We should have a DIY section on the forum for guys to share how they did things themselves and saved. Unfortunately most of the after market for our cars is directly related to the SLK32 or SLK320 and Mercedes owner seem willing to pay anything and even seem to take pride in paying more.

The last really fun car I had was the Supercharged Mini Cooper. The first thing we all did was spend about $100 on a pulley. The stock ECU didn't need to be altered but a lot of us did alter the ECU for additional power. This cost us $75 from MTH Software in Germany. We did not need to send the ECU to Germany. We sent him a list of our Mods and VIN number and he sent us a file that we uploaded ourselves from a laptop with a special cable that plugged into the OBDII port. MTH doesn't currently work with Mercedes but if he did, the prices would start dropping. I will send him an email and see what he says.

I will look into the pulley. $975 is nuts. You can buy a whole set of show quality March pulleys for a Street rod for that.