I can't thank Josh enough -- I just bought a 2007 Coup Limited 6wks. ago from the original owner, about 2hrs. from me, Trailered it down (to be on the safe side) and parked it in my garage. It only came with 1 key fob, which functioned fine, and I wanted a backup, seeing how if something catastrophic happened to this lone fob, I'd have to learn how to take apart my driver's door and driver's side of the dash to get the necessary parts to make a new key/fob from scratch (if I could even find someone to do it depending how far into the future this occurred). Decided on Josh to make the key/fob copy after searching through this forum, and overnighted it to him by USPS -- USPS lost my shipment at the first processing center!!!
I was in touch with Josh, and after 3wks. gave up on my package being found. I watched YouTube videos, esp. "Crossfire Repairs by Paul", and tackled getting the necessary parts to Josh so a key and fob could be created from scratch, using my ECU, Skreem and driver's door key cylinder. (by the way, I think the lower dash on the 2007's are different from the earlier years because Paul's lower dash panel is not as complicated as mine). Overnighted my pieces to Josh by UPS without an issue, and he got it back to me within the week by FEDEX overnight, first bench testing it to make sure it worked before shipping it. I also bought from Ebay a married set from a donor car of an ECU,Skreem,ignition cyclinder, single key fob,driver's door key cylinder, and glovebox lock and had it shipped out directly to him -- got to him while my original set was there, and he programmed the donor set to my VIN so I have a complete back up if ever needed to put in my car(not a duplicate of my original) with 2 additional key fobs made for this back up set. He even had to do some programming repairs on the Ebay Skreem to get it to consistently work properly. During this whole process, I was on the phone with him, or communicating by emails or text messaging, to figure out how to proceed -- he's a great resource!
Finally installed my original ECU, Skreem and door cylinder, and tested each of the 3 keys and fobs that I had Josh make - all work great! He did have to walk me through the initializing steps to get the fob's door lock/panic button recognized by my car (by the BCM I'm guessing) which really was simple in the end.
Josh is like a wizard when it comes to our car's (or Mercedes for that matter) electronics, and watching his YouTube videos, he definitely knows the Crossfire's powertrain. Anyway, with how much support I got from this forum with deciding on purchasing the Crossfire (and bringing it back to life - despite the postal service incompetence or, to be frank, potential larceny of my package), I thought this would be a helpful first post.

-jack

 

Wow, crazy that the post office lost your package! That was my worry when I sent Josh my only key, but a week later he had the old and new ones back to me. He's a wizard with the electronics in these cars and all Mercedes cars. I hope to have him do a V8 swap some day.