Hello Markus,

first it was great to meet you and the other Crossfire owners in Germany. The Mercedes Museum was fantastic!! I hope I can compare some notes with Evil Deeds. It appears he started right off the key with a N/A 55 engine! I would love to know how that was done.

All,

Just to set the record straight, It did not take a year or so to work out any bugs. Once the car started it ran great and I have had no problems at all. I have made some upgrades over time, such as a C43 colling fan and shroud instead of the dual electric fans, and have installed n/a 55 AMG cams into my 500 engine, and added the AMG intake recently as well as shift paddles and blue top solonoids. I also have a set of headers ready to install and a turbo kit in the works.

When I first got the idea of the V8, only Startech/Brabus had done it and they were not being helpful at all. It took about two weeks to figure out mechanically how to do it. I was looking at engines on Ebay and noticed a C43 engine that had exhaust manifolds that looked just like the ones on our V6's. this led me to look at the C43 chassis and I noticed it was pretty much identical to the Crossfire. It then took two more years of research to figure out the wlectronics. After hitting many dead ends, I came up with an unproven therory on how to adapt the V8 ECU to the car. The swap took a weekend, but then it took another month to get it running. It took time to start for two reasons, clogged injectors and trying to figure out the key start issue. We eventually gave up and gave the car a starter button.