CLR goes CLS

[Ryzza5]

The only way it could be mintier is if it revealed random facts when you opened it up ;)

[The Compensator]

Leather needs to be cleaned and the paint might look much worse under direct light if it has never been machine polished in its entire life. Also we don't have close-up photos of the front end - stone chips, y'know.

[CarMadMike]

Bit of a killjoy post that Tom, y'know :p

[TIMELESS]

Bit of a killjoy post that Tom, y'know :p

 

He's just trying to convince CLR to hire him to detail the CLS :p

[CLR-GTR]

We all know how Tomas is regarding detailing :p

 

@Tomas: the place I bought it from had undented and repainted the front-end to remove stone-chip damage, so there won't be anything to see now. Leather treatment in my opinion would be necessary for the steeringwheel and the front seats, but I just got the car and it's not high on my list right now to sort out.

 

@Andreas: I bought it with just over 154.000 km. That would be just over 30.000 a year, which is a good mileage for a diesel. Sometimes diesels show up which have done maybe 10.000 km a year, I would have more doubts about such a car.

 

@Myk: At the moment I have not really planned anything, just thinking/looking/dreaming a bit, but it's nothing spectacular like what nearly every American MBForum member does.

 

If I'd do anything to this car, most likely the first thing would be a different and/or extra set of wheels, so I can easily swap winter-summer. I don't know how I'll do it. I could get a second 18-inch or a 19-inch set for the summer and keep the current 18's as winter set, or I can get a second 18-inch or 17-inch set for the winter. For 19-inch wheels I'd first have to ask around a bit if others know what difference it would make in comfort. For 17-inch rims, I'm not sure if the current brakes are larger than the stock ones or not. But as you point out, Merc has a lot of different wheels, both AMG as non-AMG. Ofcourse the rim width and ET offset must be correct, and then it'll just be taste. We'll see. Oh and I absolutely don't want wheels with spokes that are curved like turbine blades or anything, because they'd all be similar and that means 2 would be facing the opposite way. The only directional rims Merc made were the SLR turbines.

 

Speaking of which... there are two sets of wheels they had on the SLR which I would love to see how they look like on other Mercs, a 5-spoke (like the one in TDU1, but less Vauxhall Corsa-ish) and a nice 10-spoke. But those sets are extremely rare to find, and I don't know if the sizes will be right.

 

A second thing would be to get rid of the emblems across the bodywork, which are 2 BlueEfficiency labels on the front quarterpanels, chrome letters spelling the seller's company name below the rear license plate, and the CLS350 and CDI badges. Other than that, I currently don't miss anything and I don't see myself spending thousands to get retrofitted folding mirrors, upgraded soundsystem, dynamic multi-contour seats or radar-guided cruise control, just to name a few things my car doesn't have. But I don't miss them anyway and most likely I would rarely use those.

[The Compensator]

 

Got a tune for ya.

[CLR-GTR]

Clearly one of the people who were behind me in line for the hand-out of singing skills...

[CLR-GTR]

Been messing a bit in Word to see what other wheels I'd like. Basically all are sort of sized to the 18" that are on now, but in reality I think most of em are 19". 20 and over is a no-go, so are all black wheels except for the AMG 7-twinspokes.

 

 

 

[CarMadMike]

Not a fan of the second ones down. The last ones are :drool: They look amazing. There's no question/debate for me, it's them or none :cheeky:

[TIMELESS]

I'd go for the last ones, but I'm a little biased since that's what's on our E :lol: They are pretty though!

[The Compensator]

Numero viero

[CLR-GTR]

@Mike: none? You expect me to carry those 1700+ kg on my back to work? :lol:

 

@all: seems option 4 really seems to be a favorite. I also showed these pics on the dutch mercforum and the first 4 replies were also straight to the 7-spokes. And I myself also keep returning to those 7-spokes. They are very different from the other AMG rims which are nearly always 5-spoke, single, double or 'triple'. I like to make a combination of wheels and car that you don't see every time you search for pictures of that car. Ofcourse that could also mean just to slam some Vossen or ADV1 or whatever on it, but I like to stay close to Merc+AMG themselves.

[CarMadMike]

Yeah definitely stay OEM :nods:

[CLR-GTR]

Little update: bought some stuff for the car. Most of the stuff was some basic care products and cloths, all through MB. Also ordered special center caps with the fancy AMG graphics on it which I now find too nice to put them on the car :lol:. They were expensive, but OEM and I prefer these over the colored once you can find on ebay. Other people might find it badge-engineering but at least my car had the AMG pack from the factory and no matter which rims I'll end up buying, they'll be AMG ones. I won't do anything else, no spoiler lip, no actual AMG bumpers and no quad exhausts.

 

 

Rest of the order was basically a folding crate, and a set of valve covers (which will go on the car :p).

 

 

As I was at family in the north of the country for 1,5 week, I got the chance to make some better pictures than what I'd be able to do around my own city. Weather could have been worse, but could also be better, let me know when you found the control panel for it. I'm still a noob at handling cameras but I think the pictures came out well.

 

 

 

[The Compensator]

lower it, son

[CLR-GTR]

I'm fine with the way it is now, and if nothing major shows up, the first thing I'll be buying is an extra set of rims (7-double spokes 19" still #1 candidate).

 

Today I went to the local gardening center to pick up a bag of gravel for the garden, and when we walked back to the car, I saw this standing there. Excellent time to take pictures, and the camera's home :/ It's 350 petrol vs 350 CDI, stock exterior vs AMG styling... and folding mirrors vs no folding mirrors :lol: These Shooting Brakes are a rare sight too, rare enough that Das Haus is most likely going to axe it with the third gen CLS.

 

For techies and trendies: the following anti-quality of the images could turn your stomache upside down. :nods:

 

 

[CLR-GTR]

Found some decent pics since these rims really depend on their depth, so I thought I'd give it a try as well:

 

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And now I've had all of them lol. Time to start saving... for the 7-doublespokes.

[The Compensator]

Yeah... nah. They are not the right ones.

 

Looking at the specs of the SL rims, it appears that the ET is -17mm lower. While moving the wheels towards outside is always welcomed (and it baffles me that manufacturers do not care about this important visual aspect), you'd have to check if the wheels would fit in there. I have no idea how much room there is.

 

Watch out for the offset and width of the double seven-spoke rims because W/S212 and A207 do not share the same rims even though they look the same. And the 212 runs 10mm narrower tires compared to your CLS. However, that is not an issue.

 

W212

48,3 cm (19") AMG Leichtmetallräder im 7-Doppelspeichen-Design hochglanzschwarz lackiert und glanzgedreht

245/35 R19 auf 8,5 J x 19 ET 48

275/30 R19 auf 9,5 J x 19 ET 48

A207

48,3cm (19") AMG Leichtmetallräder im 7-Doppelspeichen-Design hochglanzschwarz lackiert und glanzgedreht

235/35 R19 auf 8,5 J x 19 ET 44

255/30 R19 auf 8,5 J x 19 ET 44

 

C218

48,3 cm (19") AMG Leichtmetallräder im 7-Doppelspeichen-Design hochglanzschwarz lackiert und glanzgedreht

255/35 R19 auf 8,5 J x 19 ET 35,5

285/30 R19 auf 9,5 J x 19 ET 48

 

I think the 7-spokes for the CLS have only been available in the awful chinese black/silver style as part of the Nightpaket.

 

BTW, what about the forged 5-spoke rims on page 40?

 

Think they are the same design as on the new C AMG coupe, but again, the offsets are different (ET37/52). You'd have to get spacers installed.

[CLR-GTR]

I don't like the split 5-spoke wheels. They're too common imo, overused, I want something a bit less obvious.

 

Hm... I gotta take some more looks at this. But I really don't wanna go for those black wheels, and full black isn't classy.

[CarMadMike]

Yeah I wouldn't go full-black unless you have a part time hobby in distributing narcotics around the netherlands :p (Possibly an easy job come to think about it).

[CLR-GTR]

Ehm.... ehhh... :leaves:

 

 

But ye that's sort of the reason I wouldn't go that way on this car, exactly that group of people. Though it would make me fit another stereotype regarding Merc drivers, but I'll skip on that :lol:

[CLR-GTR]

Today was the day of a micro-forummeeting at a transmission specialist in the west of the country. We were shown a presentation and did a tour through the place while our cars were being worked on; I registered mine for a flush, not to fix an issue but to know for sure it has been done at least once now.

 

It was a bit exciting to get there, knowing I skipped buying winter tires (this winter it has only snowed twice on a day that I had to hit the road) and it had snowed overnight. Luckilly the roads were relatively clean so with adjusted speed I managed to get there. The presentation gave a nice overview of what they do, but the tour was a real eye-opener. They make their own tooling in order to refurbish/fix transmissions and go very far to fix the actual cause of the issue rather than smacking a replacement transmission under the car, which might save time but can still cost more than a focused fix even when it's deep inside the internals. They also work on the electronics and they have several ways of running a transmission or its components on test setups simulating the operation in a car.

 

Happy that I did it, and I recommend others to do this as well, even when there are no issues. I had no complaints about the car at all but the car felt even smoother during gear changes than it already used to be. Especially a true specialist company like the one I visited, ATR, also have the right equipment to do full diagnostics on the car and transmission. Definitely a morning well spent.

 

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