds best driving through traffic with the windows down in the city.

And you just hear this unexpectedly high pitched.

It just sounds brilliant.

Yeah.

But it just, it sounds amazing at high revs.

It just gets quieter.

And I wanted to get louder.

Yeah.

Let's see opposite of what you want.

So yeah.

So I did that.

Okay.

Which was successful.

Science.

Yeah.

And then you have a good motor and a healthy motor.

Yeah.

Healthy output anyway.

Um, it doesn't use any oil and makes full power so I guess it's healthy.

Um, and then I, I know the rover.

Okay.

Did it make more or less than 297 horsepower at the wheels?

Slightly less.

So I should, let me, let me say this also, I went to a local shop.

Sort of an hour north of San Francisco called Chuckles Garage.

And I had never met these guys before.

Super cool.

They have a big, big sort of social media following.

And they, they do a lot of like crazy engine swaps.

Mostly like 2JZ swaps.

They're like the home of 2JZ swaps.

And they have.

2JZ everything.

2JZ all the things.

And actually Scott, the owner has a, as a land speed record for compact pickup truck.

230 something miles an hour with a 2000 horsepower 2JZ.

And I'm just genuinely sick.

Shit.

He was a sweetheart.

He was like totally amazing to work with.

Just sort of gave us all this dinotime.

Um, and they have a leaderboard of the most power ever made on the dino.

And then a separate leader for the most power, at least power ever made on the dino.

Uh-huh.

And I am now in first place for the least power ever made on his dino.

And I'm in fourth place.

And I'm in 14th place.

And to, to tell you my, my 304 horsepower to the wheels, 850,

which is by a massive margin, the most of any car I've ever dinowed ever,

is in 14th place on the shame board.

Uh-huh.

The rover is in fourth place at 208 horsepower to the wheels.

Well, you might be in for some number between fourth and 14th,

once you get your new motor for your rover.

Yeah.

I'm still holding out hope you've heard it here first.

Agerty.

Please build me a new motor.

Um, no, the, uh, we talked about a couple weeks ago,

the, uh, redline rebuild team that does all those really cool, uh, videos.

And I are discussing building a spicy rover.

3.9 liter, um, I just feel like 250.

So put it this way.

It's rated at 133 horsepower.

Um, it's, uh, I have, I chopped off the muffler.

It doesn't have a muffler.

And yet you can't hear anything the engine says over the, uh,

over the rollers on the dyno over the fan or the fan, the mechanical, um,

which I replaced at great, I, I bled a lot, but I got, I replaced that fucking, uh,

viscous fan clutch, thinking it was broken.

And the brand new one does exactly the same thing.

It never shuts up.

Uh-huh.

Um, I hate fan clutch replacements.

Yeah.

Well, there's, I had to pull the rated.

There's just no, that car is designed, never to be worked on, worked on.

Um, but, uh, British Layland never.

Never.

Uh, yeah.

So put one away to the wheels.

My goal would be one, uh, two sixteen.

Like, I think two sixteen to the wheels, two hundred and something to the wheels.

Two, did you say two sixty?

Two sixteen, two sixteen.

Double one away.

Oh, I see.

Doubling the power.

That's my challenge for the red line team.

Just give me a three point nine liter that puts two sixteen to the wheels.

And I think that's easily possible.

I mean, at my typical calculation of 17% loss on a dyno jet, um, two sixteen times one point

one seven would be two fifty two.

Yeah.

That's probably the most, um, that I think that engine would make reliably without warm

mods.

Yeah.

Depends on what compression ratio and ten to one, not in half or ten to one.

So the Vitas, which was the, you know, the homologation car, was nine and a half to one or nine point two five to one, um,

with not very, very small mods, um, and it made one ninety.

Yeah.

So yeah, an intake and, you know, intake exhaust headers and whatever I should be two twenty two thirty.

No problem.

I'd be thrilled.

And TVR made a spicy version of the Rover V8 that was used in the, what is that convertible?

So they had five liter version that was the Griffith 500.

And then the, uh, is it the Camara?

It is the Camara.

The Camara used, uh, various forms of spicy Rover V8s.

And I think they were making two twenty five to two fifty horsepower from, um, three point nine liter.

I don't know if there were three nines or not or fouros.

You might even, you know, maybe do four.

If this thing jumps from a hundred and eight wheel horsepower to 160 or 170, I mean, it'll transform the car.

Um, more importantly, the thing made peak torque at nineteen hundred RPM.

Yeah, it's American V8.

There you go.

I mean, it just needs to breathe a little bit better up top.

Um, needs to have a little bit more aggressive of a cam in it.

Um, and I think it would be fantastic.

I mean, it was a Rover engineer then.

The Buick engineer, that engine for use in a sedan used by Americans, the way that Americans use cars.

And then it was used in a truck where it would make a hundred and fifty or 160 horsepower and 210 foot pounds of torque.

And that was what it mattered because it was going to be used in the rain.

And I believe the original Buick design was only meant to rev to forty two hundred RPM.

Yeah, something absurdly.

Uh-oh.

And this did make peak power at forty two hundred.

Like, and it's just all kind of downhill from there.

And it just falls and falls and falls and falls and falls.

It actually is a horsepower plateau from four thousand to fifty five hundred.

That tells you there's some unlocked potential.

There's a lot of unlocked potential in that thing.

Um, so yeah, I mean, I don't want to destroy the character of the car.

Um, and it does have long gears so you can't, if you push all the torque to the top of the reverence, you'll never get there.

That zero to like thirty in first gear will be like, come on, wake up, wake up, wake up.

You like driving at nine thirty?

Yeah.

Exactly.

And then of course, we put the hundred feet on.

So, uh, let's, let's have a look.

So that's first place.

First place, fifty four horsepower.

So they use this slightly different correction factor.

So if you're looking at the inserts, you're going to see the, uh, the numbers don't quite match up with what I'm saying.

It was fifty five horsepower there, uh, fifty four because I use SAE standard correction.

And they use just regular standard correction.

Um, yeah, fifty four horsepower of the wheels and forty pound feet of torque.

There's a lot for a six hundred and fifty six CC engine.

That would be ideal for a motorcycle.

Yeah.

But your, your motorcycles probably have far more torque.

Yeah, I think my motorcycle probably has like ninety eight foot pounds of torque or something like that.

Oh my god.

Your motorcycle?

Two hundred and fifteen horsepower.

I mean, five times the horsepower.

So it's fucking insane.

Um, but yeah.

No, it was fun.

Dinos are amazing because they are, um, the shape of the, the curves really tells you a lot about the character of the motor.

Being able to sort of correlate what you experience with the shape of the lines that you see really allows you,

gives you the vocabulary to then look at dyno plots in the future and see what the character of the motor is like just by looking at a graph.

I spent a whole day doing a whole bunch of spreadsheets, um, just sort of, you know,

imported the dyno runs into Excel and just made a bunch of things.

And I'll put the one in here, which is what I did was index.

This is super fucking nerdy.

Like I've run an entire Sunday on this.

I indexed revs and torque so that the x-axis of this graph instead of being RPM from, you know,

idle to red line, um, is a percentage of maximum mention speed.

So, you know, if the car did 6,000 RPM was red line, that's 100% so 3000 would be 50.

Because I have some engines like the rover's red lines that we, we stopped the dyno at 5500 RPM.

Um, and then was it still going?

It was still going.

It was, it was actually making pretty good power, but it just sounded so strained.

And I, I have revved it to 6,000 on the road.

Um, but I just, does it have an indicated red line?

6,000.

So 55 is soft and, and 6,000 is hot.

Does it have a limiter?

Yeah.

We didn't hit it.

Um, I think the limiter is at 6,000, but the, my friend Colin was on the dyno at the time,

and he kept pulling off at like 4,000.

He's like, it's done.

It's not making any more power.

And I'm like, would you just keep your fucking foot in it?

It's fine.

And it really does sound so strained and it feels like it's struggling so much.

But actually, the ideal shift point when I, when I take the plot that we did is red line.

Is 5,500.

Whether it would have been any higher than that.

You know, had I had it to do it again, I would say, just keep your foot in it.

If we blow it up, we blow it up.

But I want, we won't.

I mean, I've revved it to 6,000 on the road.

Sometimes.

Um, and it pulled.

It wasn't making huge power.

But I mean, I also did try, I adjusted timing on that dyno.

And I gave it some advance.

It lost power.

I gave it some retarded loss power.

And I'm like, you know what, I'm done.

I just need to get out of here.

It's been a long day.

But, um, but so yeah.

So this plot takes basically RPM on the bottom, which is a percent of maximum image and speed.

And then torque on the y-axis is percent of maximum torque.

So it evens out the playing field between all of my nine cars.

So you can investigate a character rather than absolute numbers.

And it's a really clear way of seeing the character difference between these engines.

Because, you know, the Rover peaks, it hits 100% it, like, you know, 20% of its RPM peak.

And then it's just downhill from there.

Whereas the Honda has this absolutely beautiful build, build, build, build all the way to, and it's not a huge build.

It's just, it's, you know, maybe a 10 or 15% gain from.

I know.

Yep.

So it's rev, it's not only as it's revving higher, it's pulling harder all the way to 6,000.

That's 61, I think is where torque peak was somewhere on there.

And then it start to fall horsepower peak was right under, under 8 grand.

And, you know, so if you put those two plots together, you just see the opposite.

You know, you can see these, these engines are opposite.

And so I have my Ferrari in there before, before Dino Motors tuned it up when they did the time available for me.

And so I need to redo that because I think it's way more powerful of top now.

But yeah, you can really visually see the character of an engine.

And you know, how much you'd be wanting to will it, to rev it out or how much we need to.

Whether there's any juice, that's worth the squeeze of doing that.

And it was interesting also to put the BMW M20, the straight six together with the V12 that is two of those straight sixes.

Because you can see, they're identical.

Right.

I mean, when they're indexed out, we're like, oh, that's the same engine.

There's just two of them.

You boy, you can't tell when it's indexed.

Yes.

Just the same.

Yeah, pretty cool.

But the Dino is the ultimate like heart breaker because everyone always thinks, oh, we got 50 horsepower from this mod.

Really?

Dino it.

I mean, first thing I do when I modify anything, Dino it immediately.

And I've had a lot of big surprises through the years where you think, oh, this is going to be great.

And maybe you'll get, you know, six horsepower peak number, but it pulls so much area under the curve out.

The car slower.

Yeah.

Yeah, I highly recommend science.

Yeah, I want a Dino jet in here.

I mean, like I would, I would, back in the day, I tried to convince automobile magazine to let me buy a mobile Dino.

Because you just trailered around and you put, you know, I thought every, at any given point, we had 10 or 12 or 15 press cars in the office.

I will Dino every single car in the office.

This is what motorcycle magazines do.

Really?

Every motorcycle gets a Dino.

Yeah, I want to do this at automobile.

And they wouldn't let me.

They were like, it's never going to pay for itself.

And I'm like, yes, well, because I'll use it all the front.

My own cars.

It was very much primarily motivated by my desire to just have a Dino.

How much does a dynamometer cost?

Thousands.

Yeah.

Like how many?

Like three or like, I think you used it.

You could probably buy a Dino jet for six.

Oh.

Interesting.

You think we should put the problem is they have the above ground one and the below ground one.

The, the, the in ground ones are the ones to get.

But then you're not six.

Well, but then you're, yeah, it's going to cost a lot to install it.

But the above ground one, I don't know, maybe use a used one for six or 10 and then just buy a truck to attach it to.

Dude, I would love that.

Leave it in the parking lot.

The neighbors would love.

Whoa.

Okay.

Over and over and over again.

You could fire up on the.

Yeah, I'm interested actually.

I mean, I don't know.

You need to find a local, I think I know of one, a local black series without a swap on it.

And let's do before and after.

I'd be curious to see.

I mean, that could explain right there the one and a half second lap time difference that Randy got.

Yeah.

So it's been a.

Dino, this is kind of weak and it's been a very sciencey week.

You have ruined doing before and after.

Yeah.

Ruin, ruined your.

Checkbook.

Yeah.

Your checkbooks day.

I mean, I can't.

So I think it's a lot of car for the money given what other things cost.

If you could have, you know, an F-355 or that.

I mean, for the same money, right?

I mean, I wouldn't, there's, there's not a lot of things.

I would choose an F-355 over.

That's about an estimate of what that car's worth.

Or have any transactions.

Is a manual?

No.

None have transactions in my knowledge.

I don't know.

If you're just doing a bottoms up estimate, the car is worth $150,000 or a little bit less than that.

So.

It's a lot of money.

Yeah, but I mean, it's less than that.

But there's not much that I would buy.

Yeah.

Would you buy a Testerosa instead?

Or for R-550 instead?

No.

For R-355.

Absolutely.

Okay.

You know, Porsche 997 GT3.

Hmm.

There you go.

RS.

Four later.

RS.

Four later.

RS.

Four later.

RS.

Four later.

RS.

Four later.

RS.

Four later.

RS.

Four later.

RS.

Four later.

RS.

Four later.

Yeah.

You're one the fuck did that out.

And that wild.

Oh my God.

Especially that spread.

It's a big spread.

Yeah.

Why the spread?

Color.

Really?

Yeah.

Hmm.

That's.

If it's like a white one with stripes than it with, you know, then it's $7,800,000.

And if it's like a one-off weird color that.

Porsche people.

I know.

Porsche people.

Well, it's because they all have the same damn car.

So they're looking to, like, my knees better or different.

Give me the white one with.

I don't care.

Exactly.

Well, there's plenty of people out there buying those.

And those cars are abundant.

But you're like, it's the only one that was made in the shade of blue that matches the.

Uh-oh.

I'm not even going to say anything here because I'll, like, three different things ran through

my head.

None of which were appropriate.

And so I'm going to say none of them.

Yeah.

Well, you know, we're about to say what we want on this podcast is one thing.

You know, Haggerty made clear and I think they've probably regretted since.

You can say whatever you want.

Nope.

Okay.

Well, I think we should go to lunch somewhere very, very far away and I'll drive.

Okay.

Also, there's two seats, so Jake is going to have to just, he's dead and he can run

all alongside us.

No.

I mean, you can, there's space in the back where the back seats were.

There's just none in there in the black series.

So you can illegally transport people without un belted passengers, un belted missiles in

the back.

That's right.

Jim Trees.

Well, I hope those cars fall in value because I hope to have one.

Yeah.

I would truly own one.

Yeah.

Bravo to math.

Yeah.

I mean, it's just figuring out that it's possible, right?

Nobody to my knowledge had put a manual behind on 156 and this is the thing now that he has

figured out what Mercedes ingredients to recombine anything with a 156 in it could be converted

to manual.

So C63, E63s, including the wagons, like, you know, the next frontier, of course, would

be the SLS.

But those are trans axles.

So I don't know.

Yeah.

That's a different story.

Very easy.

Yeah.

It's trans.

Yes.

I think so.

But yeah, it's a transaction.

So that's not going to be easy.

Yeah.

But anything else with a 156?

Oh my god.

I mean, this is the car to have.

This is the car to have.

Of all of them.

Yeah.

I mean, one of 350 US market, 500 worldwide with those fenders, those wheels, those seats, that's

steering.

Yeah.

Damn it, Derek.

You're welcome.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you for letting me drive it again.

Derek, we'll see you, Carm Engine Raiders.

That was new.

Next week.

Yes.

Probably.

Or you'll see us.

Yeah.

Or hear us.

Or just click on us and thumbs down and unsubscribe or something.

Yeah.

Because you too can't have a C63 AMG black series manual.

It's okay.

Oh, sorry.

It's okay.

Bye.

Driving a CLK63 Black Series MANUAL — The Carmudgeon Show w Jason Cammisa & Derek Tam-Scott — Ep 185

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