I was speaking to Gary at LET Mororsports today and he is very familiar with Mercedes electronics and has done many performance projects inluding tuning a normally aspirated 55 engine that had the factory supercharger installed. He also does custom performance tuning in the ECU for Crossfires and Mercedes. He mentioned that the best way to get the V8 conversion to run like it came that way was to start wiith a new or returned to "virgin" unlocked V8 ECU. He went on to say that most of the tuning would have to be done in the developer mode of the Star Diagnostic Sytem (SDS/DAS). He said he willing to help with this if we run into trouble but felt it is very doable. In the case of the Crossfire, he said I may have to play around a little by selecting chassis R170 or probably have to slect something similar that came with a V8 like a clk500 ect. He siad differences in gear ratios in the trans and dif can be worked out in developer mode. He also made a point to say that if you are starting with an unlocked or new ECU, DO NOT turn the key before you should as the ECU will lock.