Back In Black

02 May Back In Black

Yep, we’re back into the swing of things. And most of our work today happens to be painted black. Now you know the science behind our always-so-clever titles.

For starters, like we promised before we left, this month marks the effort to hammer through all of our long-termers. Today, we’ve got a C32 AMG that we’ve had for some time. Having recently taken receipt of its ECU once again, we’re getting back to work on various small gremlins from the past. After that, there’s a WOT Box install and one or two more items, then it’s one more long-termer back in the hands of its excited driver!

We’ve also got another member of the Mercedes family in the Fluid garage. George’s C63 AMG is back, this time for some Kleeman headers, an Evosport pulley and a Quaife LSD install. It’s good to see the C63 back here, because every time it leaves, it ends up getting better and better. This time should be no exception from the norm.

And now for the newest addition. This E60 M5 came from Denver for some go-fast bits — namely, headers, full exhaust, cams and a tune. This build will be a good one, so we plan on documenting the hell out of it. Keep on the lookout for updates specific to this build, which has one of the best vanity plates I’ve ever seen on an E60 M5:

Finally, we move from glossy black to flat black. Yep, we’re talkin’ about Gold Wheels again. If you haven’t had the chance to check out Gold Wheels’ most recent outing on YouTube yet, you should definitely do so. But back to the point of this post. Remember that broken speed bump from the Palazzo? Well, as we all know at Fluid MotorUnion, it sucks to roll hard. This was no more evident than when, upon our return to Plainfield, we took a look underneath Gold Wheels to see just what 3,000+ miles of driving would do to a car so low. And without further ado, here it is. For starters, there looks to be chunks of a speed bump stuck near the midsection. We certainly don’t know what speed bump would have lodged itself in our car (yep, no idea whatsoever…):

The flex pipes were the second lowest parts of the exhaust, second only to the cutouts. The cutouts, miraculously, survived with nary a scratch. The driver’s side flex pipe, however, suffered a worse fate:

When we looked at the collectors while in Vegas, the flashlight made it look like we had hit and consequently cooked a chicken. Now that we’ve got it on the lift, though, we very clearly hit and cooked a plastic bag. Yum.

Finally, it turns out we were quite lucky we didn’t scrape too much harder, or we would have certainly ended up deep in a certain creek without a paddle. After some quick inspections, the oil pan got hit pretty hard throughout the trip. Now, it didn’t dent or fall off (thankfully), but the drain bolt got pretty messed up, and most of the oil pan’s bottom is pretty thoroughly scraped. Perhaps some Roadster-style titanium skid pads are necessary in this case…but only if we can get them in gold.