W211 E55 AMG Dapper Drift V1

What started out as an oxymoron-experiment turned into a really fun and practical street build that could also come out and hang at the Sonoma Drift paddock course. The car remained subtle, retaining every bit of equipment that was installed at factory, including the ABS and traction control systems. The only thing I gave up is the air suspension for performance reasons.

The car was a 2003 Mercedes Benz E55 AMG W211, black on black. I was able to pick it up for $11K with 136K on the clock. Nothing wrong with it. This is the same car you may have seen at Winter Jam, Sonoma Drift and Gridlife.

There is a long thread on MBWorld forums if something is missing in this wiki.

The early W211 cars had a weaker rear end, so first order of business was to upgrade to the HAG215 axle found in more powerful Chrysler products. These rear ends were available in the CLS63s among other applications. Additionally, this enables the use of Wavetrac locking gear LSD, which has proven quite durable (comes with a lifetime guarantee) and well mannered for both street and light drifting duty. 

The factory axles had no issues standing up to the 4,000 lbs car being used and abused this way. One note is if you're going to be welding the differential (especially on the HAG210 axle), make sure the axle stubs are all the way in if you're plating the center of the spider gears. Otherwise you might end up committing the same sin as me: blocking full axle insertion, preventing oil sealing and compromising on the axle input spline engagement/strength. 

I ended up learning how to CAD/CAM in order to design my own dual channel hydraulic handbrake. The reasoning was that I could keep all the car's factory traction and ABS functions if the brake circuits remained isolated from each other, so I had to fabricate a dual Wildwood 0.5" Passthrough handbrake mount:

Here are some additional shots describing how I went about it.

All things considered, the air suspension is unreliable, bulky and unsuitable for high performance applications. For this car, FCP Euro Motorsports folks recommended I go with KW Variant 2 suspension which suited the car perfectly.

In order to achieve this, the rear suspension has to be converted to E350 lower control arms.

 Needless to say, nothing is offered for this platform in the way of a steering wheel hub adapter, so keeping theme with the dapper nature of the build, I had one machined from a single block of aluminum.  It used a locating pin and a machined core from the factory steering wheel to attach. Keep in mind, a Lo-Fi version of this technique can be done on any vehicle, I have done this with quick-release extensions on my W210 build as well as my 2006 Chevrolet Express tow van. 

You can also observe factory shift button pods milled from aluminum. You should note that these work by creating impedance in a 2 wire circuit, just leaving it upon will not work - the car will be trying to shift.

The M113K is an absolute beast of a unit. Pulley upgrades and tunes are common, for streetable use I'd recommend sticking with a clutched pulley and stock throttle body (as some users report surging issues with larger Chrysler upgrades). A popular upgrade is up-sizing and splitting the air-water-air intercooling system away from the primary coolant circuit to lower intake air temperature. This engine otherwise needs nothing, this dyno sheet as a testament (this was a hub dyno, not wheel).

Apparently 2003 and 2004 cars could disable traction control systems simply by holding down the ESP button for an extended period of time. Owners report that 2005 and 2006 cars had to be entered into dyno mode to achieve the same results. If that's the case, be wary of performing the hub upgrade above as it removes your ability to get into the cluster menu. For some reason I had trouble doing it even after connecting factory buttons afterwards. 

Eurocharged can reprogram your TCU to hold the gear and not upshift/downshift in M mode, which is a huge help for performance use, I highly recommend it. They occasionally do holiday sales that are announced on forums like MBWorld, so be patient and you can score a pretty good deal.